YWCA Minneapolis Welcomes New Board Members

YWCA Minneapolis announces nine new members joining the board of directors. Each bring with them a wealth of experience and knowledge to the governing role.July 2019: Colette Campbell, Nancy Garrett, Rita Patel, Lana Slavitt, Jan WikmanJanuary 2020: Stephanie Leonard Crosby, Josefina Landrieu, Carolyn Link, Nicole KvetonNew directors are appointed to serve a single, three-year term as members on the board. The board of directors works to implement the organizational strategic plan and advance YWCA Minneapolis’ mission to eliminate racism, empower women and girls and promote peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all.

July 2019

Colette Campbell

Colette Campbell has served as Bremer’s director of talent acquisition and diversity and inclusion since 2017. In this position, Ms. Campbell creates and executes Bremer’s talent acquisition and diversity and inclusion strategies, which includes shaping Bremer’s recruiting processes and establishing and growing outreach practices. Ms. Campbell’s past positions include serving as faculty in business, human resources and human development disciplines. She provided coaching, training and consulting services for many years through her own consulting business. Ms. Campbell holds degrees in religious studies, counseling, management, leadership and human development. Ms. Campbell brings both a personal and professional diversity to her position. She was raised in Canada by Jamaican-born parents and has lived and/or taught an almost every continent in the world. She is passionate about creating spaces to help people better understand themselves and others to work better together. 

Nancy Garrett

Nancy Garrett, Ph.D. is executive director of provider transformation at Aetna, where she provides strategic leadership to leverage provider and plan capabilities to improve quality and reduce costs within the joint venture between Allina and Aetna in Minnesota, and Allina and Inova Health in Northern Virginia. Previously, she was chief analytics officer and senior vice president for information technology at Hennepin County Medical Center, where she led the analytics and information technology functions. She also led informatics and analytics at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, and health economics andreimbursement at Boston Scientific.Ms. Garrett has worked at the provider, state and national levels to find creative ways of improving the health of populations by using data to identify and address both social and clinical risk factors. She currently serves on the National Quality Forum (NQF) expert panel on Disparities and the NQF Cost and Resource Use Steering Committee. She has served on the NQF committee that opened the door for risk adjustment of performance measures by sociodemographic characteristics. She is a member of the Technical Expert Panel for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) Accountable Health Communities model that is testing the effectiveness of screening and navigation for social risk factors.Ms. Garrett served on the board of Minnesota Community Measurement where she was instrumental in implementing its first cost measure. Ms. Garrett has a Ph.D. indemography from the University of Illinois and loves going to YMCA family camp in Northern Minnesota in the summers. 

Rita Patel

Rita Patel is a marketing executive with consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail experience, focused on building world-class marketing by building the high performing teams. Currently vice president brand management at Target, Ms. Patel is a professional who brings transformational thinking to difficult and complex situations. She has a strong ability to manage P&L responsibilities resulting in successful business results. She has domestic and global experience providing a unique perspective on solving business, brand and consumer problems. She is a driver and advocate for ensuring diverse thinking is leveraged. 

Lana Slavitt

A native Californian, Lana Slavitt has lived in Minnesota since 2004. She has served as the elections lead for Minnesota Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense since 2017, and is a long time volunteer with Baby’s Space. Previous to her work as a community volunteer, she was an executive at Target, Yahoo!, Universal Music Group and McKinsey & Company. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a MBA from Northwestern University. Ms. Slavitt has two young adult sons and resides in Edina with her husband. 

Jan Wikman

Jan Wikman is a sales and marketing consultant who has over 20 years’ experience bringing business solutions to a broad range of industries and Fortune 500 companies. Ms. Wikman has a proven ability to consistently open doors, create products, mobilize and energize teams and change cultures while driving significant results. Generatingover $90 million in sold products and services, Ms. Wikman has developed relationships with hundreds of companies. Prior to launching her consulting business, Ms. Wikman held the position as vice president of marketing for BI Worldwide preceded by the role vice president of sales and account management for Young America Corporation. Earlier in her career, Ms. Wikman was part of the start-up team that developed a new business in the incentive industry that was later purchased by Hallmark Insights. 

January 2020

Stephanie Leonard Crosby

Stephanie Crosby has been an advocate for educational equity as she served students, families and staff in the Robbinsdale Area Schools community for 25 years. She was hired as the first African-American school social worker in the district and then served as the first director of equity and inclusion. In the last 12 years, Ms. Crosby has served as the executive director of human resources where she has led the development of strategies for inclusion, diversity and employee engagement. She has been responsible for ensuring an integrated approach to building a diverse workforce. Ms. Crosby is the district’s chief negotiator administering all collective bargaining agreements and oversees all labor-management activities. Ms. Crosby holds a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from Tuskegee (Institute) University; Master of Arts in Education, M.Ed., School guidance and Counseling from Chicago State University; and a Master of Social Work from Augsburg University. She also holds a Certificate in human resources from the University of Minnesota. 

Josefina Landrieu

Josefina Landrieu, Ph.D. joined the Minnesota State Office of Equity and Inclusion in January 2015. From 2015 until 2017 she served as the director for equity assessment; in early 2018 she transitioned to the assistant chief diversity officer role for the system. She provides leadership and support to advance the review of policies, procedures and processes impacting inclusion and equity throughout the Minnesota State system as well as expertise and consultation for complex diversity and inclusion issues. Before joining Minnesota State, Dr. Landrieu was in a statewide role as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Center for Youth Development. Her work and scholarship strive to ensure positive learning environments for students in higher education. As an innovative, creative problem solver and change leader Dr. Landrieu is focused on the changes needed in organizational structures, policies and culture in order to serve an ever-changing student body. Dr. Landrieu has a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Norther Iowa, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership and Policy Development from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. 

Carolyn Link

Carolyn Link is the president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation. Ms. Link joined the organization in 2011, guiding the Foundation’s emphasis on health equity and focus on social determinants of health. Previously, Ms. Link was director at the Center for Prevention, a division of Blue Cross focused on preventing tobacco use and promoting physical activity and healthy eating. Ms. Link’s commitment to health improvement can be traced back to her early career as a nurse, working with children with complex health needs. Additionally, Ms. Link has worked at the Minnesota Department of Health on a tobacco-policy project. Ms. Link has a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Marquette University and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Minnesota.Ms. Link loves connecting the dots between mission and action, helping the Foundation infuse health equity into its processes and outcomes. She has three young adult children and lives in Northfield, Minnesota. Her new midlife hobbies include mountain biking and building props for high school theater productions. 

Nicole Kveton

Nicole Kveton, RN, BSN, MHA, is the vice president of quality and safety at Kaiser Performance. Prior to this role, Ms. Kveton was with Allina Health ensuring that clinical programs within Allina Health provided coordinated, efficient, high-quality care to patients in all settings across the continuum. This work was also dedicated to making sure that nursing operations are efficient, safe and effective. She oversaw patient care, centralized nursing programs, care management and total cost of care activities as these relate to Federal and State Accountable Care Organization (ACO) contracts and commercial health plan performance agreements. In alignment with these programs, Ms. Kveton’s teams collaborated to research and evaluate clinical guidelines and across Allina Health. These strategies allowed for improvement in patient outcomes and decrease in total cost of care.As an Allina Health nurse executive, Ms. Kveton provided vision and leadership to all aspects of nursing practice. She oversaw the development and implementation of a strategic nursing plan to ensure alignment with organizational goals and strategies. The discipline of nursing is strengthened through her focus on the care framework and standards, teamwork and collaboration, and building nursing capability.View YWCA Minneapolis' Board of Directors