For more than 35 years, Donna Thompson served on the front lines of community health care. As the health system's CEO from 2004-2023, Donna has driven Access Community Health Network (ACCESS) to evolve and reimagine its care delivery model to expand access and deliver comprehensive wraparound services and programs to effectively meet the needs of some of the Chicago area's most underserved, vulnerable communities. 

Donna is a well-respected executive and thought leader with a proven track record of driving innovation, expertise in strategy and execution, resource alignment, operational optimization, stakeholder engagement, communications management, and regulatory compliance to support critical initiatives by executing the organization's mission.

Currently serving on the boards of AccentCare, one of the nation's largest home health and hospice providers, operating 250 locations across 31 states and Washington D.C., DePaul University, and Advisory Board for Ardmore Roderick, one of the nation's top five Black-owned engineering firms.

In her years as CEO, Donna has led ACCESS to become the 6th largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) organization in the country, serving a predominately African American and Latinx patient population in 16 of Chicago's 20 most underserved communities. Donna has led the growth of ACCESS by acquiring and transforming health centers from health systems and community physician primary care practices in Chicago, Cook, and DuPage counties.  Moving the organization from volume to value-based care to successfully compete in the competitive healthcare environment required her to develop a focus on cultural alignment, physician engagement, technology enhancements, innovative payer partnerships, health systems, and community-based partnerships. Through a focused commitment to high-quality community health care that can save lives, revitalize communities, and preserve the possibility of a healthy life for hundreds of thousands of patients across the Chicagoland area, Donna successfully led ACCESS through innovative redesign of the delivery system by optimizing patient experience, providing quality services focused on health disparities and health inequities while embedding systems to address social determinants of health serving close to 180,000 patients annually. 

On Mother's Day in 2007, Donna launched ACCESS' faith-based breast cancer awareness campaign, Pin-A-Sister? /Exami?nate Comadre?, to educate and reduce health disparities and decrease the number of African American and Hispanic women who develop breast cancer. The campaign has reached millions of women locally, nationally, and internationally through strategic investments in community partnerships, media outlets, and grassroots outreach. 

Keeping the focus on providing solutions to health inequities and, under Donna's leadership, ACCESS  invested in long-term partnerships for teaching and research. In 2015, ACCESS opened its NIH-funded ACCESS Center for Discovery and Learning in Chicago's Englewood/Back of the Yards community to bring meaningful community-led research directly to those most in need. The Center has been a convener to share best practices in public health, educate community residents on critical health issues, and served as one of ACCESS's largest community COVID-19 vaccination sites through the pandemic. Through its research department, ACCESS invested in landmark studies and evaluation work on hypertension, patient engagement through shared decision-making, and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

Donna holds a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and a Master of Science in nursing administration from DePaul University. Donna was named a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow in 2003 and a 2010 graduate of the Kellogg School of Management's CEO Perspectives program. Throughout her career, Donna has received several awards and recognitions including the 2015 National Medical Fellowship Leadership in Healthcare Award, Crain's 2019 Most Notable Women in Healthcare, Habilitative System's 2021 Race and Health Equity Award, the National Black Nurses Association's 2021 Notable Nurses and Champions, Crain's 2022 Notable Executives of Color in Health Care, Institute of Medicine Chicago (IOMC) 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award and Equal Hope Lifetime Achievement Award as a Champion for Health Equity.