The president and CEO of Mount Carmel Health System will retire at the end of the year, marking the end of a roughly two-and-a-half-year tenure as the first Black woman to head a central Ohio health system.
Tauana McDonald will step down at the end of 2026, capping a 23-year career with Trinity Health, Mount Carmel's Michigan-based parent company. McDonald first joined Mount Carmel in 2017 as its first chief administrative officer before taking on an expanded role in 2020 as president and chief operating officer of Mount Carmel Grove City. McDonald assumed the system's top role in July 2024.
“Serving at Mount Carmel has been one of the greatest honors of my career,” McDonald said in a press release. “I have seen firsthand the care and comfort
Mount Carmel gives thousands of people on their hardest days. I have never taken for granted the responsibility of the legacy that the Sisters of the Holy Cross left us. My job was to carry it a little further down the road, and I hope my service honored the strong women who started it.”
Trinity Health leadership is working with Mount Carmel's Board of Trustees to begin the search for the system's next president and CEO, the release stated.
During McDonald's time at the helm, Mount Carmel Dublin opened as the system's fifth hospital, while the New Albany location added emergency services, according to the release. Mount Carmel also established a partnership with the Community Shelter Board and expanded training for allied health professionals to address the health care staffing shortage.
“Tauana has always led with strength, grace and a deep commitment to serving others, and the people around her feel it,” Trinity Health executive vice president and associate chief operating officer Rob Casalou said in the release. “She is a trusted partner for many of us, and I am grateful to have worked with her.”
McDonald grew up in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Kennedy Heights before attending Stanford University and completing a bachelor's degree in human biology. She later completed a master's degree in health administration at the University of Michigan, after which she worked on the business and tech side of health care.
In 2003, McDonald began her journey with Trinity Health. After a nationwide search, McDonald succeeded Lorraine Lutton as Mount Carmel's president and CEO, leaving her mark as not only the first Black woman to lead Mount Carmel in its 140-year-old history, but the first Black woman to lead any central Ohio health system.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Mount Carmel CEO Tauana McDonald to retire at end of 2026
