Richard Griffith MHA, FACHE

He leads healthcare operations and support activities for more than 29,000 Veterans in Central Illinois and Western Indiana in an acute and long-term care system involving 1,500 employees and an annual budget of more than $366 million. During leadership transitions, he has also served as Acting Executive Director, providing continuity of operations and organizational stability.

 Mr. Griffith was commissioned into the U.S. Air Force in 1997 and served in assignments at Minot, Bolling, and Keesler Air Force Bases, as well as Fort Sam Houston. He deployed to Baghdad International Airport to perform casualty receiving and aeromedical staging operations and helped lead disaster relief activities following Hurricane Katrina.

 After joining the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2006, Mr. Griffith served in a variety of leadership roles, including administrator of a Health Services Research and Development Center and executive officer to a medical center director. From 2015 until 2023, he served as Chief Strategy Officer for Veteran Health Indiana, a tertiary care system with two inpatient and ten outpatient facilities serving approximately 65,000 Veterans annually in affiliation with the Indiana University School of Medicine. In that capacity, he led enterprise strategic planning, academic and public-sector partnerships, and major capital initiatives, including development of a $2 billion capital plan, activation of ten new sites of care, and support of the Indianapolis VAMC replacement medical center proposal.

 Mr. Griffith earned a Master of Healthcare Administration degree from Baylor University and completed a fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Health System. He is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, serves as faculty at Indiana University’s Fairbanks School of Public Health, and holds a Certificate in Strategic Planning from the University of Cambridge. He has also served in a variety of community leadership roles, including as a member of the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary National Board, the Combined Federal Campaign coordinating committee, and as a board member for the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis.