Grace Taylor takes role of ‘incident commander’

FORT COLLINS — Deeply embedded in Northern Colorado health care, Grace Taylor helps to lead UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital and UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies through the thicket of issues that has engulfed hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Taylor is a 2020 BizWest Women of Distinction award winner in the health-care category.

While Taylor’s a vice president of operations for those two hospitals now, her health-care career began many years ago as a clinical technologist in a lab working on contracts for the National Marrow Donor Program and the Centers for Disease Control. She was putting her bachelors degree in microbiology to good use in that role, which was with VRL Eurofins, formerly LABS Inc.

She advanced in that organization but in 2007 she picked up her masters in business administration in health administration, which gave her entry to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins.

Her roles with PVH and later UCHealth have varied but they have included physician recruitment, business development, community outreach, and strategy development. She helped lead the planning and initial operations for the Colorado State University Medical Center, which is a collaborative effort of UCHealth, CSU, Associates in Family Medicine and Columbine Health Systems.

Since September 2019, she has been vice president of operations for PVH and MCR where she has oversight of about 750 staff members and an expense budget of $8.7 million. In that role she has been “incident commander” for COVID response.

“I am a working mom raising two young girls as they are my everyday job. I am always looking for balance trying to do some good in the world,” she said. Her motto comes from her late father, a teacher, who stressed “walk in the shoes of others and seek first to understand.”

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