New Vice President for Supply Chain Management

As many of you will recall, Jane Pleasants, Duke’s Vice President for Supply Chain Management and leader in this critical space for over 20 years, announced her retirement effective January 31, 2021. Jane built a world-class organization that has delivered significant savings and many advancements in our supply chain. The service model for her team, which balances the interests of our University and Health System communities and effectively leverages Duke’s enterprise technologies, is considered best-in-class by many throughout both the higher education and health care industries. Jane and her team’s performance over the past several months, in particular, have been key to Duke’s response to the ongoing public health crisis.

Duke’s national search for the next Vice President of Supply Chain Management is now complete, and we are very pleased to announce that Mr. Jim Churchman has accepted our offer to lead and serve Duke in that capacity beginning January 19, 2021. For the last two years, Jim has served as Vice President for Supply Chain at MedStar Health, Inc., a complex healthcare network of acute-care hospitals, non-acute clinical points-of-care, ambulatory surgery centers and home health care within Maryland and Washington D.C. Prior to that, Jim was Vice President for Supply Chain Site Operations & Logistics at Advocate Health Care in Illinois, which included 12 acute care hospitals. Jim has 35 years of progressive experience and holds a bachelors of mechanical engineering from Purdue University, as well as an MBA from Rockhurst University.

Throughout this search, we were extremely pleased by the interest of industry leaders, which reflects all the progress achieved by Duke and our leaders in the Supply Chain function over many years. Jim differentiated himself from that esteemed group of interested candidates with his demonstrated transformational leadership style, as well as his extensive experience within complex, clinical enterprises.

Jim will have a joint reporting relationship to the University’s Vice President of Finance and the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Duke University Health System. We look forward to introducing Jim to many members of the Duke community over the coming weeks and months, and to the leadership he will provide for Duke in this critical realm over many years to come. Please join us in welcoming Jim to our Team and the broader Duke Community.