About Chris McCarthy

ILN Coaching & Consulting is Chris McCarthy’s strategy and consulting practice. Chris brings the best of his past innovation worlds – human-centered design from Kaiser Permanente, systems thinking and strategy from Hopelab Foundation, and art of convening from the Innovation Learning Network – and fuses them into his core practice.

Chris founded the ILN in 2005 through a generous grant from the VHA Health Foundation and grew it into a 40+ member-based association of healthcare delivery systems, foundations, and design firms.  These organizations explicitly decided that innovating together was far more powerful than doing it alone, and they became friends along the way.

He co-founded Kaiser Permanente’s Innovation Consultancy in 2003 and co-led that group for 14 years.  It was an innovation SWAT team of designers and strategists paired with doctors, nurses, and other frontline staff to tackle complex challenges for the organization. Design Thinking and the Model for Improvement were the main frameworks driving the work. Systemwide innovations include Nurse Knowledge Exchange, KP MedRite, and Chamai.