Sheila P. Rossi is a strategist, operator and organizational leader whose career has spanned business, healthcare, nonprofit leadership and government. For more than two decades, she has worked at the intersection of strategy and execution — helping organizations understand why they are not producing the outcomes they should, identify what needs to change and translate that judgment into practical action.
Her perspective is grounded in a combination of business training, healthcare operating experience and leadership inside complex institutions. Sheila earned a B.S. in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, with an emphasis in International Business and Near Eastern Studies, and later earned a Master of Healthcare Administration from the University of Southern California. Her additional academic work has included public health, healthcare economics and M&A valuation coursework at UCLA. She has also completed Coro's Women in Leadership program and the nine-month Coro Lead LA cross-sector leadership program.
Early in her career at City of Hope, Sheila worked directly with hospital and physician leadership on complex strategic initiatives during a period of significant institutional change. Her work often began where the conventional interpretation of a problem fell short: identifying a significant growth opportunity in market research others had dismissed, or developing a physician compensation model that introduced greater financial accountability while continuing to recognize contributions to research, mentoring and fundraising. Alongside this strategic work, she managed outpatient operations and carried major initiatives from analysis and board presentation through development and implementation.
Through Cenergy Consulting, Sheila has advised early-stage and established businesses on growth strategy, market positioning, operating challenges, healthcare strategy, organizational change and the practical work required to move from an idea to an executable plan. Her experience has included helping an early-stage healthcare company refine its market opportunity, pricing, messaging and go-to-market strategy in connection with a $25 million venture financing; supporting the formation and portfolio activities of a private equity firm; coordinating technology and product-development initiatives involving international teams; and helping a mobile-health business reposition toward healthcare end markets while reprioritizing financial and operating resources around profitability.
Sheila has also applied the same approach to nonprofit and civic institutions. As an Executive Board Member of the South Pasadena Educational Foundation, she helped redesign branding and communications, modernize digital marketing and operating tools, improve program and event enrollment, and establish formal criteria for the allocation of approximately $100,000 of annual major grants. Her work there contributed to a reported 30% increase in net income. Earlier nonprofit leadership included work with CureMitO, where she chaired an inaugural fundraising event that raised more than $100,000 and supported the organization's branding, web presence and marketing.
Her public-sector work grew out of a belief that institutional problems should be diagnosed with the same rigor applied to businesses. After years of civic engagement, Sheila served on South Pasadena's Finance Commission, including as Vice Chair, before being elected to the City Council in November 2024. She now serves as Mayor. Her work has included financial and organizational reform, senior-leadership rebuilding, long-range planning, housing and land-use strategy, public-safety technology, regional collaboration and state policy. Across those issues, her focus has remained consistent: understand the system, identify the incentives and constraints that are producing the current result, align stakeholders around a practical path forward and build the structures required to make improvement endure.
Sheila's experience across healthcare, business and government gives her an unusual ability to work in environments where economics, operations, people, policy and stakeholder interests intersect. She is particularly effective in situations where the visible problem is only a symptom of something deeper — and where a technically correct answer will not matter unless the organization can actually implement and sustain it.
B.S., Business Administration, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business · Master of Healthcare Administration, USC
