Natalie Miovski Hagerty, senior director, facilities planning, design and integration, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (Philadelphia)

Since joining the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in 2015, Natalie Miovski Hagerty has been at the center of the organization’s significant expansion efforts.

Much of that work has been co-leading CHOP’s 10-year, 2 million-plus-square-foot, $3 billion capital program to create state-of-the-art hospital, outpatient, academic, and research facilities. Balancing a variety of responsibilities from project logistics to big-picture planning, she looks for opportunities to drive innovation and push boundaries in all aspects of her role.

For example, in response to shifting workplace needs, Hagerty led an enterprise-wide space optimization effort in 2021 that reduced leasable space by approximately 200,000 square feet and created CHOP Commons, a non-dedicated workspace.

In January 2022, she helped unveil the new King of Prussia Middleman Pavilion in King of Prussia, Pa., CHOP’s second inpatient hospital in its 170-year history. Currently, she’s overseeing a new 1.3 million-square-foot, 500-bed patient tower expansion on the main campus and the $480 million Schuylkill Avenue Research Building project.

Known for gathering input and building consensus among project teams, Hagerty’s is credited for creating a model of project leadership that includes a multidisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, and operations staff members. She’s also an advocate of CHOP’s Family and Youth Advisory Committees and prioritizes the patient-family experience on her projects, always looking to deliver new ideas and solutions that push boundaries.

For example, as part of the bed tower expansion project, which is expected to be completed in 2028, she prioritized a new campus-wide concourse level where families will be able to seek respite and a variety of services such as family education, meditation, salon services, a coffee shop, and specialized entertainment areas.

Outside of CHOP, she’s a cofounder of The Center for Health Design’s Pediatric Environments Network (PEN), an organization focused on advancing pediatric design by bringing together owners, architects, and vendor partners to create a shared forum for new ideas.

She’s also dedicated to delivering new research in healthcare design, advocating for post-occupancy evaluations on CHOP spaces that have been open at least six months. This effort has contributed to detailed project standards as well as expanded brand standards focused on improving the patient experience.

By continuing to partner with industry professionals—within her organization as well as the industry at large—and encouraging everyone to share their knowledge widely, Hagerty is helping drive new ideas and innovations throughout the industry, raising the bar on pediatric design and maximizing the impact on the industry’s most vulnerable populations.

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