Venkata (Ven) Rao is Executive Vice President of HR at KVC Health Systems. In this role, he provides support to all KVC’s local teams nationwide that employ 2,400 professionals at 60 locations. Ven is a human capital executive who has worked in two continents and three domains of life insurance, education, and health care. In this role spanning two decades, he has worked with in-person, distributed and remote teams to design, develop, and implement people solutions at workplaces. In health care, he has worked with state operated mental health hospitals and not-for-profit organization operating in intellectual and developmental disability services.

Ven has been a student and practitioner of life-long mission of learning newer ways to connect and work with people to help them achieve their full potential. As a mental health advocate, his areas of interests, explorations, and pursuits originate from the life philosophy of “bloom wherever you are planted.” He uses big data and lean six sigma methodology to thoroughly research and then develop human-centered solutions for individual, team, and organizational impact.

In addition to his work-life, Ven is actively involved as guest faculty at health care education organizations, sharing the experience and knowledge in strategy and performance management. He has been invited to share his workforce solutions at various state and not-for-profit conference settings.  He is currently pursuing his Ph. D in Human Capital Management at Bellevue University, Nebraska and will be working with the university’s Human Capital Lab to explore best practice solutions in optimizing individual and team performance skills.