ZSFG Leadership

Dr. Ehrlich received her BA in Public Policy Studies from Duke University, her Master’s in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and her MD from the University of California, San Francisco. She is board certified in Internal Medicine and completed her primary care internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard University-affiliated training hospital. She previously served as the Chair of the Board for the California Association of Public Hospitals, and Chair of the Board of America’s Essential Hospitals. She currently is a Trustee for the California Hospital Association. She continues to practice primary care internal medicine at the Richard Fine People’s Clinic on the ZSFG campus.

Dr. Critchfield is a Professor of Medicine at UCSF in the Division of Hospital Medicine at ZSFG. After an early focus on the basic science of T-lymphocyte regulation in laboratories at NIH and UCSF, Dr. Critchfield’s diverse roles with trainees, faculty, and SFDPH staff have centered on improving the care of hospitalized patients across the care continuum and into the community. In addition to his faculty roles, Dr. Critchfield’s prior leadership roles include ZSFG Chief of Staff (2006-2008), founding Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at the General (2008), founding member of the ZSFG Equity Council (2017) and Chair of the UCSF Committee on Academic Personnel (2018-2019). Additionally, he served as a SFDPH HICS Commander at the COVID Command Center and collaborated with city department heads to coordinate San Francisco’s pandemic response (2020).

As interim UCSF Vice Dean at ZSFG, Jeff will continue to serve the greater San Francisco community while creating innovative programs, training the next generation of providers, and further strengthening the partnership between UCSF and the City and County of San Francisco.

Gillian Otway has been an exceptional nursing leader at ZSFG starting in 1998. Her leadership journey at ZSFG has extraordinary depth and breadth and has included serving as: Project Coordinator for our hospital-wide patient classification system; Nursing Supervisor; Acting Nurse Manager for the 6C Birth Center; Nurse Manager for the 5A AIDS/Oncology Unit; Nurse Manager for Retention and Recruitment; and Nursing Director for Maternal Child Services and Nursing Administration: all culminating in her assignment as ZSFG Interim Chief Nursing Officer since 2022.

While in these roles she has led our teams successfully through many major events, including in the last decade our move into our new acute care tower, Building 25; through Epic go-live; and the Covid pandemic.

As Chief Nursing Officer, she will be the leader of over 1000 nurses on campus, the largest single group of nurses in the Department of Public Health. She will serve in a dyad leadership role with the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Gabe Ortiz, for all clinical services on campus, and will be one of the co-strategic leaders for the Access and Flow initiative. She will serve as a member of the ZSFG Executive Team, which as a group is responsible for the overall strategy and operations for the hospital, and that we achieve our True North goals of Equity, Quality, Safety, Patient and Staff Engagement, and Financial Stewardship.

During the eight years I’ve worked with Gillian, I’ve found her to be incredibly knowledgeable, collaborative, creative, humble, resilient, data-driven and a joy to work with!

Hemal Kanzaria, MD, MSc, is the Chief of Performance Excellence at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG), where his focus is on organizational strategy and performance improvement. He is also a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he holds the Terry A. Patinkin, MD, Endowed Professorship in Health Equity.

Prior to his current role, he served as the Director of Complex Care Analytics for the San Francisco Health Network (2015-2019) and the Medical Director for the Department of Care Coordination at ZSFG (2019-2023). Through these roles, he supported the expansion and operationalization of a novel multi-agency integrated data systems to understand patients medical and non-medical needs; the implementation of the Emergency Department (ED) information exchange across the SF Department of Public Health; the development of an innovative multi-disciplinary Social Medicine team to address patients’ health-related social needs; and numerous care coordination efforts employing lean improvement principles to advance safe, efficient, and equitable patient care. He is also the founding Co-Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine Section of Social Emergency Medicine and Health Equity, and serves on the Board of Directors for the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.

Dr. Kanzaria is a health services researcher, a decision editor for Annals of Emergency Medicine, and an Associate Director at the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative and a Core Faculty in the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations and Affiliated Faculty at the UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies and the California Policy Lab focusing on patient engagement, health-related social needs, homelessness, frequent users of the health care system, and delivery system transformation.

A graduate of Brown University, UCSF School of Medicine, and the UCLA School of Public Health, Dr. Kanzaria’s training includes an emergency medicine residency at UCSF/ZSFG and continues his practice as an emergency physician at UCSF/ZSFG, and lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two daughters.

Dr. Ortiz received his MS and BS in 1996 from Yale University in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. He received his MD, PhD in 2004 from the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program where he studied human cellular immune responses to HIV.

Dr. Ortiz is well-known to most of us at ZSFG, having served since last year as the elected Chief of Staff and since 2018 as the Medical Director for Medical/Surgical Care.

Dr. Ortiz’s commitment to ZSFG started in 2004 when he joined as an intern in the Internal Medicine residency program. He shared with the interview panel that the mission of ZSFG is what drew his attention to train at UCSF, being a first-generation Latino who was driven to give back to underserved communities. Subsequently, he went on to do a Fellowship in Infectious Diseases and served as a ZSFG Chief Resident in Internal Medicine. He joined the faculty as a Clinical Instructor of Infectious Diseases in 2008 and then as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine in 2012 with the goal of applying his skills towards improving care and care delivery. Throughout his career, Dr. Ortiz has distinguished himself as a multifaceted leader, holding important roles within UCSF and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. As one example, he has served as the Epic Inpatient Domain Co-Leader since 2019 when we went live on Epic, navigating the electronic health record through stabilization and optimization phases. Highlighting his commitment to our key values, he has served as a Medical School Bridges coach, has been recognized with the Excellence in Teaching Faculty Award in 2019 by the UCSF graduating medical school class, and has twice been awarded the Values in Action Award by the Medical Executive Committee. He is an enthusiastic Lean leader, having completed Lean Certification in April 2014 and continuing to apply the principles of respect for people and enhancing value to his work across the Department of Medical/Surgical care and in his Chief of Staff role.

Dr. Ortiz epitomizes our ZSFG values of Joy in Work, Compassionate Care and Thirst in Learning.

Dr. Mercer has been an esteemed member of the UCSF faculty, serving as a Professor in Emergency Medicine. She has worked clinically at ZSFG and has actively engaged in numerous roles that intersect Emergency Medicine with Disaster Medicine, Public Health, and Organizational Improvement and Culture.

Dr. Mercer’s impressive background includes previously leading performance improvement efforts in the ZSFG ED and nine years of service as the co-director for ZSFG’s Relationship-Centered Communication (RCC) program. She currently directs the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and Disaster Medicine Section and Fellowship at UCSF and serves as the Medical Director of Alameda City Fire Department EMS. Her dedication to medical education and well-being is evident through her role as Director for Well-Being in the UCSF Department of Emergency Medicine, where she is responsible for initiatives across all clinical sites and teams.

Her academic contributions are significant, with extensive publications in the fields of EMS, Disaster Medicine, communication, and substance use disorder. Dr. Mercer’s leadership extends beyond UCSF, including service and leadership for national and regional EMS organizations. Locally, she has held various strategic and operational leadership positions in response to public health emergencies, including the COVID-19 and mpox outbreaks in San Francisco, in which she helped to facilitate key, multi-institutional partnerships across the city.

Dr. Mercer completed her undergraduate training at Harvard University, followed by medical education at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She undertook her Emergency Medicine residency at Stanford University and completed an EMS/Disaster Medicine fellowship at UCSF/ZSFG, along with a Master’s in Public Health focused on Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley.
In her role as Chief of Medical Staff at ZSFG, she oversees the Medical Staff and spearheads key initiatives in quality and safety, continuing her commitment to improving patient care and health outcomes. She leads our Medical Staff toward a future marked by excellence in care, innovation, and a deepened commitment to the health and well-being of our patients.

Eric brings over 15 years of healthcare finance experience to the CFO role with a strong aptitude for using data analytics effectively to drive operational excellence and strategic planning. In his recent role as the Director of Budget and Decision Support, Eric was responsible for directing the development, management, and implementation of ZSFG’s and Jail Health Service’s combined $1.5 billion budget. Over the past four years, he has partnered closely with many of our leaders to streamline budget processes and enhance financial transparency and accessibility across all service lines.

Eric has also served as ZSFG’s Finance Equity Champion and was recently honored as a recipient of the Values in Action Award for his commitment to promoting equity and exemplifying ZSFG’s values. Outside of work, Eric prioritizes family, enjoying time with his spouse of 8 years and two children. As a native San Franciscan, he remains engaged in his community, striving for positive change both professionally and personally.

In this role, he will oversee the Budget and Decision Support team and accounting functions for ZSFG, as well as the Health Information Management division and Patient Financial Services for SFHN. In addition, he will serve as a member of DPH’s finance leadership team and the ZSFG executive team.

Adrian is a Bay Area transplant from in Leeds, in the north of England, and came to the USA in 2006 with a background in critical care nursing and leadership. After his arrival he worked clinically in critical care, then taking on leadership roles in nursing and Quality Management. His passions include regulatory affairs and public health and in 2018, Adrian joined the ZSFG Quality Management team.

In 2021 Adrian became the Chief Quality Officer for ZSFG. In this role he is the Patient Safety Officer, oversees Performance improvement, the Quality Data Center, Risk Management, Regulatory Affairs and Infection Prevention & Control. Adrian partners with network leadership to also oversee the functions of the Medical Staff Office.

Angelica Almeida, Ph.D. is the Chief Integrative Officer at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Prior to joining the executive team, she served in several roles with the Department of Public Health’s Behavioral Health Services, most recently as the Director of the Adult and Older Adult System of Care. She is a clinical psychologist that has worked with individuals across the lifespan, with an expertise in complex trauma and serious mental illness in both community based and forensic settings. Dr. Almeida has been instrumental in providing subject matter expertise on court related programs and conservatorship locally and statewide and prioritizes client centered care.

She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California Berkeley and then her masters and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco.

As the Chief Integrative Officer, Dr. Almeida will be responsible for overseeing behavioral health services within Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, including Psychiatric Emergency Services, Psychiatric Inpatient Units, the Behavioral Health Center, and community behavioral health services. This role will be instrumental in supporting hospital operations while also supporting connections to treatment services in the community.

Christine has served the City and County of San Francisco in several roles for 25 years, including as Director of Communications for Mayor Ed Lee, Director of Communications for the Transbay Joint Powers Authority and Director of Communications for the Department of Public Works. Now with the Department of Public Health, Christine leads a stellar communications team at ZSFG to advance and support ZSFG’s mission, values and vision of providing quality health care and trauma services with compassion and respect.

Angelica Journagin, JD, MHA is the Chief Administrative Officer for Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. In this role, she serves as the liaison for the hospital foundation, supports and leads the key leadership meetings throughout the hospital, and leads special projects. Prior to coming to ZSFG, Angelica was the Director of Planning, Project Management Office, and Patient Experience at Mercy Fitzgerald, Mercy Philadelphia and St. Francis Hospitals within Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic (THMA). There she was responsible for strategic planning, project management, patient flow, and patient experience. At THMA, she led the divestiture of Mercy Philadelphia Hospital and served as the COVID-19 Incident Commander. She has also served as the Vice President of Planning and External Affairs for Unity Health Care Inc., a Federally Qualified Health Center, in Washington, DC. Angelica received her Juris Doctor and Master of Health Administration from Tulane University and her Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University.

Laurae began her UCSF at ZSFG career as an administrative assistant in the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Division of Rheumatology, then served as Division Manager of the Epidemiology and Preventions Interventions (EPI) Center and as the inaugural Manager of the Division of Experimental Medicine. In 2015, she was appointed Director of Administration and Finance for the Department of Medicine at ZSFG.

A UCSF DEI champion, Laurae has made significant contributions as Co-chair of the UCSF Committee on the Status of Women and as a member of the Chancellor’s Council on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion. With a wealth of administrative experience and a passion for fostering a collaborative and supportive environment, Laurae embodies the principles and values we uphold in the Dean’s Office. As a reflection of her dedication and accomplishments, she received the 2012 Holly Smith Award for Exceptional Service, the 2020 Chancellor Award for Exceptional University Management, and the 2023 Chancellor Award for the Advancement of Women.

As the Associate Dean of Administration and Finance, Laurae prioritizes empowering and supporting all community members as she works to assess processes that support the UCSF mission-critical research and academic operations at ZSFG.