Seasoned healthcare leader with over 20 years of experience in employee engagement, communications, and human resources. Specializes in developing engagement strategies, measuring engagement through surveys, and implementing organizational actions plans to improve culture and engagement. Currently the Program Director of Employee Engagement at Children's Health System of Texas where accomplishments include increasing overall engagement by 5 points and having 95% of employees recognize new organizational values within 6 months of introduction.

1. Kerry E. Silver
7140 Gracefield Lane
Dallas, Texas 75248
214-783-2745
kerry.silver@me.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kerrysilver
Summary
Seasoned engagement leader with extensive healthcare experience. Proven track record of engaging and
motivating employees to achieve business objectives. Developer of people, collaborative team member,
attentive listener and creative problem solver.
Experience
Children’s Health System of Texas (Children’s Medial Center Dallas)
March 2014 - present: Program Director, Employee Engagement
Nov 2013 – Feb 2014: Director, Health Literacy and Patient Engagement
April 2012 – Oct 2013: Manager, Human Resource Communications
Partner with HR and organizational leaders to drive employee engagement and support organizational
change. Maintain thorough understanding of strategic priorities, key business drivers and organizational
initiatives. Create and deliver effective communications to enhance employees’ ability to understand and act
on organizational and human resource initiatives, benefits and compensation programs.
• Engagement strategy: Developed 3-year engagement strategy to position Children’s Health as a great
place to work through employee involvement, recognition and rewards, employee appreciation, and
continuous listening strategy that includes pulse surveys and employee lifecycle surveys.
• Audience measurement and action planning: Administer annual employee engagement survey and
face-to-face listening sessions, collaborate with leaders to develop, communicate and implement
organizational action plan and dashboard, conduct pulse surveys to measure progress; increased overall
engagement in 2015 by 5 points in spite of significant organizational changes.
• Values: Led cross-functional team to introduce new values that are transforming the organization’s
culture; within the first 6 months, 95% of employees recognize values and 80% understand how they
demonstrate the values in their own work.
• Employee appreciation events: Partnered with Internal Communications and Events to plan and
execute year-round activities to demonstrate appreciation, such as Valentine’s Day cookies and ice
cream, summer barbeque, State Fair day, family movie night, Halloween costume party, Christmas
dinner served to employees by senior leaders, and a milestone anniversary dinner dance with live music.
• Leader listening: Developed program to give frontline staff the opportunity to engage with leaders
throughout the organization through guided, informal conversations.
• Clinical staff engagement: Introduced Schwartz Center Rounds®
as part of cross-functional team to
support emotional needs of caregivers, address moral distress and compassion fatigue in a safe, non-
judgmental forum.
• Culture of caring: Visioned and am now implementing “By Your Side,” to aggregate and expand the set
of programs and tools that support employees through events such as on-the-job injuries, FMLA,
Employee Care Fund, employee illness, illness or death of a family member, birth or adoption of a child,
educational assistance, retirement planning, and more.
• Performance management: Played key role on team to embed new values into the performance
management tool as behavioral expectations for which employees are measured and held accountable.

2. • Organizational communications: Collaborate with Internal Communications, Marketing, Digital
Strategy team and external vendors to increase employee understanding of strategic priorities and
organizational initiatives.
• Benefits communications: Achieved 33% increase in employees’ ability to make informed decisions
about benefits (from 54% in 2014 to 87% in 2015) through a high touch strategy for communicating
benefits that included 100 individual department meetings, mobile-optimized short videos to explain
benefits, and a program called “Night Rounds” in which human resource team members visit night shift
employees on their units to answer benefit questions.
• Wellness communications: Developed branding and introduced employee wellness program; support
ongoing messaging for wellness initiatives; 90% of employees participate.
• Health literacy: Collaborated with clinical staff to identify needs and create culturally sensitive materials
for low literacy or low health literacy patients and families for asthma management, healthy eating, using
primary care, getting vaccinations and using the emergency room.
1994 – 2012: Silver Communications, Owner, Independent Communications Consulting Agency
Built and managed an independent communications consulting agency that specialized in employee and
human resources communications. Employed a staff of five people and averaged $1M in annual billings.
Developed and managed large, complex, multi-faceted communication campaigns on behalf of clients.
• Primary clients from 1999 – 2012: Texas Health Resources, EmCare (nationwide physician practice
management organization) and Children’s Medical Center. Additional clients, listed alphabetically:
American Airlines, Baylor Healthcare, Brinker International, Centex, City of Austin, CompuCom, Crow
Holdings, Dallas Employees Retirement Fund, Dallas Police and Fire Pension System, Daltile, Darden
Restaurants, FedEx Office (formerly Kinko’s), Flowserve, Trammel Crow Company, University of
Oklahoma
• Worked with stakeholders to identify communication issues, articulate objectives, develop communication
strategies, and manage large, complex communication projects.
• Conducted audience assessments through surveys and focus groups to support communication strategy,
determine appropriate channels, pre-test messages and measure effectiveness.
• Directed creative teams including writers, graphic designers, Web developers, video and audio producers,
photographers.
1989 – 1994 Towers Perrin Communications Consultant
(now Towers Watson)
1987 – 1988 Coopers and Lybrand Associate Consultant, Defined Contribution Plans
(now PricewaterhouseCoopers)
1986 – 1987 Peat Marwick Manager, Defined Contribution Plans
1983 – 1985 First Pennsylvania Bank Defined Contribution Specialist
1980 – 1982 National FSI Defined Contribution Software Documentation
Education
University of Texas at Austin, Bachelor of Arts, Major: Marketing; Minor: Spanish