INTERVIEW: Transforming Health Care Culture UC Tech Nominee Spotlight on Mojgan Amini and Ashley Gambhir

At UC San Diego Health, innovation is more than a strategy, it’s a shared mission. Mojgan Amini, Director of Transformational Health Care, and Ashley Gambhir, Executive Director for Transformation, are leading a cultural shift that empowers every team member to contribute to operational excellence. Since its launch in 2018, their Lean engagement system has generated more than 700 improvement projects, enhancing patient care, strengthening operational efficiency and transforming how care is delivered across the organization.

Laurel Skurko interviews Mojgan Amini and Ashley Gambhir on how they transformed health culture at UC San Diego Health using their improved Lean engagement system to foster innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement. See the full video here (with captions).

Four essential steps to igniting results

In a recent interview with UC Tech News, Amini and Gambhir shared more about the updated version of Lean Management and provided several seemingly simple, but essential, practices to catalyze needed improvements across an entire population of UC San Diego Health Staff. These can be summarized as follows, and are detailed in the article, below.

Organizational Alignment and Execution – Success comes from tightly linking the organization’s top-level strategy with daily operations. Teams build action plans that connect long-term, short-term, and even daily activities directly to overarching business goals. Mid-level leaders play a critical role in sustaining progress by translating strategic priorities into concrete actions, coaching teams through challenges, and ensuring Lean practices are consistently reinforced.
Structured Communication for Agility – A clear communication rhythm—anchored by daily huddles—keeps teams aligned and responsive. These huddles surface operational issues, with urgent matters escalated in a structured way: from frontline teams to mid-level managers and, if needed, to the CEO by mid-morning. This system ensures timely decisions and coordinated action.
Shared Responsibility for Problem-Solving – Problem-solving is a collective responsibility. Employees at all levels are empowered and trained to address challenges proactively—either implementing solutions themselves or proposing well-thought-out recommendations to supervisors. This shifts the focus from merely reporting issues to actively resolving them.
Empowerment and Leadership Development – Leadership buy-in includes creating space for junior employees to lead problem-solving initiatives, take risks, and step beyond their comfort zones. This approach prioritizes building the right mindsets, behaviors, and processes over focusing solely on guaranteed outcomes. When employees leverage their skills, intuition, and resources, they are more likely to achieve positive results.

Making daily improvement a system-wide practice through a cascade system of communications

UC San Diego Health’s Lean Engagement System ensures every employee’s insights help shape outcomes. Through daily tiered huddles, information flows from the front line to executives—sometimes reaching the CEO by 10:30 a.m. for urgent issues. This rapid communication aligns day-to-day work with the organization’s top goals.

“That’s our Lean engagement system. It helps us run operations, but it also helps us remind ourselves that we’re always looking for improvements, and then how are we aligning our day-to-day work with the highest priority goals of the organization that we set every fiscal year,” Amini explained.

‘Learn it, try it, teach it, live it’ – Lean 2.0

Launched in 2024, “Lean 2.0” builds on the original 2018 system with a stronger focus on independent problem-solving. Employees are encouraged to take initiative without waiting for top-down direction. Amini calls the motto “learn it, try it, teach it, live it,” with the goal of making continuous improvement second nature.

The Secret Sauce: Leadership, Culture & Mindset

UC San Diego Health’s success comes from a people-first approach. Leaders stay actively engaged, frontline staff get free coaching, and contributions are celebrated. Mid-level managers, who bridge strategy and daily execution, are key to sustaining progress.

Meaningful Impact on Patients and People

For Amini, who recently moved to the health care side of the business from UC San Diego’s campus, the most powerful part of this work has been seeing how improvement translates into better patient outcomes.

“It’s not the tools, it’s not the back end operation… it’s the impact on each and every patient and care provider, and that’s been really touching for me,” Amini said.

For Gambhir, the reward lies in empowering staff, helping them move from frustration to ownership and pride in their work.

“One of our coaches, Brian Hand, came up with the sea of frustration to the sands of satisfaction. And we help get them out of that sea of frustration into like, ‘Okay, I know what to do now to help make things better’. And that is really motivating and inspiring,” Gambhir expressed.

Recognition and Looking Ahead

Though their UC Tech submission didn’t secure the award this year, both Amini and Gambhir emphasized how meaningful the opportunity to share their work has been. They believe this kind of culture transformation, though often overlooked in technical award programs, is essential for innovation and long-term sustainability. Their vision extends beyond improvement projects to shaping a health system where every team member is empowered to lead change.

Related Reading:

Healthcare Transformation Team UC Tech Awards Application Form 2025 – Healthcare Transformation Team