Director, Johns Hopkins USA

Karen Van de Velde is the director of Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Corporate Relations and Special Services for the Johns Hopkins Medicine member organizations. Karen oversees the management of corporate patient referrals and significant patient relationships across Johns Hopkins Medicine.

During her 25 years with the organization, Karen has served in various patient-centered roles. For 15 years, she led the Johns Hopkins USA team, a service that provides the highest level of concierge care to patients living outside of Maryland who wish to travel to Baltimore to access the expertise of Johns Hopkins physicians and hospital services. She enjoys cultivating long-standing relationships while connecting people to Johns Hopkins expertise through personalized paths to medical care.

Karen served as a steering committee member and emeritus chair on the Global Executive Services Council (GES), a group of 50 major academic medical centers that serves to drive knowledge and strategy across their network. Specifically, GES is responsible for defining best practices among major academic medical centers in the areas of international services, executive health/concierge and medical hospitality for high-profile patients. Additionally, Karen spent seven years working with the World Economic Forum during its annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland.

Karen holds a bachelor’s degree in business marketing from California Polytechnic State University and a master’s degree in international business and finance from Webster University in Austria. Before her career at Johns Hopkins Medicine, she worked as a medical representative with AstraZeneca in Palm Springs, California.