Titan Awards 2025

Katy Welkie 

Katy Welkie, RN, MBA is the Chief Executive Officer of Primary Children’s Hospital and Vice President of Children’s Health for Intermountain Healthcare. She received her MBA with an emphasis in Health Care Administration from Regis University and her bachelor’s in nursing from the University of Utah.

Katy is particularly interested in quality and patient safety, receiving the Excellence in Nursing Leadership Award from the Utah Organization of Nurse Leaders in 2008 and a previous recipient of the Osler’s Cloak for Excellence in Caring and Curing. Katy also received the Utah Hospital Association’s Distinguished Hospital Executive award in 2015. She is the recipient of the Pioneers in Progress Award in 2022 and the inaugural Intermountain LOVE Legacy Award in 2024.

Katy was named to the first-ever Board of Directors for Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety group whose goal is to help guide the national effort to eliminate serious harm in all children’s hospitals. She was a founding member and is on the Board of Directors of the Children’s Hospital Coalition working to provide certainty in availability, quality, access, and affordability for key medicines for children. Katy serves as a board member for the Ronald McDonald House Charites Intermountain Area Board, The Nature Conservancy of Utah and The Children’s Center of Utah well as the Utah Hospital Association Board and Executive Committee.  Katy previously served on the Children’s Hospital Association Board of Trustees and Quality and Safety Committee.

Katy was instrumental in creating Primary Promise, Intermountain Health’s campaign to build the nation’s model health system for children. This multifaced philanthropic endeavor is supporting new research, innovative programs in the hospital and community to help children thrive, and new care sites, including the Primary Children’s Hospital, Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Campus in Lehi and the new behavioral health campus in Taylorsville.

Katy spent many years as a nurse in the Primary Children’s Pediatric ICU, eventually becoming a charge nurse, nursing director, chief nursing officer, then COO, and finally CEO in 2012. Her leadership experience at Primary Children’s and collaboration with children’s hospitals across the nation allows Katy the unique position to advance quality measures for children across the nation. She is particularly motivated in her career by the hospital’s philosophy, ‘The Child First and Always’ and by Primary Children’s Zero Harm initiative.

Katy lives in Salt Lake City and is an avid hiker, camper, and traveler.