Kaiser Permanente

Executive Director of Environmental Stewardship

Seema leads a broad portfolio that spans several key issues including climate, waste, water, food and products. Her environmental stewardship work includes collaborating across a wide set of functions including facilities, purchasing, finance, community health, physician groups, and more. Seema represents KP externally in coalitions, policy arenas, and other critical forums. Seema works to continue KP’s leadership across healthcare and evolve efforts to support communities to create equitable and inclusive action for environment and health. Prior to her time at KP, Seema worked as the AVP of Sustainability and Wellness for Inova Health System in Virginia. During that time, she developed the organizational framework for sustainable operations that included energy, water, waste management, sustainable foods, alternative transportation and environmentally preferable purchasing. She also served as a national director for the Healthier Hospital Initiatives, a coalition of 1,300 hospitals across the US to accelerate the adoption of sustainable and climate smart scalable solutions. She most recently founded her own consultancy, working with mission driven and non-profit organizations across the country advising on strategies for sustainability. She has spoken, written and published extensively on environmental and sustainability issues, including co-authored the first book for leadership in the field of healthcare sustainability. She has a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Alberta and hails from the great country of Canada, where she grew up.

VP of Operations, National Facilities Services and Chief Energy Officer

Ramé Hemstreet leads the integration and coordination of the $4B/year, 1500-employee National Facilities Services (NFS) organization for Kaiser Permanente, one of America’s leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. He is focused on system interoperability to achieve integrated facilities lifecycle management, reduce total cost of ownership, and achieve the optimal alignment of capabilities and resources. Hemstreet is responsible for the NFS multibillion dollar capital acquisition program, maintenance, and clinical technology at more than 1,000 hospitals, medical offices and other buildings; as well as management of a 78-million-square foot real estate portfolio. As Chief Sustainable Resources Officer, he oversees Kaiser Permanente’s energy and water strategy. Hemstreet joined Kaiser Permanente in 2011 after 29 years in the U.S. Navy, where his career culminated as commanding officer of Naval Facilities Engineering Command Washington D.C., leading a team of 70 officers and 1,500 civilians delivering $1.5 billion a year of facilities management and construction services to Navy and Marine Corps clients throughout the national capital region.

National VP, Community Health

John is responsible for the development and implementation of key strategies to ensure Kaiser Permanente’s commitment to improving the health of communities, focused on upstream determinants of health. He leads the development of initiatives related to climate change and sustainability, ESG, broad systems-level change to improve health and thought leadership for community health. John has been with Kaiser Permanente for over 20 years, having previously been a director in national strategic planning. He has been a Fellow in America’s Health Insurance Plan’s Executive Leadership Program and was named a DiversityMBA Top 100 Under 50 Diverse Executive Leader in 2013. He graduated from executive leadership programs at Harvard Business School and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

National Director for Energy and Utilities

Seth Baruch is responsible for managing sustainable energy programs across the organization, including solar projects at a hundred different hospitals, data centers and medical office buildings. Part of this program includes the development of microgrids and rapid installation of electric vehicle charging stations across the Kaiser Permanente portfolio. Baruch is also helping lead the effort for Kaiser Permanente to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020. He has spent his career developing clean energy projects and programs. He led a multi-million dollar initiative at the Washington, DC-based Alliance to Save Energy to improve energy efficiency in the Former Soviet Union. He later founded his own company, QualityTons, that designed projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. QT helped clients around the world lower emissions and generate carbon offset credits, which were sold in the international carbon markets. QT was eventually acquired by Climate Change Capital, a large UK-based investment fund that financed clean energy projects. At CCC, Baruch managed project origination and executed the company's first project in the United States.

CEFNext

Senior Energy Consultant

Gary is a Senior Energy Consultant at Kaiser Permanente (KP), an integrated healthcare system where he supports affordability and environmental stewardship goals.  He works on a wide range of projects in energy and water management from distributed energy resource deployments to efficiency and conservation efforts across the country. Prior to joining KP, Gary served on active duty in the U.S. Army where he deployed multiple times in support of combat and security operations. Gary earned a BS in mechanical engineering from the United States Military Academy and MBA from the University of California – Berkeley. He is also a Certified Energy Manager.  Gary is married and the proud father of two little girls.