Kolaleh Eskandanian
Children's National Hospital
Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer
Kolaleh Eskandanian, PhD, MBA, PMP is Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. In this capacity, she oversees the Office of Innovation Ventures and has a leadership role in the development of the Children’s National Research and Innovation Campus (opening in December 2020), housing Children’s Research Institute as well as JLABS @ Washington, DC, BARDA, and Virginia Tech as the initial cohort of innovation ecosystem players. She is also the executive director of the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation and the principal investigator of the FDA-funded National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation, focused on accelerating the path to market for pediatric devices. Dr. Eskandanian works with a large network of small and large businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies to address the unmet medical needs of children. She is the producer of the annual Symposium on Pediatric Device Innovation and the “Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!” competition. Since early 2014, over 100 pediatric medical device companies have been funded and/or received technical expertise through these competitions
Dr. Eskandanian’s own innovations are in the market space, used by millions. She is the lead inventor of the first-ever adverse event reporting system, initially deployed in a research academic environment. This technology and its derivatives have now been in the market for over 10 years. She has had leadership roles in the development of the first web-based trouble entry management system for a Fortune 100 company in the telecommunications sector. In her role in academia, she has secured over $70 million in peer-reviewed government funding.
Prior to joining Children’s National, Dr. Eskandanian held positions with Intelsat, Accenture, and Georgetown University. Kolaleh’s background is in mechanical engineering with a PhD in operations science and an MBA. A polyglot and avid traveler, she has lived in three continents and speaks four languages fluently.