Team Member
Melba Ansah, MBA, BS
Chief Operating Officer
(She/Her/Hers)
Melba Ansah serves as Chief Operating Officer of Howard Brown Health, where she leads the organization’s operational strategy, clinical support services, and administrative functions to advance high-quality, affirming, patient-centered care. She oversees initiatives that strengthen operational excellence, improve access to care, enhance the patient and employee experience, and support Howard Brown’s mission of serving LGBTQ+ people and others seeking compassionate, inclusive healthcare.
Ansah brings more than 30 years of healthcare leadership experience spanning academic medicine, private practice, and healthcare consulting. Throughout her career, she has built a reputation for leading complex healthcare operations, expanding patient access, optimizing clinical performance, and developing high-performing teams that deliver exceptional care.
Before joining Howard Brown Health, Ansah served as Executive Director of Ambulatory Operations and Strategic Initiatives at UChicago Medicine. There, she directed long-range operational strategy for 30 specialty clinics serving approximately 34,000 patient visits each month and managed a $100 million operational budget. She led strategic initiatives that improved operational performance, strengthened patient-centered care delivery, and supported the implementation of large-scale ambulatory expansion projects. She also collaborated closely with leaders across quality, safety, care coordination, information technology, customer experience, and process improvement while helping guide operations for approximately 450 employees.
Earlier in her career, Ansah held progressive leadership positions at Northwestern Medicine, where she directed ambulatory operations across multiple practice locations and led initiatives to improve efficiency, access, and organizational performance.
A collaborative and mission-driven leader, Ansah is passionate about creating healthcare systems that enable both patients and care teams to thrive. She believes operational excellence is fundamental to delivering equitable, compassionate care and is committed to building processes and partnerships that improve health outcomes for the communities Howard Brown Health serves.
Ansah earned a Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Leadership from National Louis University and a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Management from Roosevelt University.