Jeff brings an eclectic mix of political, promotional and organizational leadership experience to the opportunities emerging for healthcare in the areas of growth, sales, marketing, communications, innovation and change management.
Based in San Antonio, Texas, he’s earned national recognition as an effective leader in building models of work that achieve measurable results. He has served on the senior leadership teams for Vanguard Health Systems and Inova Health System, as Deputy Chief of Staff and Press Secretary for Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer, and as a consultant to clients such as Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Major League Baseball, the Chicago Bulls, HGTV, The Washington Post, New York Times, and other U.S. and Latin American media companies. He is an adjunct instructor in the Masters in Health Administration program at University of the Incarnate Word and holds a Bachelor and a Masters degree from Louisiana State University.
Recent Posts and Articles
Healthy Writing: Before Taking a Word Trip
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH How to think about organizing the story is typically one of the most intimidating challenges we hear from writers. A good metaphor is to think about taking a car trip. We don’t just get in and drive aimlessly. Usually, we have a purpose around why...
Physician Relations: Liaisons as Strategic Message Channels
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH A strong hospital physician liaison field outreach program achieves results precisely because it develops meaningful connectivity with an important audience of high influential voices. But, rarely is this channel of connectivity considered when a...
Healthy Writing: Framing the Story
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH A key to success in writing, and reader or listener understanding, is always thinking in terms of creating a storytelling framework. Every story that we tell should have a beginning, middle, and end. Otherwise, we present snippets of information...
Healthy Writing: Beware of Verbing Nouns
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH The television commercial dazzled us with the attributes of the SUV and proclaimed it as the “most awarded” vehicle in its class. The prominent headline on the front of the direct mail piece for the cruise line said it was the “most awarded.” As...
Healthy Writing: Embracing Punctuation as a Storytelling Tool
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH One day the newspaper editor received copy from a young journalist that was filled with long and rambling run-on sentences. Exasperated, the editor typed a page filled with dots, printed it, walked over and handed it to the budding writer. “These...
Healthy Writing: Of Lightning and Lightning Bugs
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH Mark Twain wrote “the difference between choosing the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Precision in words is one of the most important decisions a writer makes. Think, for example, of...
Three Essential Truths for Effective Leadership
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH When I was new to leadership, one of the most jarring truths I heard from a seasoned leader was, “Always remember that your own professional...
Stretching to Fill the Leadership Void
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH In today’s rapidly changing and sometimes disruptive environment, organizations are craving leadership. They want to know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how they are progressing. As a leader, it’s up to you to set the...
The Marketing Leader in Transformation Times
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH Most seasoned hospital and healthcare marketers today were bred in a world where product marketing was the gold standard, and metrics...
The Marketing Toothbrush Test
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH Reading recently in the New York Times I was intrigued by the headline, “Rise of the Toothbrush Test.” The story spotlighted Larry Page, chief executive of Google, on how he evaluates multimillion dollar acquisitions: Page said his primary...