Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian on June 24 announced its appointment of Caroline Pereira as president of Hoag Hospital Foundation, the fundraising arm of Hoag, effective immediately.
She is joining a nonprofit that annually raises more than $100 million to support Orange County’s second-largest hospital, which last year had 639,000 outpatients and admitted 35,000 patients.
Pereira’s appointment comes at the same time as Hoag’s $1.2 billion expansion of its Irvine campus, which opened in 2010. The expanded complex will be named the Sun Family Campus after a $50 million donation from David and Diana Sun in 2022. The first phase of the expansion is scheduled to be completed in 2026.
Pereira will help lead Boldly Hoag, a $300 million campaign that’s supporting the Irvine expansion.
“I’m excited to work alongside the Hoag Hospital Foundation board to share the message of the Boldly Hoag campaign and all of the great work Hoag is going to be doing in Irvine with our community,” Pereira told the Business Journal.
She replaces Flynn Andrizzi, who left at the beginning of this year to become chief executive and president of Houston Methodist Hospital Foundation after 14 years in the position.
OC Fundraising Expert
Pereira has over 20 years of fundraising experience.
She was previously associate vice chancellor for health advancement at University of California, Irvine Health, where she helped raise almost $1 billion during her 11-year tenure, according to Hoag officials.
In 2020, Pereira and her team raised over $20 million for UCI’s Brilliant Future campaign, which is raising funds for a $1.3 billion medical complex on the north end of its campus that’s set to open next spring.
“Caroline’s knowledge and experience of the local healthcare landscape make her especially fitting for this role, as she has been key to the execution of major health initiatives in our community,” Hoag CEO and President Robert Braithwaite said in a statement.
“Her passion for building strong teams, fostering their skills and creating a supportive environment for them to aim for and meet ambitious philanthropic goals make her exactly what we want in a Hoag leader.”
Pereira called Hoag’s “privademic” model combining private practices with clinical research a “game changer.”
“Hoag has extremely strong research, clinical trials and [National Institutes of Health] funding, which really puts Hoag in the caliber of the academic institutions coupled with the private hospital world,” Pereira said.
Inspired by Mother
Prior to UCI Health, Pereira spent more than 11 years mainly leading fundraising efforts for the performing arts theater at the University of Toronto.
Pereira said she became involved in healthcare fundraising after losing her mother to cancer.
“I really thought about what I wanted to have an impact in, and it was healthcare,” she said. “That gave me a lot of clarity.”
Similar to her career path, Pereira comes from an international background.
Pereira was born in India and spent most of her childhood growing up in Saudi Arabia before immigrating to Canada during the Gulf War.
After marrying and starting her own family in Canada, Pereira and her family moved to Irvine in 2013 where they currently reside.
