After leading Mission Integration for Ascension since 2002, Sr. Maureen McGuire, DC, has chosen to step down from the role of Chief Mission Integration Officer, effective April 20. She will become Senior Executive Advisor, serving as counselor to the CEO and taking on special projects.
“Sr. Maureen has transformed the role of Mission Integration for Ascension,” said Joseph R. Impicciche, JD, MHA, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ascension. “Over the course of her tenure she has brought to life our commitment to expand the role of laity, in both leadership and sponsorship, to ensure a Catholic health ministry in the future. With her guiding hand, Ascension has developed formation experiences and programs that have strengthened our ministry and prepared the next generation of leaders.”
Also, two respected and exceptional Ascension leaders have joined the Ascension Leadership Team (ALT) effective April 20.
Timothy L.M. Glover, M.Div, assumes the role of Executive Vice President and Chief Mission Integration Officer and serves on the ALT.
Peter M. Leibold, JD, who serves as Chief Advocacy Officer, also has joined the ALT. His new title is Executive Vice President, Chief Advocacy Officer.
“These changes enhance our advancement of the next generation of senior healthcare leaders and expand the scope of the ALT in the important aspect of advocacy as core to our Mission. At the same time, we will continue to benefit from the deep experience, wisdom and guidance of Sr. Maureen,” Joe said.
Sister Maureen McGuire, DC
Sr. Maureen McGuire began her service as Executive Vice President and Chief Mission Integration Officer for Ascension in July 2013, having served as Senior Vice President, Mission Integration, for Ascension Health since January 2002. Her entire Ascension career has demonstrated a deep commitment to advancing the Mission and Values of Ascension in service to those who are poor and vulnerable.
“Within Ascension, there is a new energy in awareness that our identity as a ministry of the Church, our being, is in fact what guides our doing, the fulfillment of our Mission,” she wrote in Health Progress in 2016. “This sense of ministry identity has been there from the beginning …”
In 2015 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, in recognition of her numerous contributions to Catholic healthcare.
In 2003 in relationship with Aquinas Institute of Theology, Sr. Maureen began Ascension’s first program of formation for leaders, integrating theological study and personal spirituality. Participants themselves encouraged the creation of new programs to reach deeply into the organization. As a result, formation serves the Mission of Ascension by nourishing the interior life of leaders and associates, enabling actions and behaviors that reflect our identity as a ministry of the Church, able to respond in an ever-changing healthcare landscape. Sr. Maureen has supported a gifted Formation Department in developing continually evolving standard formation programs, services and resources. This includes the Executive Ministry Leadership and Foundations of Ministry Leadership programs along with formation programs for physicians and nurses and newly evolving programs locally available to associates in the ministries. She also participated in the design of the Ascension Leadership Academy and has served as the Assistant Dean.
“Our formation framework has grounded Ascension in a highly inclusive perspective that the life journey of every person is about becoming the unique being our Creator called into life; that all of life is formative; and that Ascension is committed to human flourishing through a culture for community and personal growth in service of human dignity and the common good,” Sr. Maureen said.
As Ascension engaged its journey as an integrated ministry, Sr. Maureen worked together with colleagues in Human Resources and other areas, forming a vision for a Model Community of inspired, flourishing associates, supporting associates’ deep sense of personal meaning in their work and thus inspiring them to contribute their unique talents in service of our Mission. This benefits our associates and everyone we serve. This benefits our associates and everyone we serve.
As part of the Mission Integration Ministry-wide Function, Sr. Maureen has supported the development of an Ethics department with deep expertise. They provide ministry leaders with tools and processes for decision-making and education around the complexity of issues in the changing healthcare environment. She encouraged development of Centers for Excellence in Health Care Ethics, supported by a clinical ethics intensive training program to empower members of institutional ethics committees to address a broader scope of ethical issues.
Recognizing the multiple dimensions of Spiritual Care as integral to our service of the whole person, to our new models of care, to serving our associates, and to the well-being of communities, Sr. Maureen included Ascension’s Spiritual Care leader as a member of the Mission Integration Executive Council. Outstanding areas of development include Standards of Excellence, the creation of On Demand Spiritual Care available by phone and video conferencing, and several professional research initiatives demonstrating the benefit of spiritual care for persons with certain physical conditions.
Her focus also has extended beyond Ascension into the communities we serve. Sr. Maureen has facilitated the ongoing implementation of a System-wide initiative to address the tragedy of human trafficking, developing model approaches to identifying and helping these victims as they come to our sites of care.
All of this work comes together as essential to Mission Integration. Early in its evolution Sr. Maureen was instrumental in the development of the Catholic Identity Matrix, a tool developed with the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to help Ascension assess and advance the ways in which the six principles of Catholic Ministry identity are expressed within their operating policies, processes, practices and culture. Today, all ministries of Ascension regularly engage the assessment and resulting plans for growth and deepening of ministry identity. This instrument has been adopted by other Catholic health systems as well.
Sr. Maureen joined Daughters of Charity National Health System, a founding member of Ascension Health, in 1996, serving in Mission leadership roles in Western New York health ministries. Prior to that, she held various service and leadership roles in professional social work including leadership of two Catholic Charities agencies in the Diocese of Albany, New York. She earned a Master of Social Work degree from Temple University, Philadelphia. In 1992 she began one of the first transitional housing programs in the nation for homeless women and children affected by HIV/AIDS.
Sr. Maureen entered the Daughters of Charity in 1967. Later, after studies in formative spirituality at Duquesne University, she served in the initial formation of new members of the Daughters of Charity.
In her new role as Senior Executive Advisor, Sr. Maureen will serve as counselor to the CEO and will serve as needed for our ministry in this time of challenge. In her role, she will also develop initiatives contributing to Ascension’s Mission-inspired Transformation for the future.
Timothy L.M. Glover, M.Div
In addition, Timm will collaborate to design the regular meetings of the Mission Committee of the Ascension Sponsor. He will also contribute material reflecting the work of Mission Integration as essential information for the annual report of the Sponsor to the Vatican.
Timm has served as Senior Vice President, Mission Integration, since 2013. In this role he has provided spiritual, strategic and collaborative leadership that helps deepen integration of Ascension’s Mission, Vision, Values and Catholic Ministry identity throughout all our markets and partnerships.
He works with leadership at the System and market levels in defining creative ways to express Ascension’s Catholic Ministry identity within the ever-changing healthcare environment and collaborating to support our executives in their role as leaders in a health ministry of the Church.
Before joining the System Office, he served as Senior Vice President, Mission Integration, Chief Mission and Ministry Officer at Ascension Saint Thomas in Nashville, Tennessee. Before that he served as Vice President of Mission Services and Leadership Formation at Middle Tennessee Medical Center, Murfreesboro (now Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital). He previously served as Chaplain and then Coordinator of the Stress Reduction Program and Consultant in Organizational and Change Management for Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital.
Prior to his roles in healthcare, Timm served as a director for a pastoral counseling center and provided individual, couple and family pastoral psychotherapy as a licensed Clinical Pastoral Therapist in Tennessee.
Timm is a member of the 2020 cohort of the Ascension Leadership Academy and participated in the Ascension Foundations of Ministry Leadership formation program. He holds a Master of Divinity degree in Pastoral Psychotherapy and Family Systems from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.
Peter M. Leibold, JD
Prior to joining Ascension, Peter served for 15 years as the Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA), the largest association in the United States dedicated to educating and promoting collegiality among health lawyers.
Previously, Peter served as General Counsel to the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) from 1996-1999. He joined CHA after working at the law firm of Bryan Cave as counsel from 1995-1996. For six years prior to joining Bryan Cave, he served in three different capacities for U.S. Sen. John C. Danforth – as counsel for judicial and health affairs, as legislative director, and as chief of staff.
In 2004, Peter took time away from his AHLA responsibilities to serve as Washington Deputy to Danforth when he was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In 1988-1989, Peter clerked for Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Peter is a member of the 2018 cohort of the Ascension Leadership Academy and participated in the Ascension Executive Ministry Leadership formation program. He earned a Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School, New Haven, Connecticut, and a bachelor’s degree in history from Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania.
