When Mitch Cloward speaks about healthcare, he often begins with people.

Today, Mitch serves as Regional President of Intermountain Health, helping oversee healthcare operations across Nevada and Southern Utah. In Southern Nevada, he is helping shape one of the region’s most significant healthcare investments: Nevada’s first standalone comprehensive children’s hospital. Yet Mitch’s healthcare journey began far from the executive office, as a housekeeper in a hospital intensive care unit.

Growing up in a small town in northern Utah, Mitch learned early lessons about responsibility, service, and community. Those values shaped his interest in healthcare and inspired him to pursue a degree in healthcare administration with a long-term dream of becoming a hospital CEO.

While attending college, Mitch followed advice from his father and took a job inside a hospital to better understand the industry. His first role was housekeeping in a trauma intensive care unit.

The experience changed the way he would lead for the rest of his career.

As a housekeeper, Mitch understood the importance of his work in protecting patients from infection and maintaining a safe environment. Yet he often felt invisible. Most interactions happened only when something needed to be cleaned or fixed. Over time, he recognized how easy it was for people in supporting roles to feel overlooked.

On his final day in that position, Mitch made two promises to himself: he would work toward becoming a hospital CEO, and he would never forget the people whose work often happens quietly behind the scenes.

That philosophy still shapes his leadership today.

Over the next three decades, Mitch built experience across nearly every side of healthcare, physician groups, insurance, operations, hospital leadership, and executive management. His path eventually led him to serve as a hospital president before advancing to Regional President at Intermountain Health.

His work today extends far beyond hospital walls.

Southern Nevada continues to grow rapidly, and healthcare infrastructure is racing to keep pace. Mitch speaks often about the importance of building stronger healthcare access, workforce pipelines, and specialized care for families who currently leave the state to receive treatment.

One of the projects closest to his heart is Nevada’s first standalone children’s hospital.

For years, families across Nevada have traveled to neighboring states for pediatric specialty care, often during some of the most difficult moments of their lives. Mitch believes Southern Nevada deserves a world-class pediatric healthcare system close to home, one that allows children to receive advanced care while remaining near family and support systems.

Building that future also requires investing in people.

Like many healthcare systems nationwide, Southern Nevada faces workforce shortages across nursing, specialized medicine, and healthcare support roles. Mitch believes stronger partnerships between healthcare providers, schools, colleges, and workforce organizations are essential to preparing the next generation of talent and creating sustainable career pathways.

For Mitch, healthcare leadership has always been about balancing operational excellence with compassion.

During the Workforce Connections podcast, he shared a story that deeply stayed with him. A patient hospitalized during COVID later wrote about a hospital housekeeper who visited his room each day, offering encouragement and writing uplifting messages on a whiteboard. Those daily moments gave the patient hope and helped him continue fighting through isolation.

The story reminded Mitch of something he learned years earlier in the ICU:

Every role matters.

A healthcare system may be powered by physicians, nurses, and technology, but healing also comes through kindness, encouragement, and human connection.

When asked what advice he would give young people considering healthcare careers, Mitch encouraged them to stay curious, continue learning, and remember that meaningful careers often begin in unexpected places.

His own journey, from hospital housekeeper to healthcare executive, reflects the power of persistence, humility, and never losing sight of people.

At a time when Southern Nevada is building the next chapter of healthcare, Mitch Cloward continues to lead with a simple belief:

People may forget what you said. They may forget what you did. But they never forget how you made them feel.

 - Part of the Nevada Leadership Archive (NLA), a leadership portrait series documenting people shaping Southern Nevada.