25 Over Fifty-Five 2019 Award Winner
DIANA FRANCHITTO | CEO and president, HopeHealth
DIANA FRANCHITTO works in a growing field, managing a $70 million company that she had a large role in creating and doing lots of public speaking and consultation work.
But don’t expect to meet a frantic, go-go executive, barking orders to underlings and screaming into the phone.
Past the midpoint of her career, Franchitto puts great value on peacefulness, collaboration and careful listening. One of the things she would advise her own 20-year-old self, Franchitto said, is to practice patience.
Franchitto is CEO and president of HopeHealth, a large nonprofit home care, hospice and palliative care organization. HopeHealth has 550 employees, and it cares for about 2,200 patients a day in settings – often their homes – where patients prefer to recover from a serious illness or approach the end of their lives.
In her role in the company, where she has worked for 12 years, Franchitto has led the assimilation of two nonprofit hospice and palliative care organizations. She implemented a palliative home care program, led the construction of a new 24-bed hospice facility and new administration headquarters, and many more major initiatives.
Now 29 years into her career, Franchitto said she’s at a stage where she wants her work to have meaning. “I get great satisfaction in knowing we make a difference in caring for seriously ill people and their families,” she said.
The current stage of her life and career, Franchitto said, also makes her extra aware of using time well. “Being intentional about how we use our time is more prominent in my mind,” she said. “Earlier on in my career I was not as deliberate with my time.”
Franchitto counsels calmness in doing one’s work. “You are more successful when you go about your work with a more peaceful approach,” she said. “More-mature people learn this through the good times and the bad times.”
