Kristian Olson

Kris is an Internist and Pediatrician and serves as Vice President of Design Impact at Mass General Brigham Health where he leads the Springboard Studio. He is a founding member of the Core Educator Faculty and the Chief Innovation Officer in the Department of Medicine’s Residency Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He founded and is the Director of the Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies (CAMTech) through the MGH Center for Global Health and is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He has worked extensively in low-and-middle-income countries as well as the US to develop innovative solutions to healthcare challenges utilizing design-thinking. He champions humility, empathy, and creative confidence amongst would-be innovators. Kris is a serial innovator, has several patents and has started both non-profit and for-profit ventures to accelerate ideas to implementation.

Originally from rural Canada, he completed a degree in biology at the University of British Columbia, medical school at Vanderbilt University and his residency training in the Harvard Combined Medicine and Pediatrics Program. He obtained a Masters of Public Health at the University of Sydney while a US Fulbright Scholar and a Diploma in Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

A Doctor Who Listens
Dr. Kristian Olson’s leadership is founded on a simple yet transformative idea: the people closest to the problems often have the best solutions. As an Internist, Pediatrician, public health expert, educator, and innovator, Olson has spent his career empowering frontline healthcare workers and patients to design solutions that address their most pressing needs.

Internist, Pediatrician
Whether in refugee camps in Thailand or leading cutting-edge initiatives in the United States, Olson’s work is driven by the belief that the best ideas come from those who experience challenges firsthand. “The real innovation happens when you listen to the people who are living and working in the system every day,” he says. LEARN MORE