Manjinder Kaur spent the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic working as an emergency-room nurse at South Brooklyn Health, living in a hotel rather than risk bringing the virus home. Now she runs the whole 351-bed Coney Island hospital as its chief executive, becoming the first nurse to lead a New York City Health and Hospitals institution in recent history.
Kaur was named CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health in July, according to a profile in the Brooklyn Paper, stepping into a job held for six years by her predecessor. Kaur's path to the corner office wound through nearly two decades of frontline and administrative work in the same public hospital system. She began her nursing career in India, came to the United States in 2004, and earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in nursing along the way, per the same account.
From Lincoln Hospital to Coney Island's Emergency Room
Kaur started as a trauma nurse at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, where she worked from 2006 to 2016, before arriving at South Brooklyn Health that same year as a nursing consultant. She went on to serve as assistant director of nursing in the hospital's emergency room, becoming chief nursing officer in 2021 and then chief operating officer in 2024, the report notes. As COO, she led operational and multidisciplinary teams and oversaw an overhaul of the hospital's throughput management process, which the outlet reports helped cut medical/surgical patient length of stay by more than two days.
Kaur described her approach to the top job as one of support rather than interference, saying she wants to respect the staff responsible for specific medical cases even as she oversees overall hospital management. She said she was prepared for the CEO role given her clinical and operational background, according to the Brooklyn Paper article.
A Wider Reshuffling Across Brooklyn's Safety-Net Hospitals
Kaur's promotion did not happen in isolation. It came amid a broader restructuring across Brooklyn's public hospital leadership tied to the pending partnership between NYC Health + Hospitals and Maimonides Health, as VINnews reported. Former South Brooklyn Health CEO Svetlana Lipyanskaya, who led the hospital since 2020 through the pandemic, was named CEO of Maimonides Health, opening the door for Kaur's step up from COO.
That merger has since cleared a major hurdle: NYC Health + Hospitals and Maimonides Health won unanimous approval from the New York State Public Health and Health Planning Council for the deal, which is backed by $2.2 billion in state grant funding over five years, according to NYC Health + Hospitals. More than $500 million of that package is earmarked for upgrading labor and delivery facilities and rolling out a unified Epic electronic health record system across the combined system.
Elsewhere in the network, similar shuffles have played out. Cristina Contreras was named CEO of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx after previously leading Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem, holding degrees from Herbert H. Lehman College, Fordham University, and Baruch College, along with an honorary doctorate from the New York College of Podiatric Medicine, per the Brooklyn Paper report. NYC Health + Hospitals CEO Mitch Katz has brought in chief executives with diverse backgrounds, the outlet notes, including Woodhull Hospital CEO Sandra Sneed, a former occupational therapist who told the paper that combining clinical experience with administrative or business skills is powerful.
Nurses Increasingly Climbing Into the Corner Office
Kaur's rise reflects a national trend of clinical leaders moving into hospital executive suites. Nurse leader Anthony T.J. De Angelis wrote in 2024 that chief nursing officers can be well prepared to become CEOs, and Becker's magazine has identified more than 30 hospitals with similar CNO-to-CEO examples, the Brooklyn Paper article states. Among 219 new hospital and health system CEO appointments that Becker's tracked in August, COO promotions accounted for 68, or roughly 31 percent, while CEOs moving between hospitals made up 54 appointments and other internal executive promotions represented 28. CNOs specifically accounted for seven of the tracked appointments, a smaller but notable share among the roughly 6,129 hospitals counted nationwide by the American Hospital Association.
South Brooklyn Health itself has undergone its own transformation. The hospital, which sees about 100,000 patients a year and includes a stroke center and a PCI center for the heart, traces its roots back 150 years to a 20-bed emergency aid station on the Coney Island beachfront, according to Wikipedia. In 1875, patients needing care beyond emergency aid had to be carried seven miles to Kings County Hospital by horse-drawn ambulance.
A Campus Rebuilt After Sandy, Now Expanding Care
The hospital known then as Coney Island Hospital was devastated when Superstorm Sandy flooded 144,000 square feet of its ground floor in October 2012, forcing a full patient evacuation, as reported by Healthcare Brew. FEMA ultimately funded a $923 million rebuild, and the campus reopened in May 2023 with the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospital tower — the first new public hospital building constructed in New York City since Woodhull's in 1982, according to Healthcare Facilities Today. The rebuilt campus features an elevated second-floor emergency department and a 1,720-foot, four-foot-high flood wall engineered for a 500-year storm event.
Under Kaur's tenure, the hospital has continued investing in patient care and community connection. South Brooklyn Health completed a $2 million expansion of its outpatient oncology and infusion center in March, growing from seven to 11 infusion bays, as Hoodline previously reported. The hospital also launched its bedside BRAVO Program this month, bringing arts, recreation, and health education directly to admitted patients and their visitors, and it partnered with community organization Be Proud Inc. on the God Bless America art exhibition featuring 19 original works by local Russian-speaking artists, marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, according to BKReader.
Kaur was recently named one of Schneps Media's Power Women of Brooklyn for 2026, alongside Sneed and Dr. Maggie D. Tetrokalashvili, an honor NYC Health + Hospitals says recognizes female leaders who impact healthcare and community well-being across the borough. It's a fitting bookend for a career that began with a nurse living in a hotel to protect her family during a pandemic, and now finds her steering the future of one of Brooklyn's busiest public hospitals.
