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Clayton (Mitch) Mitchell, PE, CEM


Senior Vice President, Real Estate and Facilities, Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health

Clayton leads facilities management services and public safety for a $9B enterprise comprised of an 18 hospital healthcare system, university, and health plan based in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey.  He is charged with leading corporate transformation of real estate, facilities, and security services for 800+ staff distributed across five divisions. His responsibilities include delivery of a 19 story, 462,000 SF, $762M Specialty Care Pavilion being constructed in Center City Philadelphia and representing the largest capital project in the system’s history.

He serves or has served on a variety of civic and professional associations, including the Center City District Philadelphia Board of Directors, Urban Land Institute Healthcare and Life Sciences Council, The Center for Health Design Built Environment Network, The Common Market (a nonprofit regional wholesale food distributor focused on connecting communities with sustainable food grown by family farms) Board of Directors, The Philadelphia Anchors for Growth and Equity (Co-Chair), a subcommittee of the Economy League of Philadelphia, Downtown Denver Partnership, and the Jefferson Leadership Center. 

Clayton joined Jefferson from Kaiser Permanente Health Plan, where he served in various capacities for eight years, to include Executive Director, National Facilities Services Colorado and Mid-Atlantic States, and most recently, Vice President (Interim) Facilities Operations. Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed care organization with more than 12 million members, 200,000 administrative employees, 18,000 physicians, 51,000 nurses, and $80 billion in annual revenues.  

Raised in San Mateo, California, Clayton earned his Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, and his Master’s in Civil Engineering, with a concentration in Construction Management, from the University of California at Berkeley. He has also completed executive management studies at both the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth and the Harvard Business School. He completed a 25-year career as a U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps officer prior to transitioning to the healthcare industry delivering over $7B in facilities projects and services across the facilities spectrum to include planning, design, construction, real estate, operations, and maintenance. 

Clayton served in various challenging assignments to include Director, Maintenance, Transportation, and Utilities at the U.S. Naval Academy; Operations Officer for Naval Mobile Construction Battalion SEVENTY FOUR based in Gulfport, Mississippi; Navy Legislative Fellow to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott; Executive Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Navy, Installations and Facilities; and Commanding Officer, Naval Mobile Construction Battalion FORTY based in Port Hueneme, California and deployed to New Orleans, Louisiana (Hurricane Katrina); Okinawa, Japan, and; Fallujah, Iraq. 

More recently, he was the Operations Officer for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command in Washington, D.C., Project Executive for the $1.5B expansion of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at Bethesda, Director Navy Energy Coordination Office, and Assistant Commander of Public Works Business Line for Naval Facilities Engineering Command.

Clayton is both a registered professional engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia and Certified Energy Manager. His awards and recognition include the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star for Navy service, Advocate of the Year for Supplier Diversity and Corporation of the Year awarded by the Mountain Plains Minority Supplier Development Council, and a citation for supplier development excellence issued by the City Council of Philadelphia.