John Kouletsis, AIA, EDAC, oversees the planning and design of all Kaiser Permanente buildings. During his 20-year tenure with Kaiser Permanente, John developed a comprehensive set of design standards that continue to ensure Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical offices across the country are built and maintained with a consistent level of quality and affordability. Created in collaboration with hundreds of frontline health care professionals, planners, architects, and others, these standards established Kaiser Permanente as one of the foremost proponents of both evidence-based design and safety-by-design. John developed the first inpatient room templates for Kaiser Permanente, and he managed the development of the “templated” hospital, a site-adapt inpatient design that allows Kaiser Permanente to reduce the time it takes to bring new hospitals to market, while still allowing local project teams to adjust the design to accommodate local conditions. John is an executive sponsor of the Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center, a unique living laboratory where design ideas are tested and solutions are developed in a hands-on, mocked-up clinical environment. His recent activities include developing energy- and water-conservation policies for Kaiser Permanente. He also collaborated with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense Military Health System on a series of initiatives, including BIM standards, post-occupancy evaluations, and design excellence for health care facilities. Before joining Kaiser Permanente, John worked for 15 years as an architect in architectural and engineering firms specializing in the health care design. John graduated from the University of Southern California and did post graduate research in the Department of Engineering at Kyoto University. He is a member of the American Institute of Architects; is vice president/president elect for the San Francisco chapter of the AIA; and is a member of the Facility Guidelines Institute’s Health Guidelines Revision Committee. He is an invited member of the AIA’s America's Design and Health Initiative, and, in 2011, received the Changemaker Award from The Center for Health Design. He is also a member of The Center for Health Design’s EDAC Advisory Council. John speaks widely on design excellence, high-performance design, and sustainable design and operations.