Roberto de la Cruz is a Parkland Health & Hospital System “boomerang,” as he calls it. He worked his way up to associate medical director at a Parkland clinic, and then departed for Baylor University Medical Center in 2000, where he spent the next decade and a half. But de la Cruz would eventually make it back to Parkland, and in 2015, he was named the system’s chief medical officer.
For the September issue of D CEO, de la Cruz and I met for lunch at Ascension at The Crescent, where we talked about his career and, mostly, about Hurricane Maria. A Puerto Rico native who came to Dallas for residency at UT Southwestern Medical Center, de la Cruz went back to his home country within weeks following the brutal, fall 2017 hurricane. He would eventually do a three-month sabbatical in Puerto Rico, working on behalf of the federal government to assist with recovery efforts.
The story went online today. Have a look.
