Jean Chantra and Fernando Hurtado receive top employee honors for their work to improve care and support families and colleagues.
Jean Chantra helps hospital teams use data to make care safer for children. Fernando Hurtado helps lead a holiday toy drive for families spending the season in the hospital and has coordinated a gathering for families remembering children who have died. Their work at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health addresses different needs, but both help make caring for children and families a shared effort.
For Chantra, that means developing not just better ways to measure care, but teams whose members feel comfortable asking questions and solving problems. For Hurtado, it means anticipating needs and handling practical details so colleagues can focus on the families they serve.
That work was recognized at the 35th Annual Employee Achievement Awards. Chantra, director of Clinical Effectiveness and Analytics, received the 2026 Excellence in Leadership Award, while Hurtado, Project Coordinator for Palliative Care, Family Guidance, and Bereavement Program, received the 2026 Grace Award, Employee of the Year, Stanford Medicine Children’s Health’s highest individual recognition.
Turning data into a conversation
Earlier in her career, Chantra worked with data in research, where publication often marked the end of an analysis. Health care quality improvement offered a different opportunity: to see findings become the basis for a conversation, a decision and a change in care.
“Data is what gets a team together to make care safer for the next patient and family,” Chantra said.
Her work includes developing the quality, safety and service dashboard and a health equity measurement framework. The framework is designed to standardize how data is collected, analyzed and used, helping teams identify and evaluate disparities and guide quality improvement efforts toward more equitable outcomes.
Yet when Chantra reflects on what she is proudest of, she points to her team rather than a dashboard or framework.
“I have worked intentionally to build a culture where people feel comfortable asking questions, sharing knowledge, and learning from one another,” Chantra said. One measure of success, for her, is whether a team has the confidence, expertise and relationships to sustain its work without depending on any one person.
She learned the value of that independence from leaders who invested in her development. Chantra credits mentors and colleagues including Grace Lee, MD; Jessey Bargmann-Losche; Terry Platchek, MD; and Ndidi Unaka, MD, with giving her room to develop her own judgment. Rather than pairing a problem with a prescribed solution, they trusted her to work through complex challenges and develop an approach.
Their example informs how she leads now: define the challenge, offer support and resist the urge to immediately supply an answer. Creating psychological safety for questions and learning is part of that work, not separate from it. Her leadership recognition reflects both the improvement efforts she advances and the people she helps prepare to sustain them.
Chantra also values colleagues’ willingness to examine performance candidly and share their expertise. In that environment, data serves as more than a scorecard. It gives people a starting point for discussing where care is working well and where it needs to improve.
Keeping the focus on families
Helping colleagues do their work takes a different form for Hurtado. He supports Family Guidance and Bereavement, Palliative Care, CORE and Spiritual Care, programs that accompany patients and families through difficult and deeply personal experiences. His colleagues describe someone who notices needs before they are voiced and brings order and calm when circumstances become complicated.
At the first Annual Day of Remembrance, that steadiness mattered when the event encountered unexpected technical challenges. Hurtado had coordinated the gathering to give bereaved families a place to remember and honor their children. As problems arose, he helped keep the event moving, supported his colleagues and remained present with families.
His service also extends to families spending the holidays in the hospital. For years, Hurtado has helped lead the holiday toy drive and distribution in partnership with Ronald McDonald House. The effort brings moments of joy and normalcy to families during their hospital stay.
The remembrance gathering and toy drive are visible examples of his work. Colleagues’ nominations also describe the everyday interactions around those efforts: the humor, encouragement and kindness he brings to work that can be complex, emotional and urgent. Their accounts emphasize not just the tasks he completes, but the experience of working alongside him.
That support helps growing programs stay connected. Working across teams and disciplines, Hurtado provides practical assistance that allows colleagues to focus more fully on patients, families and one another.
Twelve colleagues from across the organization nominated him for the Grace Award, reflecting working relationships that extend beyond a single program or event. His nominators connected his everyday actions to the organization’s PCARES values. Their accounts show how the excellence, dedication and commitment to mission recognized by the award take shape in daily service to patients, families and colleagues.
Chantra gives teams tools to examine care and room to develop their own judgment. Hurtado helps colleagues keep their attention on families, including when plans change. Their contributions take different forms, but neither ends with a completed task. The work continues in what someone else is able to do.