Gretchen Kolb has served as the director of learning innovation at Penn Medicine Academy since 2016, providing leadership and strategic direction on the coordinated application of learning strategies—including online, mobile, virtual, microlearning, classroom, and simulation—across the health system in support of Penn Medicine organizational development goals.

Prior to this expanded role, she was the director of simulation at Penn Medicine, responsible for overseeing all simulation activities, both unit-based as well as those taking place at the 22,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art Penn Medicine Clinical Simulation Center, where she began her simulation experience as director of operations in 2008. Under her leadership, Penn Medicine Simulation was one of the first programs to receive accreditation by the International Society for Simulation in Healthcare.

Kolb started her career at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in 2002 as the director of professional medical education for the department of surgery. She has a master’s degree in genetic counseling from the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and worked clinically as a certified pediatric and cancer genetic counselor from 1997 to 2008 at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Thomas Jefferson University Health System, and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in biology from Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.