Michael Amoroso – Summit Health

Michael Amoroso is a bit of a Renaissance man, with interests ranging from high finance and engineering to physics and philosophy. As director of facilities at Summit Health, a New Jersey-based for-profit healthcare system, he’s bringing that intellectual dynamism to his work—and helping usher in changes that will keep Summit competitive in the 21st century.

Amoroso, who started his career in the financial industry, decided to learn a new trade after the subprime market crash of 2008. His mother’s side of the family had always been into the trades, and that had long been at the back of his mind as a possibility. So, he switched to engineering.

Michael Amoroso | Director of Facilities | Summit Health

A quick study, he ascended from engineer to director in under three years, working primarily in the commercial real estate and hospitality sectors, before moving into his role at Summit in July 2022. He now oversees 240 locations with a staff of 16.

Amoroso says he runs his department as if it were a Fortune 500 company: stretching resources to create efficiencies, implementing strict procedures for things like capital improvements, acquisitions and employee job responsibilities, and conducting thorough audits when necessary.

At the same time, he takes pride in his empathy and his ability to see the silver lining in any scenario.

“Every day there is a situation that requires some personal touch or some background that I have to bring forward,” Amoroso says. “Whether it’s being organized; proper communication; or actually putting on a pair of work boots myself to go in and do the job, just because we don’t have the hands or some of my guys don’t have the skillset. So, every single day is a unique project.”

Executive functioning

Amoroso is currently in the process of restructuring Summit’s New Jersey facilities team. This requires calibrating the job duties for each employee he oversees and planning and coordinating the visual appearance and equipment layout for each medical facility to conform to the company standard.

“It’s not an overnight process,” he says. “We are having procedures put into place that streamline all aspects of our day-to-day work—communication amongst the team, or making sure paperwork is documented properly. None of this was ever really put into place when Summit was established.”

He’s also been staffing up to meet the demands of Summit’s rapid expansion and putting systems in place to train the new recruits. For example, the onboarding process at Summit’s facilities department now involves one-on-one meetings—with Amoroso, the new hires manager, an administrator and a maintenance coordinator—to go over the procedures and expectations for the role. There’s also on-site, hands-on training with multiple technicians, which allows the technicians and Amoroso to gauge the new hire’s abilities.

It’s all part of Amoroso’s plan to get Summit running like a finely tuned corporation.

“There are no secrets to success,” he says. “It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.”

Technological innovator

Amoroso says collaboration and innovative thinking have also helped him be successful in his role. Case in point: He worked with one of Summit’s website creators to design a new digital platform for the healthcare system that vastly simplified the interface physicians had to deal with.

“I had contacted the designer and said, ‘This is what I need and how I want it to work,’” Amoroso. “The systems that Summit was using were very inefficient; they were not designed properly. What the requestor would see—which would be the nurses, the physicians, the building managers—it would just look chaotic. So, seeing that from all sides gave me a better perspective on what my team needs to be doing.”

Because physicians and technicians often use different terminology, Amoroso also had to translate between them and create processes for each respective side of the system. He says they’re seeing success with the new platform, which is about 80 percent complete. Summit’s workers are now more mobile as a result, with staffers able to access the system through their individual mobile devices, create reports and so on.

A quest for personal growth

That ability to speak to tradesmen as easily as physicians or high-level executives has enabled Amoroso to rise through the ranks quickly.

A graduate of Brooklyn College, he previously worked for Marriott Vacations Worldwide as a director of engineering, at Hilton as a chief engineer and at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a director. He says that going against the crowd has kept him ahead of the curve in finance as well as engineering.

Always one to learn new things, Amoroso enjoys cooking, home improvement projects and fixing automobiles. He’s also an avid stock trader and real estate investor.

Beyond those hobbies, he enjoys reading about how things work—everything from chaos theory to root cause analysis—and learning new things about the financial industry. He feels his reading habits have helped him to excel throughout his career.

“I don’t ever want to get into a place where I’m complacent and just happy being on the same hamster wheel every day,” Amoroso says. “I’m always going to be looking to grow, to add to my repertoire of skills and talents. That will be a never-ending project until the day I die.”

View this feature in the Blueprint Vol. II 2023 Edition here.