All of us have been shaped with visible and invisible hands,” says Laura Kaiser, who as executive vice president and COO of Intermountain Healthcare, can draw on her own experience as a guide. Kaiser, 53, was born in St. Louis and followed what seems like a natural journey into healthcare service, volunteering as a teenage Candy Striper at a local hospital and encouraged even then by her father, a life-long Monsanto executive who recognized her leadership gifts, to go into healthcare administration. She earned an undergraduate degree in health services management at the University of Missouri and then an MBA and MHA at Saint Louis University. Prior to joining Intermountain, a Salt Lake City-based 22-hospital integrated health system with 1,200 physicians and its own health plan, Kaiser served as president and CEO of Sacred Heart Health System in Pensacola, Fla., president of the Daughters of Charity Foundation and regional executive for the Gulf Coast/Florida region of Ascension Health. She has been married to her husband Chuck for 18 years and has two daughters.