Carl Armato is president and CEO of Novant Health, a four-state integrated health care network of physician clinics, outpatient centers and hospitals with more than $7B in revenue and 37,000 employees. Throughout his career, Armato has advanced strategic business transformations and critical organizational and cultural changes of complex, highly regulated health care systems to drive long-term value creation for all stakeholders.
Armato has transformed Novant Health, recognized as one of the safest health care systems in the U.S. by The Leapfrog Group, into one of the top integrated health care delivery networks in the country. While delivering an unprecedented response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he led the $5.3B acquisition of New Hanover Regional Medical Center, establishing a third major operational hub in North Carolina.
Armato joined the company in 1998 as the vice president of finance and operations for the physician division and since then has served in numerous roles including senior vice president of materials management and logistics, chief operating officer and eventually president and CEO for Presbyterian Healthcare; president of Novant Health markets; and chief operations officer for Novant Health. The board of trustees appointed him to his current position in January 2012.
Prior to joining Novant Health, Armato was vice president of operations for First Care Physicians and director of finance for the General Health System in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was also a senior tax/audit consultant for Ernst & Young in the Baton Rouge office.
Armato serves on the southeast board of directors of the American Heart Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Charlotte Chapter Advisory Council and is a founding member of the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council, where he now serves on its executive committee.
Named to the Power 100 list by Business North Carolina, Armato has received numerous awards throughout his career, most notably the Most Admired CEO by the Charlotte Business Journal and the Triad Business Journal in 2018 and 2017, respectively. Also in 2017, the JDRF honored Armato with the Lifetime Achievement Award, and he received the 2015 Father of the Year award from the American Diabetes Association, Charlotte Chapter. After receiving the Joslin’s Diabetes Center Medal for living with diabetes for 50 years, Armato shared his life-long journey with the disease in his 2018 book, “A Future With Hope, An Inspiring Guide to Overcoming Diabetes,” which quickly became an Amazon best seller.
Armato holds a bachelor’s of business administration in accounting from the University of Southwestern Louisiana Lafayette and a master’s in business administration from Norwich University of Vermont. He is a certified public accountant licensed in Louisiana and North Carolina.