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Joan Saba, FAIA, FACHA, NCARB
Consulting Partner | Healthcare Practice Leader
Joan Saba, FAIA, FACHA, NCARB
Consulting Partner | Healthcare Practice Leader
Specializing in healthcare design and planning, Joan Saba brings more than 25 years of expertise and strategic vision to all types of healthcare projects, with a focus on academic medical centers, pediatric and teaching hospitals. In addition to her leadership within the healthcare practice, she is a trained architect who is responsible for helping manage the New York office of NBBJ.
Joan’s expertise in translating current and future programmatic and operational needs into effective healing environments is applied to projects of diverse scales. She has developed long-term client relationships with a range of prestigious healthcare organizations and has advised on some of the nation’s most pressing healthcare design issues. Joan is a trusted advisor to boards and senior management teams in developing and implementing strategies and capital planning tailored to specific organizational needs.
She has recently led the healthcare planning and design efforts on the Kimmel Pavilion at New York University’s Langone Medical Center and a new medical center at the American University of Beirut. Her recent work on the Massachusetts General Hospital Lunder Building has won numerous design and industry awards, including a National Healthcare Design Award from the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health.
Recognized as an industry expert and dynamic educator, Joan is frequently asked to lecture and teach on trends and innovations in the planning and design of academic healthcare and pediatric environments. She was recently interviewed by Forbes China and Chinese Business News Weekly on recommendations to improve healthcare in China. Recent speaking engagements include presentations at Stanford Medicine X, The Economist Health Care Forum, the Academy of Architecture for Health, Harvard University Graduate School of Design's Executive Education Program, and the Symposium of Healthcare Design. In 2012, Joan was named as one of Healthcare Design magazine’s HCD 10. She was also a recipient of the AIA / Academy of Architecture for Health’s Presidential Citation Award and was included in Healthcare Design’s list of “Twenty Who Are Making a Difference.”