Nancy E. Paridy

Nancy Paridy, JD, LLM, is an executive who brings diverse experience and insights to her multifaceted role. For more than 25 years, Nancy has served Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, the global leader in physical medicine and rehabilitation for adults and children with the most severe, complex conditions. A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab has been named the #1 rehabilitation hospital by U.S. News & World Report every year since 1991. Upon the opening of its state-of-the-art hospital in 2017, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab became the first-ever “translational” research hospital in which clinicians, scientists, innovators and technologists work together in the same space, surrounding patients, discovering new approaches and applying (or “translating”) research real time.

As a member of Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s executive leadership team, Nancy serves as Senior Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel overseeing a diverse team of more than 300 employees. She is responsible for all legal matters, including health care matters; employment law; joint venture; acquisition; management and other transactional agreements; regulatory interpretation and guidance; intellectual property; litigation; and corporate governance.

She oversees and directs the organization’s human resources function (e.g., talent acquisition, leadership and succession planning, total rewards, HRIS), developing new initiatives — including a robust employee engagement program and a facilities and support services apprenticeship program that opens up new career pathways for team members. She also leads the hospital’s food service department — which prepares more than 3,500 meals per day for patients, staff and visitors — and its facilities department — which recently was honored for its commitment to environmental action with two prestigious national awards.

Additionally, Nancy serves as Corporate Secretary to all of Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s corporate entities and also is responsible for the hospital’s ethics program; corporate compliance; security operations; insurance needs; and government and community affairs.

Nancy’s leadership in healthcare and law has been honored through myriad awards. In 2018, she received the Top Women Lawyers in Leadership Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois. This honor recognizes elite women lawyers who have created growth in their field and fostered new pathways through mentoring. In addition, she received the First Chair Award for “Top General Counsel” in its inaugural year, 2011, and again in 2016.

In addition to her work at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Nancy writes and lectures about healthcare law, and serves as an adjunct professor at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Furthermore, in 2019 she was named the first woman Chair of the Loyola Academy Board of Trustees.

Nancy joined Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago) in 1995 as Associate General Counsel. Previously, she was a Partner at Dykema and practiced law at Nixon Peabody LLP in the areas of litigation and corporate healthcare.

She earned her BA in History from Western Illinois University, her JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Institute of Technology, and her Master of Laws (LLM) in Health Law from the Loyola University School of Law.