Mary Faria, Ph.D., spent 30 years as a health care executive and administrator, including 23 years with the Ascension/Seton Healthcare Family in Austin. She was chief operating officer/vice president/administrator for Seton Southwest Hospital, serving 17 years from the hospital’s opening until she retired in 2017. After this retirement she was asked to serve as the CEO and President of a graduate school of Integrative Medicine in Austin, Texas. In addition to teaching for Human Dimensions of Organizations, she has been an adjunct professor, lecturer and guest speaker at Texas State and Concordia universities.
Her passion is strengthening executive and organizational resilience to generate broader well-being impacts in our communities. She also loves to conduct research.
Her dissertation research at UT Austin focused on organizational change. She has been involved in research in the area of human and organizational resilience and presented findings at both SXSW and The Healthier Texas Summit with Sheila Armitage, Ph.D.
Faria serves on several community advisory councils and not-for-profit boards. She is a former board chair for the Austin Mayor’s Health and Wellbeing Council, having served on the board for 19 years.
A distance runner with local, national, and international age group race wins, she is also a triathlete and teaches swimming to those fearful of water. She was her age group winner in the 2016 Austin Fit Magazine’s Most Fit Competition.
Faria was introduced to acupuncture when dealing with a running injury and quickly incorporated it and other non-traditional healing methods for an integrated approach to her own health.