Hi, I'm Matthew Miller.I modernize complex systems so they can serve people better.My work blends enterprise portfolio leadership, AI governance, digital transformation, and design thinking to strengthen institutions.I am attracted to worthy causes and principled teams with the heart and means to achieve the near impossible.
I write occasional articles on Substack @mtthwmllr. Have a read. Share your thoughts.
Follow or send a message on LinkedIn
About
Matthew Miller is an innovative and people-centred executive leader with 20+ years leading digital transformation, brand and innovation initiatives, and culture change in complex healthcare systems.Skilled in creating value through strategy, high-performance team building, and delivering design-driven, system-focused integrated solutions.Known for advancing human-centred design and embedding culturally safe learning and innovation through successful participatory design event series such as:
And for championing career-changing research and education initiatives for care providers and health leaders through partnerships with:
Leadership
What does leadership look like in complex health systems?
For me, it has meant stepping into environments that are already under pressure politically, operationally, and culturally, then helping align people, priorities, and platforms so the system performs better for the people inside it and the communities it serves.
Sometimes that has involved experimentation.
Sometimes it has required restraint.
Often it has meant knowing that good ideas fail if the conditions aren’t right.
I’ve learned that leadership in these environments comes down to translating strategy into practical action, creating clarity where there is ambiguity, and building trust across clinical, technical, and community partners.
Below are four examples of work that reflect that approach.
None of it happens alone. Every initiative required strong teams, courageous partners, and a shared commitment to strengthening the system rather than simply adding to it.
1. Code Hack
Annual health hackathon innovation series
Role
Co-founder and Lead Architect
Why It Started
Island Health is a regional public health authority serving 850,000 residents and employing more than 30,000 people.I had a vision to bring a health-focused hackathon into the organization, not as a one-off event, but as a structured platform for collaboration. Together with a co-founder (who later became CEO of Nurses and Nurse Practitioners of BC), we designed Code Hack to bring frontline voices into system-level problem solving.Innovation shouldn’t be limited to executive tables. The people closest to care — nurses, patients, physicians, designers, developers, operational leaders — see problems and possibilities every day.Code Hack was created to bring those perspectives together in a supported, well-governed way.
View the Code Hack trailer. Volume up!
What We Built
Code Hack became an annual 24-hour health innovation experience supported by more than 30 volunteers, sponsors, academic partners, and community organizations.Up to 100 participants — including staff, nurses, patients, physicians, designers, developers, and executives — formed cross-disciplinary teams to tackle real health system challenges, build working prototypes, and present to a judging panel executive and community leaders. Winning teams entered a six-month innovation cohort within the Innovation Lab to continue developing their ideas.
Sponsors and community supporters
The diversity of partners below revealed that meaningful system improvement requires collaboration across public, private, academic, and community sectors.
AWS
BC Ministry of Health
CGI
Camosun Innovates
Doctors of BC
Good Earth
Health Quality BC
Fasken
Michael Smith Foundation
Mural
Nanaimo & District Hospital Foundation
Nurses & Nurse Practitioners of BC
Patient Voices Network
TELUS & TELUS Health
UVIC Innovation Centre
Victoria Hospitals Foundation
Recognition
Code Hack and the Innovation Lab were cited as best practice examples in the Government of Canada Nurse Retention Toolkit — a national acknowledgment of their contribution to workforce sustainability.Island Health’s President and CEO publicly endorsed the initiative, reinforcing that innovation was part of the organization’s mandate, not an extracurricular activity.From Island Health's press release:"I love the Code Hack tagline: ‘Everyone is an innovator’,” said Kathy MacNeil, Island Health President and Chief Executive Officer.“We need that now more than ever. Bringing diverse minds together is the way forward and experiencing the energy at Code Hack fills me with hope for the future.”
Interested In Learning More?
I wrote an article about Code Hack on Substack @mtthwmllr. Have a read. Share your thoughts.
View the Code Hack event website
2. Spark Series
Multi-day in-person design thinking events focused on wicked health care and community issues.
Role: InstigatorWhat: Multi-day in-person design thinking event
- Understand a specific “wicked” problem area
- Learn with professionals and peers
- Distill problems into opportunities
- Empathy mapping and ideation sessions
- Prototype solutions and presentation options
- Commit to moving forwardEvent series included:
- 2023 Toxic drug supply crisis in Nanaimo BC part 1
- 2024 Toxic drug supply crisis in Nanaimo BC part 2
- 2025 (planned) Alternate Levels of Care (ALC)Reference: SPARK Nanaimo: Looking at the Toxic Drug Crisis through a Different Lens"The aim behind the SPARK series... is location, activation and inclusion.Rather than tackling problems in the Innovation Lab or at Code Hack, we’re bringing the Lab’s design-thinking process into communities to explore opportunities with the people who are affected by, and who can most benefit from, potential solutions.”It’s a collaborative approach, which means communities and partners are jointly responsible for moving ideas forward."
3. Walk With Me
Role: Thought partner, collaboratorWhat: Walk With Me (WWM) is a research-based harm reduction and knowledge mobilization organization based in Comox, BC, leading through cultural mapping, experiential walks, and circle dialogue workshops.
Why: While leading Island Health's Innovation Lab, I worked with Walk With Me over several years as a thought partner and internal and ministry champion.Their event-based approach to truth and reconciliation looks directly at the impacts of the ongoing toxic drug supply crisis in collaboration with people with lived and living experience.Outcome From the success of initial events, Walk With Me secured a contract with Island Health to deliver over 50 walks with frontline and executive staff. More than one clinical leader was heard to say the experience should be required training.
4. Culturally Committed
Role: Partner, championWhat: Culturally Committed is a year-long organizational membership program "facilitated by mentors, Elders, and experts in the field of cultural safety and humility, with the intention of supporting providers in expanding their knowledge around cultural practices, barriers to care, and to educate on what safe relationships looks and feels like to Indigenous Peoples."How: I enrolled a pilot group that included multiple Island Health portfolios including the Innovation Lab, Digital Engagement, Cultural Safety, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.Why: I was fortunate, as a white settler, to receive San'yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Training. It taught me how I might lead myself and others further into truth and reconciliation actions. When I found out about Culturally Committed, I knew right away this is exactly what was needed.Outcome: The Culturally Committed pilot immersed team members into a profound, life-changing learning experience. As a result, it created a system-wide opportunity to recommend further adoption by the health care executive team.
Balance
I do my best thinking outdoors on forest trails, on the water, or under a wide coastal sky.
Creative practice matters to me. I write and record original music and experiment with design and product development through small entrepreneurial projects. These pursuits sharpen my ability to see patterns, test ideas, and build with intention.