)
Svetlana Makarova
Svetlana Makarova is an AI strategist, product leader at Mayo Clinic, and the founder of Spark Change, a consultancy helping organizations adopt AI with clarity, confidence, and measurable impact.
With over a decade of experience leading innovation across healthcare and IT services, she has delivered enterprise-scale AI solutions that have improved care delivery and operational efficiency for tens of thousands of clinicians and patients.
At Mayo Clinic, she leads major AI initiatives, including a platform deployed across 90+ specialties, as well as intelligent systems that automate documentation, streamline data triage, and support clinical decision-making. Svetlana has co-authored peer-reviewed research on expert-finding algorithms and LLM-powered clinical data retrieval. She speaks regularly at global conferences including the American Telehealth Association and AI Summit. A passionate educator, she teaches executive AI strategy at NextMBA alongside Seth Godin, James Clear, and Brian Tracy, and mentors founders at Cornell University. Svetlana holds dual undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry and Psychology from George Mason University and an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler. Through her work, she is shaping the next era of responsible, scalable, and human-centered AI.