Our Indispensable Man
Craig Leach has led with a cool head, a warm heart and a steady hand.
Written by Diane Krieger | Photographed by Peter Cooper
After more than 39 years, Craig Leach is finally being discharged from the hospital. There’s a spring in his step as he heads for the exit, but there’s also mist in his eyes.
A “company man” in the best sense of the term, the retiring CEO of Torrance Memorial Medical Center has given his all to this institution. He was only 28 when he was first “admitted.”
Leach hadn’t planned on spending a lifetime in health care administration—let alone at a single hospital. In hindsight, though, it’s clear he was tailor-made for the job.
His cool head, warm heart and steady hand steered Torrance Memorial—now the city’s largest employer, with almost 5,000 people on payroll—through transformative changes and hard times. The digital revolution in health care, the 2008 financial crisis, the advent of the Affordable Care Act and a once-in-a-century pandemic all happened on his watch. Remarkably, Leach leaves behind a record of enormous expansion and surging excellence.
The data points are eye-popping: a five-fold increase in staff; a 100% increase in hospital-owned land; two new patient towers on the main campus and several community-based ambulatory care centers sprinkled across the South Bay; $350 million in philanthropy; and a trailblazing affiliation with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center that will help ensure Torrance Memorial will be around 100 years from now—still thriving and serving the South Bay’s evolving needs.
Exit Strategy
Leach officially retires on Halloween. (Asked what he’ll do the morning after, he says, “I’ll probably go for a swim after sleeping in late, then come home and have my toast and peanut butter with a glass of milk”—his breakfast routine since early childhood.
He’ll stay involved with Torrance Memorial, continuing to serve on the board of trustees, which should bring him on campus regularly. His newfound leisure time will be spent “goofing around and playing some golf” with high school friends, now all retired.
He wants to see more of his grandkids. There are now seven, with two more on the way—to be delivered at Torrance Memorial, of course.
“I would love to pick them up at school or take them to the beach while they’re still young enough to like having me around,” says Leach, smiling. He wants time to travel with his wife, Judy, a retired nurse who worked for Torrance Memorial cardiology director Ben Rosin, MD, for many years.
Some may wonder how the hospital will go on without Leach, its rock-steady Gibraltar for nearly 40 years. Leach isn’t worried. He’s laid the groundwork, having groomed his senior leadership team including his handpicked successor, rising CEO Keith Hobbs.
His departing advice to Hobbs: “Build on Torrance Memorial’s culture of being compassionate, like family. Keep up the positive relationship with doctors, and stay engaged with your exceptional management team and staff. I know Keith can do that, and I think he’ll be very successful.”
Native Son
A native son of the South Bay, Leach grew up in the Hollywood Riviera, went to St. Lawrence Martyr through grade school, then Bishop Montgomery High School. His dad, Dave, was a Redondo Beach High School science teacher for 30 years. His mom, June, stayed home with their five kids.
When Leach joined Torrance Memorial in 1984, he was seven years out of college. A CPA with an accounting degree from Loyola Marymount University, he’d gone to work for Deloitte in Downtown L.A. By good fortune, he was asked to audit several hospital clients. Intrigued and wanting to dig deeper, he accepted a comptroller job with Centinela Hospital in Inglewood.
Three years later, he moved to Torrance Memorial as director of finance. And never left.
Mentored by his boss, Ray Rahn, Leach quickly learned the ropes. At the time, Torrance Memorial had roughly 1,000 employees. The campus was just three buildings. After skating on thin ice in the 1970s, the hospital’s books were balanced by the ’80s. They looked shaky again when the California legislature mandated costly seismic upgrades for hospitals following the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
The whole medical marketplace was reinventing itself. Private physicians—overwhelmed by computerized billing, insurance complexity and government regulations—were running for cover under big-tent health care systems and physician networks. Struggling small hospitals were being snapped up by large ones. The South Bay population was growing, and a new generation of patients wanted ambulatory services in their local communities.
Leach advocated for bold moves—land purchases, massive infrastructure investments, a new physician network—laying the foundation for Torrance Memorial’s present-day stability and excellence. He was promoted to senior vice president in 1996, then to chief operating officer in 2001. Everyone recognized how indispensable he was.
A Man of Contradictions
“He’s absolutely brilliant—and I mean brilliant!” says Laura Schenasi, now in her 22nd year as executive vice president of the Torrance Memorial Foundation. “He is also fair and thoughtful. He truly cares about you as a person.”
“Craig is a rare combination,” says Greg Geiger, chair of the hospital’s board of trustees. “He’s a big-picture, forward-looking, strategic thinker. At the same time, he’s detail-oriented, focused on financial performance and expense controls. And he has the highest character, the highest integrity.”
Other admirers point to a grab bag of seemingly incompatible traits. A master strategist with great communication skills. A visionary who is deeply humble. How many CEOs of large organizations get accused of being “trustworthy” and “sincere”?
“He’s got a heart of gold, but boy, does he know his numbers,” says Torrance YMCA president Steve McAller. Leach has served on the nonprofit’s board and finance committee for eight years. Many partnerships grew out of their friendship, notably a diabetes prevention and youth weight management program. When schools shut down during the pandemic, McAller and Leach cobbled together a hospital-based childcare program so Torrance Memorial essential staff could keep coming to work.
Back in 2005, when outgoing CEO George Graham tapped Leach as his successor, people who knew him well, like David Chan, MD, had worried Leach was “too genuinely nice” for the job. “The amazing thing is that Craig’s personality never changed,” says the respected oncologist, who worked alongside Leach in developing a first-class cancer program and was part of the team that negotiated the landmark Cedars-Sinai affiliation deal.
Leach is the kind of CEO who shuns executive parking privileges, preferring to walk from the farthest lot and chat with coworkers. He’s famous around Torrance Memorial for knowing everyone’s name—and their spouses’ and kids’ names too. He knows how far they commute to work, where they went on vacation and other odds-and-ends about their lives.
“When I first met Craig, our son was playing high school basketball,” recalls Donna Duperron, president of the Torrance Chamber of Commerce and current member of Torrance Memorial’s board of trustees. Leach was on the business association’s board of directors from 2006 to 2012. “My son is now 35 years old,” says Duperron. “He’s married and has two kids. But every time I see Craig, he’ll ask about Luke.”
Duperron saw Leach a lot during the pandemic. Torrance Memorial was her go-to resource for the latest infectious disease advice and information, which she email-blasted to 5,000 South Bay businesses.
“It seemed like the rules were changing daily,” she recalls. “Some industries could work, others couldn’t. It would take L.A. County two or three days to get back to us with answers, but Craig was always there. I never asked a question he didn’t know the answer to.” The mayor of Torrance was also meeting every week with Leach during that time.
People Power
It isn’t just VIPs, however, who have his ear. Few CEOs welcome drop-in visitors, but Leach’s door is famously wide open to anyone who comes calling. He’ll stop what he’s doing and invite them in.
He also walks the corridors. Twice a week, often starting at 6 a.m., Leach makes his rounds building by building, floor by floor, checking in with hundreds of physicians, nurses, housekeepers and volunteers to ask if there’s anything they need.
From cafeteria workers to neurosurgeons to major donors, Leach is comfortable interacting with everyone in the Torrance Memorial community, says former senior vice president Sally Eberhard, who worked shoulder to shoulder with Leach from 1985 until her retirement in 2020.
His modest, warmhearted leadership style is deeply informed by a biblical quote. “To whom much is given, much will be required.” Leach is a committed Catholic, who still attends mass at St. Lawrence Martyr, the church he grew up in.
Though Leach poured his lifeblood into the hospital, kin always came first. “I never felt I was married to Torrance Memorial,” says Judy, his wife of 45 years. When their boys were growing up, Leach coached their baseball and soccer teams for many years.
“He never came home in a bad mood, never talked about work,” she says. “He was able to separate the two so beautifully. But his identity is wrapped up in Torrance Memorial. He has given his heart and soul to this place and the people who work there. I think it’s going to be hard for him to let go.”
