Patricia Colella connects health, sports, and innovation

Patricia Colella builds bridges between health care, sports, and technology both at University Hospitals and in the Cleveland innovation ecosystem as a member of University Hospitals Ventures (UHV). 

As Lead Innovation Strategist, she designs programs and partnerships that transform big ideas into sustainable platforms to shape the future of healthcare delivery and performance. Colella leads SportsLand™, a strategic initiative positioning Cleveland and Ohio as national leaders in sports technology and medicine. What began as an annual summit has evolved into a year-round engine that unites sports executives, clinicians, technologists, startups, and investors around a common goal: improving human performance through collaboration.

“We’re creating an ecosystem designed for connection instead of isolation,” she explains, framework that makes innovation repeatable, measurable, and rooted in Ohio.

In parallel, Colella crafts innovation education and culture-building programs across the UH system, including IDEATOR, a high-energy, two-day sprint pairing caregivers with cross-disciplinary experts to design real-world solutions for issues that are particularly important in Northeast Ohio. Now in its fourth year, the program has become a launchpad for new ventures and a training ground for the next generation of health innovators.

Her approach combines operational rigor with entrepreneurial creativity, informed by an MBA in venturing and entrepreneurship from Ohio University and a foundation in long-term care administration. Recognized by Crain’s Cleveland as one of the city’s 20 in Their 20s in 2024, Colella channels that blend of strategy and storytelling into a broader mission: turning Cleveland into a national destination for sports, health, and innovation.

Patricia’s vision for Ohio innovation

By 2050, Colella envisions Ohio as the country’s undisputed leader in health innovation and human performance—a place where hospitals, universities, sports organizations, and startups co-create breakthroughs in real time. She sees a future defined by athlete performance labs adjacent to health-tech accelerators, where collaboration is instinctive and innovation education is built into every institution.

In that vision, the next generation of founders and clinicians will emerge from Ohio’s own ecosystem—trained, inspired, and equipped to lead on a global stage.

Picturing Ohio’s next moonshot

Colella’s moonshot extends the foundation of SportsLand™ into something even bigger: The Human Performance & Sports Innovation Corridor. This connected network would link hospitals, sports franchises, universities, and startups across Ohio into a single, “always-on” innovation engine.

Within this network, shared testbeds, data collaboratives, venture studios, and fellowship programs would accelerate discovery and commercialization at unprecedented speed. The result: a statewide model for how health and sports innovation can fuel economic growth, talent retention, and global recognition.

As Colella puts it, “If we build the right infrastructure, Ohio won’t just host the conversation about the future of human performance, it will lead it.”

This profile is part of the OhioX and Ohio Tech News Next25, a series highlighting the leaders, 35 and under, driving the state's innovation economy. From responsible AI to medtech breakthroughs, discover the full class of 2025. Meet the Next25.