Sarah Beales is the Vice President of Culture & Development at Rochester Regional Health where she focuses on team member and leadership development, organizational culture, experience and engagement. 

Despite being told she should be a teacher her entire life, Sarah decided to try out a variety of career paths, including magazine layout and publishing, editing and light coding, freelance journalism and copyediting, until she eventually found herself as an instructional designer and inadvertently proved everyone right. 

Sarah has spent the last 20+ years focused on adult learning, writing for sense and style, and bringing clarity and alignment to complicated processes and issues. She has earned a reputation as a leader who sees the big picture and is able to identify the steps and execute quickly to achieve desired objectives.

She has worked with a variety of clients over the years, including Baker Hughes, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics and In-N-Out Burger; some of her biggest moments of pride are the Leadership cohorts she’s developed for Rochester Regional Health, including an innovative Nurse Leadership Program that was featured in the Nursing Management Publication in 2019. 

Sarah attended undergrad at St. John Fisher University, and has BAs in both Communications and English. In 2017, she completed her MBA from Temple University’s Fox School of Business. She has served on the Northstar Network Healthcare Business Academy (HBA) Advisory Board since 2018 and was appointed to Mercy College’s Women in Leadership Advisory board in 2024. 

A rural girl at heart, Sarah enjoys exploring woods and lakes, gardening, and biking. She loves spending time with her family and friends, figuring out the next trip, next book, or next home project to tackle.  She considers herself a lifelong learner, even if her attempts at self-taught landscaping and conversational French leave considerable room for improvement.