President | Healthcare Executive | Speaker | Leadership Voice on Ownership and Influence
From Survival to the Boardroom: The Decisive Leadership of Nicole Jones-Gerbino
Nicole Jones-Gerbino, FRBMA, is the President of PBS Radiology Business Experts and a leading voice in healthcare advocacy. Her journey from childhood instability in rural Florida to executive leadership has defined her “Owning It” philosophy: simplifying chaos, raising the energy, and leading with radical authenticity. A strategic advisor and national speaker, Nicole empowers organizations to move from explanation to action, ensuring every leader claims their seat at the table.
Where Responsibility Begins
Nicole Jones-Gerbino is a leadership voice on ownership, growth, and influence, known for speaking and writing from inside the work—where decisions affect people, organizations, and what happens next. Her voice is shaped by early life hardship, and she is known for raising the energy in the room, saying the hard things clearly, and empowering people to move with confidence in what is in front of them.
Long before titles or formal authority, she was carrying responsibility.
Growing up in rural Florida in a family reliant on welfare, stability was never assumed. By her teenage years, she was working full time while finishing high school and helping support her terminally ill father, learning to navigate uncertainty and expectation at the same time.
From food lines to national boardrooms, her story reflects what happens when responsibility shows up early and is carried consistently. Those experiences formed the leadership instincts she still relies on today: direct communication, ownership of hard decisions, and the belief that the energy of a leader shapes the room.
“Responsibility often shows up before anyone feels ready,” she says. “Leadership begins in how you carry it.”
Building Companies That Move
Today, Nicole serves as President and co-owner of PBS Radiology Business Experts, leading a national organization supporting healthcare groups through complexity, growth, and change.
Over more than two decades, Nicole has built a career across the business of healthcare, leading physician practices, consulting environments, health systems, and value-based care. Her work has included partnering with some of the largest radiology practices in the country, leading enterprise initiatives across multiple specialties, and helping launch one of the largest Medicare ACO and clinically integrated networks in California, representing more than 1,500 physicians.
She brings that same expectation to the organizations she leads and advises today.
Nicole often observes that many leaders already understand their problems. The conversations have happened. The language is clear.
What is missing is movement.
“A well-explained problem is still a problem,” she notes.
Her work centers on helping leaders move from understanding to action, particularly in environments where complexity can keep teams circling the issue instead of addressing it.
The Rooms That Shape Leadership
Nicole often describes her experience through the concept of rooms.
There were hospital rooms where she watched her father navigate prolonged illness. Welfare offices and food lines where families waited quietly, trying to hold things together. Early leadership meetings where she was the youngest person in the room.
Today, there are boardrooms where decisions affect organizations and the people inside them.
The environments changed. What they required did not.
“Leadership is how you carry the room you’re in.”
Early in her career, she walked into rooms asking whether she belonged there. Over time, that question changed.
What does this room need from me right now?
That shift moved her attention away from self-assessment and toward responsibility. It continues to shape how she leads—by focusing on what the moment requires and responding directly.
Raising the Energy in the Room
Nicole is known for raising the energy in the room.
In her work, energy is created through clarity, direction, and standards. When people understand what matters and what is expected, they can move.
She pays attention to what is being said, what is being avoided, and where things are holding. Then she addresses it.
“Put the fish on the table.”
It is a phrase she uses to reinforce a simple standard: progress begins when the real issue is visible and addressed directly.
Raising the energy in the room is how movement begins.
Owning It: Speaking from Inside the Work
Nicole is the creator of Owning It, a leadership platform and speaking brand built from her experience leading in real time.
Through writing and national speaking engagements, she focuses on ownership, energy, and the responsibility of carrying influence well. Her work resonates with leaders who are already carrying responsibility and recognize the gap between understanding what needs to happen and moving it forward.
“I’m not writing about leadership from the outside,” she explains. “I’m writing about what I’m doing while I’m in it.”
Her keynotes reflect that same perspective.
From Welfare to the Boardroom explores how responsibility shapes leadership long before titles appear.
Nonlinear Paths to Success speaks to the reality that growth rarely follows a straight line and that beginnings provide context, not limits.
Influence and the People in Front of You centers on the idea that leadership is experienced in proximity—and that how people experience you consistently matters.
A consistent thread across her speaking is helping people see their own story differently.
When Nicole shares her experience, it often creates a shift in the room. People begin to recognize parts of their own story they had overlooked or dismissed. They begin to see what may be possible from where they are.
She believes that when leaders own their story with clarity and maturity, it gives others permission to do the same.
“You don’t get to choose your beginnings,” she says. “You get to choose what you do with them.”
Audiences often leave her talks with the same experience: clarity on what needs to happen next, ownership of their role in it, and a renewed sense of what is possible in the rooms they are already in.
Influence, Mentorship, and Making Space
Nicole’s leadership is not only reflected in what she builds, but in who she develops.
She serves on advisory boards where she contributes to strategy, governance, and leadership development. She is intentional about recognizing potential, creating space, and helping others step forward.
“People rarely rise because they were pushed,” she says. “They rise because they were seen.”
Her work is grounded in helping others carry responsibility and see what they are capable of becoming.
Legacy in Motion
Nicole’s work is defined by what changes because she was there.
She focuses on leaving people better than she found them and companies better than she found them.
Her message is direct.
“Where you begin gives you context. What you build from it is yours to decide.”
Leadership is reflected in how responsibility is carried over time—and in what changes because someone chose to carry it well.
“The people in front of you are the work.”
Work With Nicole
Nicole works with rooms that are ready to grow, adapt, and take ownership of what comes next.
Through keynotes, speaking, advisory work, and leadership development, she brings clarity, candor, and forward movement to the moments that define leaders most.
To learn more or connect, visit www.nicolejonesgerbino.com
Editorial Note
Nicole’s journey reminds us that true leadership is not found in comfortable environments, but in the willingness to carry responsibility when the path is unclear. Her story invites every leader to stop waiting for perfect conditions and instead, start raising the energy in the rooms they already inhabit.
