In a memo to Covista employees, Chairman and CEO Steve Beard shared an update on the company’s three-year strategy, Purpose at Scale.

Introducing Purpose at Scale

Team,

Somewhere in this country today, a hospital bed sits empty, not because a patient doesn't need it, but because there is no nurse to staff it. A student who has done everything right has to choose between a clinical rotation and picking up her kids from school, because no one built the program around her life. A rural ER can't find a doctor to staff it. A town's nearest primary care office is 40 miles away.

That's what the workforce gap looks like on the ground.

We used to call this a talent shortage. It isn't. It's a production failure. America posts 702,000 healthcare jobs every month against only 306,000 unemployed healthcare workers to fill them. No amount of recruiting closes a gap that size. That reframe drove everything we did over the past several years, and it is the crux behind our purpose: to open doors and unlock potential.

Where we've been

Three years ago, we set out to prove that a company built around that purpose could also build a stronger business. Growth with Purpose (GwP) was the anchor. The investments we made and the outcomes we achieved demonstrate how operational excellence and transformation across all our institutions translate directly into a stronger healthcare workforce pipeline and an unmatched competitive advantage. This year, I am proud that Covista enrolled more than 100,000 students*, with 28,000 graduates** who will join a community of 400,000 alumni delivering care, leading clinical teams and expanding access in nearly every community nationwide. Today, these results and many more speak for themselves, and they exist because you showed up for our students and each other every single day. What we built together is real, and it belongs to all of us. Thank you.

Where we're headed

Those results earned us the right to think bigger and be bolder. In February, at our first Investor Day as Covista, we introduced our next three-year strategy, Purpose at Scale, built around four core principles: 

• Operational Excellence: building on the lessons learned from GwP to run our business well, so every dollar and every hour goes further for our students.  
• Platform Extension: launching new programs and expanding to new markets, reaching more people wherever they are in their healthcare education journey.  
• Employer Integration: building partnerships so a job is waiting for our graduates before they walk the stage.
• Technology Focus: putting tools, especially AI, to work in real-world experiences, so faculty spend more time teaching, and practitioners can spend more time with patients.

Purpose at Scale is how more people get to choose healthcare and have successful careers in it.

Activating our impact

In our Covista Care Capacity Monitor, 17 percent of primary care physicians and 14 percent of registered nurses tell us they're likely to leave the profession within the next year. That's not a staffing problem. That's a workforce coming apart from the inside, and we're not just losing people who might join healthcare; we're losing the people already doing the work.

That's why we introduced Covista Open Doors: our multi-year impact commitment to build and sustain the healthcare workforce across the full arc of a career, from the student who hasn't chosen healthcare yet, to the clinician already doing the work. Today marks our first multi-year milestone: a $10 million, 50,000-volunteer-hour commitment, putting our time, talent and treasure to work together, which includes:

• The Covista Foundation funding 10 nonprofit partners doing real work in the communities that need it most.
• A new Student Emergency Care Fund that can catch a student the moment before a financial setback turns into a dropout.
• The launch of Community Rounds, Covista’s new year-round volunteer program that includes care kits packed by us for students who need the everyday essentials to stay on track.

Every volunteer hour counts toward our goal. Today is the start. Together, we can show that creating a meaningful difference for students and society aren’t separate goals—they're one and the same.

Why this matters now

Our vision is simple: to be the destination where healthcare ambitions are made possible. Every nurse, doctor and healthcare professional we graduate doesn't just change one life, they change entire communities. When we reflect on that bold vision, combine it with what makes us great and bring it to the next level, we are unstoppable.

Thank you for putting our students at the center of everything we do. Purpose at Scale starts now, and it starts with you.

Steve

*As of March 2026

**As of June 2026