- February 18, 2026
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The sounds of whirring drills and buzzing table saws resonate from just outside Aimee Keller-Pickford’s office at AdventHealth Winter Garden’s campus. Two stories above the construction site, her window overlooks two major expansion projects totaling more than $188 million.
Keller-Pickford was brought on as the hospital’s chief executive officer in July 2025, previously having held other executive management positions for AdventHealth across Central Florida during her 31 years with the hospital. Most recently, she was the vice president and chief operating officer at AdventHealth Altamonte Springs.
One of the two projects she oversees includes the construction of a three-story, 60,000-square-foot facility to provide a full range of cancer treatment services. The other is adding three floors to the hospital’s patient tower, making more room for women’s services, including obstetrics and gynecology.
The additions are a combined investment of $188.2 million — $145 million for the three new floors, expected to be completed in September, and $43.2 million for the cancer institute, set to open in July, AdventHealth officials say.
Keller-Pickford has had experience with growth. She served in a leadership position at AdventHealth Wesley Chapel during the hospital’s construction and opening in 2012. She still wears the hot pink hard hat with “Aimee” scripted on the back she received from those days.
She has a clinical background, working in radiology and radiation therapy. But the reason Keller-Pickford is in health care is because of the experiences she witnessed from the patient’s perspective.
As a preteen, she watched her mother battle breast cancer.
“I thought it was terrible, and I felt like no mommy should have to go through that when I was my age, looking at her and watching her,” Keller-Pickford said. “I felt like I could go to school and take care of other people’s moms better than what I thought my mom was being cared for at the time.”
Taking care of her patients differently is how she leads her staff. It includes having them tell the patients the results of a mammogram before they leave the hospital, something her mother had to wait seven to 10 days for, Keller-Pickford said.
It also includes planning to build an Eden Spa in the new cancer institute, employing trained wig artists so women treated with chemotherapy don’t lose their identity when their hair falls out as well as trained therapists to help patients with form-fitting mastectomy bras, Keller-Pickford said.
It’s care her mother didn’t receive.
“We’re not just giving you a diagnosis, treating you, and letting you go about and figure out how you feel whole,” Keller-Pickford said. “We’re going to make sure that you feel whole before you are done with your treatment and your care.”
She said a wig artist from AdventHealth Altamonte Springs, whose work once left a patient’s husband “awestruck,” will be joining the new Winter Garden facility.
“He later wrote a letter to me and told me that he brought back his (wife of 30 years), and he saw in her what he saw 30 years ago,” Keller-Pickford said, choking up. “And she’s vibrant, and she’s happy because she feels whole again.”
Keller-Pickford emphasized the expansions are crucial to keeping care close to home for the hospital’s patients, to help with the “journey” of cancer treatment, and especially for labor and delivery.
Women and their families in Winter Garden have to drive 10 to 20 miles to be seen after going into labor, Keller-Pickford said, something she added doesn’t take into account traffic time.
“So if you’re in labor, and it’s your first time, or even if it’s your second or third time, the baby could come really fast, and you might not have any idea of what that’s like,” Keller-Pickford said. “So getting in a car and getting on three different interstate systems or turnpike systems to get to your doctor sounds a little scary to me.”
The expansion of the patient tower adds nine labor and delivery beds, 10 postpartum beds, two C-section operating rooms and future space for a level two neonatal intensive care unit, officials said, making sure families don’t have to leave the neighborhood to get care.
Keller-Pickford said she values her role as CEO because she gets to care for her neighbors, friends and family. She lives in Winter Garden, so close to the hospital that she could walk to work if she wanted.
Her experiences in the three decades she’s served in AdventHealth have shifted over time but none greater than in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Having to earn back people’s trust in the health care industry, she said, is the hard part.
“We learned what confinement does to people,” Keller-Pickford said. “We learned that health care is a scary place, and I don’t think we really realized that before COVID. I don’t think we realize that was going to happen, a loss of (the public) trusting health care organizations, and I think we are definitely seeing that turnaround. We have nothing to hide.”
Keller-Pickford is working to regain trust by being active. She speaks with team members in a regular 90-minute activity she hosts called “Aces with Aimee,” where staff can ask her questions. She also said she makes a point of going out to sit with a patient at least once every day she’s in the hospital.
Over the past few months, Keller-Pickford said she’s most recently been handing out headphones and sleep masks with music to help patients drown out construction noise.
The topping-off ceremony for the cancer institute, a time where members of the staff signs the final beam that is raised, took place Feb. 13.
As progress on the projects continue, Keller-Pickford still has more time to enjoy the view from her desk.
“I love my view,” Keller-Pickford said. “I see the elevator going up and down, taking supplies upstairs all day long.”
