Harlem Hospital has a new CEO. She's just 37, but she's been familiar with the hospital ever since she was a young girl. NY1's Michael Scotto filed the following report.

Harlem Hospital has always loomed large in Eboné Carrington's life.

"You can see it from our terrace, which is right over there. So this has been part of my genetic makeup since the beginning," Carrington said.  

Carrington grew up across the street, in Lenox Terrace. Now, at 37, she's the hospital's youngest-ever CEO, with a $279,000 salary, managing 2,400 employees and a $200 million budget.

"In the beginning, you know, you're called the kid. People identify you with their children," Carrington said. "But I've really found that specifically at New York City Health and Hospitals, your ability and your passion help to qualify you in a different way."

In many ways, she's following in her parents' footsteps. Both her mother and late father had long careers at the hospital. The dentistry department is named for her dad, an oral surgeon.

Carrington's mother says she always envisioned her daughter taking on such a job.

"She was a born leader," said Gwen Elliott-McIntosh, Carrington's mother. "But we had to be careful because it could go either way. It could go for the good or it could go for the bad. Thank God it went for the good."

Carrington once considered a career in fashion, but her dad steered her to health care. She graduated from Stony Brook University and NYU, and was Harlem Hospital's chief operating officer before being named CEO.

A mother of a newborn baby, Carrington takes over an institution struggling like the rest of the municipal hospital system. She says she'll focus on getting people insured and providing preventive care.

"There's a tremendous focus on well care, and on making sure people actually stay out of the hospital, as opposed to making the hospital the center of our former structure of networks, where you tried to get more people into the hospital," Carrington said.

As she does this, she says she's remembering her father, who always wanted the family to stay and work in Harlem.

"I think about him every day," Carrington said. "I'm living his dream. And I'm glad to do that."