The next generation of healthcare leadership has arrived! The emerging leaders recognized on this list have already accomplished what takes many professionals a career to achieve, and they’re just getting started.
Forty years old or younger, they represent some of the most dynamic, creative and forward-thinking minds working across the healthcare industry today. They’re bringing fresh perspectives to stubborn problems, challenging conventions that no longer serve patients, and driving change with urgency.
Note: Becker’s Healthcare developed this list based on nominations and editorial research. This list is not exhaustive, nor is it an endorsement of included leaders or associated healthcare providers. Leaders cannot pay for inclusion on this list. Leaders are presented in alphabetical order. We extend a special thank you to Rhoda Weiss for her contributions to this list.
Contact Anna Falvey at afalvey@beckershealthcare.com with questions or comments.
Hospital and Health System Leaders
Annalisa Abell. System Director of Productivity at CommonSpirit Health (Chicago). Ms. Abell serves as system director of productivity at CommonSpirit Health, partnering with executive leaders to strengthen workforce productivity, operational efficiency and financial stewardship across the nonprofit health system. She develops enterprise productivity strategies, workforce performance analytics and executive reporting that help leaders optimize staffing resources and align workforce investments with organizational priorities. Prior, at MultiCare Health System in Tacoma, Wash., Ms. Abell led the rollout of Workday Adaptive Planning software and an enterprise position management solution that replaced siloed Excel-based processes with a unified digital platform. She also helped design an integrated workforce automation platform that standardized reporting across MultiCare in response to Washington state staffing regulations. Ms. Abell is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and founded The Society for People Analytics. She has spoken with the Dallas AI Community on incorporating AI into workforce analytics, and her work has been featured in Business Insider.
Kelly Adams. Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Boulder Community Health (Boulder, Colo.). Ms. Adams was appointed vice president and chief legal officer of Boulder Community Health in 2026, overseeing the independent, nonprofit health system’s legal, regulatory, governance and corporate strategy functions. She provides legal counsel on the organization’s acquisitions, physician-alignment strategies, affiliations and corporate joint ventures, and leads a legal and compliance team responsible for enterprise governance, regulatory compliance and risk management. Ms. Adams advises executive leadership on complex regulatory matters, including the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, the Stark Law, the Anti-Kickback Statute and HIPAA. She also sits on Boulder Community Health’s management council alongside the organization’s CEO, CFO and chief medical officer. Before joining Boulder Community Health, Ms. Adams served as regional general counsel for Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health’s Peaks Region, where she provided legal oversight for eight hospitals and more than 150 ambulatory clinics across a multistate region. Earlier in her career, she practiced healthcare law at Akerman LLP in Denver, representing healthcare organizations on transactional, regulatory and compliance matters. Ms. Adams began her career in hospital-based research and program development before entering the legal profession.
Jason Adler. CEO at Kittitas Valley Healthcare (Ellensburg, Wash.). Mr. Adler serves as CEO of Kittitas Valley Healthcare, a public hospital district and federally designated critical access hospital in rural Washington. He joined in 2014 as a financial analyst, later served as CFO, and was promoted to CEO at age 37 in December 2024. As CFO, Mr. Adler stabilized the hospital’s labor and delivery service line, which had relied heavily on locum tenens coverage, by securing three dedicated OB/GYN physicians providing 24/7 labor and delivery coverage. In his first year as CEO, he led the hospital district’s first successful public levy in 61 years and secured 26 accepted provider offers across primary care and specialty services, reversing prior vacancy trends. Mr. Adler also launched new podiatry services, is preparing to open urology services, doubled capacity for osteopathic manipulative treatment and expanded cardiology services, effectively doubling local access to specialty heart care. Under his leadership, the hospital maintained a positive operating margin despite national financial pressures on rural hospitals and earned DNV recertification and ISO 9001 certification. Mr. Adler also serves as treasurer of the region’s Medic One ambulance service.
Kyle Anson. Associate Vice President for Human Resources at University of Iowa Health Care (Iowa City). Mr. Anson was named associate vice president for human resources at University of Iowa Health Care in November 2025, after serving in the role on an interim basis since June 2024. He oversees human resources operations across a health system with nearly 20,000 employees, three medical center campuses and more than 60 facilities spanning 33 Iowa communities. Mr. Anson has more than a decade of experience at UI Health Care, having previously held roles including director of compensation and senior human resources director. During his interim tenure, he guided the integration of Des Moines, Iowa-based Mission Cancer + Blood, a 20-clinic community-based network, into UI Health Care’s cancer care offerings. He also oversaw staff onboarding and alignment at the new North Liberty campus, a 470,000-square-foot hospital and medical office building that opened in April 2025. Mr. Anson helped launch the leadership development program “Engage, Inspire, Transform: Leading UI Health Care,” which began in February 2025 with about 280 participating leaders. In 2024, he led integration efforts during UI Health Care’s acquisition of Mercy Iowa City, coordinating nearly 1,000 employee transition agreements within a few weeks.
Julia Arora. Executive Director of Strategic Services at City of Hope Orange County (Irvine, Calif.). Ms. Arora has led the development of strategic analyses, market intelligence and long-range planning for City of Hope Orange County since joining as the organization’s fifth employee in 2018. Under her guidance, City of Hope Orange County has grown into a $1.5 billion regional cancer care network that has treated more than 44,000 patients across its Irvine campus and six regional network sites, including Orange County’s only cancer specialty hospital. With more than 15 years of experience in healthcare analytics, Ms. Arora produces the market analyses, growth forecasts, performance metrics and business cases that guide the system’s regional investment decisions. Her forecasting and strategic guidance helped inform major expansion decisions at a time when up to 20% of local cancer patients left the region for advanced care. Today, more patients can receive specialized cancer treatment closer to home. Ms. Arora serves on City of Hope Orange County’s president’s council and is regarded as a subject matter expert in growth analytics and market expansion across the broader City of Hope system. She was named a 2021 “40 Under 40” honoree by the Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce.
Isaac Atencio. Director of Diagnostic Imaging and Patient Access at Cibola General Hospital (Grants, N.M.). Mr. Atencio has provided strategic and operational leadership for diagnostic imaging and, more recently, patient access at Cibola General Hospital since joining the organization in 2009. He has led the modernization and growth of the imaging department, achieving an average annual volume increase of 5% through service line expansion and workflow optimization. Mr. Atencio oversees all imaging operations, including radiology protocols and PACS administration, serving as both the hospital’s radiation safety officer and MRI safety officer. He also performs specialized thyroid biopsies to expand local access to diagnostic services. After recently assuming leadership of patient access and registration, he streamlined intake workflows and strengthened point-of-service collections and financial counseling practices. Under his leadership, patient cash collections rose from $25,747 in February 2026 to $63,516 in April 2026, a 147% increase. Mr. Atencio also leads efforts to reduce bad debt and improve the hospital’s discharged-not-final-billed performance in collaboration with revenue cycle leaders.
Matt Bader. Chief Strategy Officer of the South Division at Providence (Renton, Wash.). Mr. Bader is chief strategy officer for Providence’s South Division and system executive lead for ambulatory surgery and imaging strategy across Providence Health System, overseeing enterprise growth strategy, market planning, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and capital investment prioritization throughout California. Mr. Bader is leading the development of multiple behavioral health and post-acute joint ventures that will add more than 200 behavioral health, rehabilitation and long-term acute care beds across the state. Mr. Bader led Providence’s largest imaging joint venture transaction, a partnership with RadNet in the San Fernando Valley that expanded imaging access from three to seven sites, and has overseen additional imaging center acquisitions in Los Angeles and Orange County, Calif. Mr. Bader helped develop an ambulatory services monetization strategy generating more than $50 million for reinvestment, and directed acute service line growth initiatives that created more than $10 million in annual incremental margin improvement. Mr. Bader also directed integrated market planning efforts supporting more than $3 billion in planned capital investments across California and led the alignment of Providence’s Northern and Southern California strategic plans into a unified statewide roadmap. Earlier in his career, Mr. Bader launched and expanded clinical programs including transcatheter aortic valve replacement, transplant growth initiatives and neurosciences expansion, and led the turnaround of an underperforming ambulatory surgery center. Mr. Bader serves on the boards of Providence Cedars Sinai Tarzana (Calif.) Medical Center, Providence Health Network, North OC Imaging and Shin Imaging Holdings.
Andrew R. Barbera, MD. Founding Program Director of the Emergency Medicine Residency Program and Vice Chair of Education at the Department of Emergency Medicine at Lakeland (Fla.) Regional Health. Dr. Barbera serves as founding program director of the emergency medicine residency program and vice chair of education for the department of emergency medicine at Lakeland Regional Health, home to one of the highest-volume, single-site emergency departments in the nation. He built and now oversees an academic training program supporting 45 emergency medicine residents and approximately 65 full-time emergency physicians, medical students and additional rotating residents, integrating graduate medical education into a high-volume clinical environment while maintaining patient safety and operational reliability. Dr. Barbera also coordinates the integration of rotating residents from the internal medicine, transitional year and family medicine programs, aligning multi-specialty education with emergency department workflows. He helped design and operationalize multidisciplinary trauma response teams, developing and integrating resident physician roles to strengthen coordination during high-acuity trauma resuscitations. Dr. Barbera serves on the hospital’s medical executive committee, graduate medical education committee, graduate medical education physician remediation committee, graduate medical education physician steering committee and institutional physician steering committee, and he founded and has provided multi-year oversight of the Lakeland Regional Health Research Symposium as its medical director.
Bo Beaudry. Market CEO at Ascension St. John (Tulsa, Okla.). Mr. Beaudry leads Ascension St. John, one of Oklahoma’s largest integrated health systems, overseeing seven hospitals, more than 90 clinics and nearly 8,000 associates across northeastern Oklahoma. Since joining in October 2023, he has driven a financial turnaround exceeding $90 million while growing surgical volumes 14%, discharges 16% and cath lab volumes 27%. Mr. Beaudry led the system’s $40 million-plus acquisition of St. John Jenks orthopaedic surgical center in 2024 and deployed 14 surgical robots, positioning Ascension St. John as the region’s robotics leader. Under his leadership, St. John Medical Center became Tulsa’s first and Oklahoma’s second American College of Surgeons-verified level 1 trauma center in 2025 and was ranked the state’s No. 2 hospital by U.S. News & World Report that same year. Mr. Beaudry also opened one of the region’s only hospital-based certified nurse midwives programs and instituted neonatal ICU flight transport, while employee retention rose 21% and engagement rose 17% during his tenure. He previously served as CEO of Cedar Park (Texas) Regional Medical Center and president of The Medical Center of Southeast Texas in Port Arthur. Mr. Beaudry serves on the boards of CommunityCare of Oklahoma, the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Oklahoma Hospital Association.
David N. Bernstein, MD, PhD. Faculty Director, Executive Consultant and Advisor at Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital and King Faisal Specialist Hospital (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). Dr. Bernstein is an orthopaedic surgeon who holds leadership roles at Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital and King Faisal Specialist Hospital. He is one of the youngest faculty directors ever appointed at Harvard Medical School, where he oversees the surgical leadership program, and he is the only trainee ever elected to an at-large seat on the Association of American Medical Colleges board of directors. At King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Dr. Bernstein provides strategic oversight within the office of the CEO and helped drive the hospital’s largest year-over-year jump of any hospital worldwide in the most recent Newsweek/Statista “World’s Best Hospitals” rankings. At Boston Children’s Hospital, he led the development and implementation of the department of orthopedics and sports medicine’s patient-reported outcome measures program, now one of the largest of its kind for a pediatric subspecialty worldwide. Dr. Bernstein has published more than 150 manuscripts in top scientific journals and written opinion pieces for Harvard Business Review, Fox News, The Boston Globe, STAT, The Hill and the New York Daily News, and he served as lead author of the latest G20 publication on healthcare delivery system sustainability in times of crisis. He is a current David Rockefeller Fellow with the Trilateral Commission, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and also serves as co-site principal investigator for a European Union grant of more than 5.5 million euros examining health care workforce resiliency and wellbeing.
Frantz Berthaud. Senior Vice President of Oncology Services at University Medical Center of El Paso (Texas). Mr. Berthaud leads the strategic, operational and financial development of the Fox Cancer Center, a comprehensive cancer center initiative between University Medical Center of El Paso and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso. He plays a central role in program development, strategic collaboration and fundraising for the center while overseeing its day-to-day operations. Mr. Berthaud is a board-certified healthcare executive and fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, where he has received the organization’s “Service Award” and “Regent’s Early Careerist Award.” He serves as president-elect of the American College of Healthcare Executives of Southwest Texas and sits on the boards of Evolve Credit Union and United Way of El Paso County. He is a legislative ambassador for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and an adjunct faculty at both UTHealth Houston School of Public Health and the University of Texas at El Paso. Before joining University Medical Center of El Paso, Mr. Berthaud worked as the market director of oncology services for Dallas-based Tenet. Prior, he served as administrative director of disease center operations at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
Nicholas Bilas. Assistant Vice President of Patient Financial Experience at Hospital for Special Surgery (New York City). Mr. Bilas serves as assistant vice president of patient financial experience at the Hospital for Special Surgery, where he oversees the hospital’s front-end revenue cycle, patient access networks and centralized pre-service units. He has spent more than two decades in healthcare operations across academic medical centers, and at HSS he has driven multi-million-dollar cash acceleration through optimized point-of-service collections and a targeted recovery of aged receivables. Mr. Bilas is leading the migration of legacy administrative workflows to exception-based, automated management using AI, including AI-driven prior authorizations. Previously at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, he co-led the strategic vision and execution of a patient flow command center for the 514-bed facility, improving capacity management for more than 24,000 annual admissions, and later served as director of international operations, designing global telemedicine programs. He also served as division administrator for the department of surgery at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. Mr. Bilas founded the Foundation for Healthcare Leaders of New York in 2021 after serving as the chapter’s president, and now serves as its chairman. In 2025 alone, the foundation secured nearly $70,000 in contributions and sponsorships, and provides more than $18,000 in scholarship awards annually.
Greg Blank. COO at Sharp Grossmont Hospital and Sharp HospiceCare (San Diego). Mr. Blank serves as COO for Sharp Grossmont Hospital and Sharp HospiceCare, and also holds leadership roles at Sharp Mesa Vista Hospital and Sharp McDonald Center, where he oversees Sharp HealthCare’s behavioral health service line. He directs systemwide initiatives focused on quality improvement, process optimization and patient experience, often leveraging lean methodologies, and partners closely with physician leaders to standardize care delivery and support business development. Mr. Blank’s accomplishments include expanding outpatient infusion services, advancing the oncology navigation program and growing outpatient radiology services to meet community demand. He led critical operational efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic and its recovery while driving operational efficiencies and financial improvement initiatives across Sharp’s facilities. Under his leadership, Sharp Grossmont Hospital has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s “Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award.” The hospital also received a spine surgery certification from the Joint Commission, one of only five such programs in California with the distinction, and Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns Grossmont in La Mesa, Calif. has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report for maternity care during multiple ranking periods. Mr. Blank is part of The Health Management Academy’s 2028 admin cohort 1 fellows, and previously served as vice president of clinical services at Sharp Metropolitan Medical Campus and in senior pharmacy leadership roles at other large health systems.
Cameron Blaquiere. Administrative Director of Supply Chain Services at Naples (Fla.) Comprehensive Health. Mr. Blaquiere oversees contracts, purchasing, distribution, logistics and patient transportation as administrative director of supply chain services at Naples Comprehensive Health, where he manages the full lifecycle of sourcing, contracting, procurement and distribution alongside capital equipment planning. Since joining NCH in July 2021, he has advanced through six progressive roles across four departments, including contract administrator, project manager of supply chain services, and director of operations and special projects. Mr. Blaquiere led the primary implementation of NCH’s Infor enterprise resource planning system transition for the supply chain team, a large-scale initiative requiring cross-functional coordination and workflow analysis that improved data visibility and decision-making. He also served as lead equipment project manager for the 100,000-square-foot HSS at NCH facility, a musculoskeletal center developed through NCH’s partnership with New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery, overseeing equipment planning, procurement and coordination to ensure the facility was ready to deliver care from its opening. Mr. Blaquiere subsequently managed an enterprise resource planning reset initiative that improved system performance and long-term sustainability.
Justin Blohm. Vice President of HSS at NCH and Orthopedic Service Line at Naples (Fla.) Comprehensive Health. Mr. Blohm serves as executive leader of HSS at NCH, a partnership between New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery, the nation’s leading orthopedic hospital, and Naples Comprehensive Health. The partnership brings together orthopedic physician practices, ambulatory surgery, imaging and rehabilitation services in a comprehensive musculoskeletal center in Southwest Florida. He reports jointly to HSS and NCH executive leadership and serves as the primary liaison between the two organizations, aligning clinical, operational and administrative functions with HSS’s national quality and safety standards. Mr. Blohm led the planning, development and launch of the 100,000-square-foot HSS at NCH orthopedic campus in North Naples, which includes inpatient and outpatient musculoskeletal services, an ambulatory surgery center, clinics, imaging and rehabilitation services. He also led the launch of Orthopedics Now, a walk-in clinic offering same-day evaluation and treatment for orthopedic injuries to streamline access to specialty care. Under his tenure, HSS at NCH earned the Healthgrades “Outpatient Orthopedic Surgery Excellence Award” and a spot on Healthgrades’ list of “America’s Best 100 Joint Replacement Programs” in 2026. Mr. Blohm previously served as chief administrative officer for Orthopedic Specialists of Southwest Florida in Fort Myers and as CEO of Bay Street Orthopaedics & Spine in Petoskey, Mich.
Zach Bork. Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at CentraCare (St. Cloud, Minn.). Mr. Bork serves as CentraCare’s inaugural chief strategy and transformation officer, helping to shape the future of one of Minnesota’s largest integrated health systems, which includes 10 hospitals and more than 30 clinics. He leads the development and execution of the organization’s long-term strategic vision while driving the short-term priorities and initiatives that translate strategy into measurable action. During his decade-long career with CentraCare, Mr. Bork has leveraged data and analytics, strategic planning and collaborative leadership to advance organizational transformation, strengthen system integration and position the health system for long-term success in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape. He oversees several key enterprise functions, including strategic planning, enterprise project management, and marketing and communications, aligning teams around a shared vision while advancing initiatives that improve organizational performance and support growth. In 2026, he was recognized by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal “40 Under 40” program, which honors emerging leaders making a significant impact across Minnesota’s business and nonprofit communities.
Duncan Bowling. Senior Director of Critical and Intermediate Care Units at VHC Health (Arlington, Va.). Mr. Bowling serves as senior director of critical care at VHC Health, supervising the directors of the general ICU, cardiovascular ICU and three intermediate care units. As the primary author of VHC Health’s level-of-care policy, he spent more than 18 months leading a multidisciplinary team, including nursing, physician, legal and compliance leaders, to establish objective criteria defining critical care, intermediate care and general care across the health system. He also helped lead planning for three new intermediate care units to support the continued growth of intermediate care services. When Mr. Bowling assumed leadership of the ICU in 2023 amid post-pandemic workforce challenges, he helped drive a 5% year-over-year improvement in employee engagement scores and a 92% reduction in contract labor usage within 10 months. Under his leadership, the ICU achieved two consecutive years without a catheter-associated urinary tract infection and 18 months without a central line-associated bloodstream infection, contributing to a 4-star quality rating on nurse-sensitive indicators. As chair of VHC Health’s “Leading to Zero” council, Mr. Bowling leads multidisciplinary efforts to reduce hospital-acquired infections and strengthen patient safety systemwide. He has been a member of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses since 2017.
Ben “Doug” Brashears. Director of Nursing for the Supplemental Staffing Team at Appalachian Regional Healthcare (Lexington, Ky.). Mr. Brashears leads the supplemental staffing team at Appalachian Regional Healthcare, providing strategic and operational leadership for a systemwide internal float pool serving 14 hospitals and two long-term acute care hospitals across four regions of rural Appalachia. As the program’s inaugural employee and founding leader, he built the initiative from the ground up, designing a scalable workforce model intended to reduce dependence on contract labor while maintaining safe, high-quality patient care. Mr. Brashears oversees workforce planning, recruitment, onboarding, scheduling, deployment strategy, budget management and performance metrics for a team that has grown to more than 130 registered nurses, an expansion the organization credits with saving millions of dollars in contract labor costs. At 30 years old, he has advanced from bedside nurse to system nursing executive leadership, leading cross-functional collaboration with CNOs, finance, human resources and hospital operations teams. He was recognized as a “Kentucky Colonel,” the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s highest honor for individuals demonstrating noteworthy accomplishment and service to their communities. Mr. Brashears serves as a board member for the Harlan County Agency for Substance Abuse Policy, holds board certification as a certified emergency nurse and maintains various relevant instructor certifications.
Tori Bratcher. Vice President of Population Health Operations at Trinity Health (Livonia, Mich.). Ms. Bratcher leads strategy and operations for Trinity Health’s national alternative payment models, serving as the ACO executive for the Trinity Integrated Care Medicare Shared Savings Program, one of the nation’s largest ACOs. Ms. Bratcher is accountable for compliance, quality reporting, network management and governance across an ACO covering nearly 120,000 patients and more than $1.4 billion in annual medical expenses. Ms. Bratcher also leads strategic growth initiatives for Trinity Health’s Medicare Advantage plan that produced 147% year-over-year growth. In calendar year 2022, the ACO under Ms. Bratcher’s leadership coordinated care for more than 130,000 lives, saved Medicare $56 million and earned $41.2 million in shared savings for participating providers, part of $126 million earned since the ACO’s 2017 launch at an average quality score of 93%. Ms. Bratcher serves on the policy committee of the National Association of Accountable Care Organizations. Ms. Bratcher also holds an adjunct faculty appointment at Indiana University’s Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health. Previously, Ms. Bratcher served as executive director of population health operations at IU Health in Indianapolis after earlier roles at Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist Health and OrthoIndy in Indianapolis.
Ahnyel Burkes, RN. Clinical Director at University Medical Center–New Orleans. Dr. Burkes provides strategic, financial, clinical and operational leadership for her department at University Medical Center–New Orleans, ensuring continuous survey readiness under Joint Commission, CMS and Louisiana Department of Health standards. She previously served as executive director of the Louisiana State Nurses Association, Louisiana Nurses Foundation and Louisiana Association of Student Nurses, leading organizations representing more than 65,000 nurses and 1,000 students while managing a combined budget exceeding $850,000. In that role, Dr. Burkes helped drive passage of workplace violence prevention and surgical smoke evacuation legislation in Louisiana. She has served on multiple American Nurses Association national committees, including as chair of the National Committee on Appointments, and currently serves as the association’s national director at large. Dr. Burkes previously led national workforce development strategy at St. Louis-based Ascension, managing a $6 million budget to strengthen nursing pipelines and align education with system priorities. She received the Daisy Foundation’s “HealthImpact Daisy Nurse Leader Award” for health policy in 2023. Dr. Burkes also chairs Louisiana State’s nursing supply and demand council, and was named a 2026 fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
Mitchel Buss. CNO and Hospital Administrator at Ascension Wisconsin (The Woodlands, Texas). Mr. Buss has served Ascension Wisconsin’s Emerus-operated hospitals for more than four years, recently being promoted to CNO in addition to his role as hospital administrator. Mr. Buss spent nine years as an emergency department registered nurse before moving into hospital leadership, a background he draws on to stay connected to frontline teams and day-to-day operations. When Mr. Buss stepped into his administrator role, annualized staff turnover stood at 48%. Through intentional leadership and stronger team engagement, he reduced it to 9% within one year. Under Mr. Buss’s leadership, teams have exceeded organizational and national benchmark goals for stroke, ST-elevation myocardial infarction and sepsis care. Mr. Buss has also built relationships with skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation centers and post-acute networks to expand access and smooth patient transitions between levels of care. Mr. Buss serves on the YMCA board and coaches youth baseball and football. Ascension Wisconsin’s hospital received the Greater Menomonee Falls & Sussex Chamber’s “Business Community Impact of the Year Award” in 2025.
Maureen Canellas, MD. Associate Chief Medical Officer, Emergency Physician and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at UMass Memorial Health (Worcester, Mass.). Dr. Canellas serves as associate chief medical officer for UMass Memorial Medical Center, leading quality improvement, operational excellence and strategic transformation initiatives across Central Massachusetts’ largest health system while maintaining an active clinical practice as a board-certified emergency physician and teaching as an assistant professor at UMass Chan Medical School. At 36, Dr. Canellas has built a five-year collaboration between UMass Memorial and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s operations research center. Dr. Canellas and her MIT collaborators developed AI-driven algorithms for the health system’s hospital-at-home program that identify eligible patients two to three times faster than traditional manual chart review, freeing clinicians for direct patient care. Dr. Canellas also serves on the board of directors of the Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance, one of the nation’s largest emergency department data collaboratives, helping health systems benchmark performance and identify improvement opportunities. Dr. Canellas was named a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians in 2022 and was a finalist for the 2026 “Early Career Achievement in Science and Health Award” at UMass Chan Medical School. Before her current role, Dr. Canellas completed a fellowship in emergency medicine administration and leadership at UMass Chan Medical School following her residency and chief residency in emergency medicine at University of Chicago Medical Center.
Andrew Canning. Vice President of Operations at MedStar Ambulatory Services (Columbia, Md.). Mr. Canning leads a $200 million-plus ambulatory portfolio spanning urgent care, imaging and radiation therapy services for MedStar Ambulatory Services, overseeing more than 800 full-time employees and serving on the system’s real estate committee to guide site development and capital investment decisions. As assistant vice president of operations, he previously oversaw more than $200 million in annual revenue and 230-plus full time employees, managing the MedStar Radiology Network joint venture and driving 23% multi-modality volume growth over three years. Mr. Canning spearheaded MedStar Ambulatory Services’ wellness committee, embedding workforce wellbeing into operational strategy and helping the organization earn multiple recognitions from the State of Maryland as one of its “Healthiest Businesses.” Earlier, as director of ambulatory strategic initiatives, he led joint ventures and acquisitions, including a majority acquisition of an endoscopy center and the development of an ambulatory surgery center joint venture. He also managed the acquisition of a center of excellence in minimally invasive gynecologic surgery designation for UF Health in Gainesville, Fla., making it the first academic medical center in the nation to achieve that status, and co-authored a publication on the process. Mr. Canning serves on the board of Christ House, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit providing health care to people experiencing homelessness, and presented at the 2025 Press Ganey conference on a decade of patient experience gains.
Kimberly J. Casper. Chief of Staff at Texas Children’s (Houston). Ms. Casper serves as chief of staff to the president and CEO of Texas Children’s, managing strategic initiatives, executive communications and high-priority projects across one of the nation’s largest pediatric and women’s health care systems. Ms. Casper worked alongside the president and CEO and senior leadership team through a major cultural transformation and $700 million one-year financial turnaround, helping redesign the organizational structure and build infrastructure to monitor progress and sustain accountability. Ms. Casper helped initiate a systemwide workgroup on culture feedback, supported an all-staff culture workshop that drew more than 93% system participation, and helped build dashboards and monthly executive operational review meetings to strengthen the organization’s operating rhythm. Ms. Casper also oversees governance and board operations for the Texas Children’s system and leads the Texas Children’s administrative fellowship program, which develops emerging health care leaders. Ms. Casper played a central role in developing Texas Children’s first systemwide annual retreats, bringing together more than 300 administrative, clinical and physician leaders, and later hosted the organization’s first all-manager retreat for more than 600 front-line managers.
Taylor Cera. CEO at Paradigm Health System & Sterling Surgical Hospital (Slidell, La.). Mr. Cera is CEO of Paradigm Health System and Sterling Surgical Hospital, bringing more than 12 years of healthcare leadership experience across ambulatory surgery centers, surgical hospitals and integrated health systems. Under his leadership, the organizations have achieved a 19-fold increase in net income while sustaining operating margins exceeding 30%. Mr. Cera has directed surgical enterprises performing 4,300 to 8,000 procedures annually, expanding operational capacity by 20% and reducing costs by 10%. Mr. Cera built an outpatient joint replacement program generating more than $5 million in annual revenue, and expanded urgent care and therapy services that added $750,000 in incremental annual profit. Mr. Cera has fostered relationships with more than 50 physicians, achieving 98% satisfaction, while leading teams of more than 100 professionals. Mr. Cera also co-founded Mane Realty, a healthcare real estate development firm that has completed projects exceeding 50,000 square feet and $28 million in value, including a musculoskeletal campus.
Jad Chahoud, MD. Chief Scientific and Innovation Officer at Orlando (Fla.) Health. Dr. Chahoud serves as chief scientific and innovation officer at Orlando Health Cancer Institute, shaping the institute’s research and innovation strategy and leading the growth of its clinical trials enterprise across academic and community sites. A board-certified medical oncologist and internationally recognized expert in genitourinary cancers, Dr. Chahoud has contributed to multiple practice-changing clinical trials in renal cell carcinoma that helped define treatment strategies in the immunotherapy era. Dr. Chahoud also leads translational research into penile squamous cell carcinoma, applying spatial immune profiling and single-cell analysis to identify new therapeutic targets for the rare disease. Dr. Chahoud is building an AI-driven research infrastructure at Orlando Health designed to identify eligible patients, streamline clinical trial workflows and accelerate therapeutic development. Dr. Chahoud directs the center of excellence in uro-oncology and forges partnerships with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and data science organizations to translate research discoveries into clinical practice. Dr. Chahoud’s research has earned recognition including an American Association for Cancer Research research award in 2023 and the Society for Translational Oncology’s “Rising Star in Oncology Award” in 2018. Dr. Chahoud serves on the Conquer Cancer Foundation’s grants selection committee.
Will Condon. CEO at Ascension Sacred Heart Health System (Pensacola, Fla.). Mr. Condon serves as chief executive officer of Ascension Sacred Heart Health System, overseeing five hospitals, 108 medical group locations and more than 6,400 associates serving nearly 1.3 million patient visits annually across the Florida Panhandle. He began his career there as a marketing coordinator and advanced through progressively larger leadership roles over 15 years before being promoted to system CEO in July 2026. As president and CEO of Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola, Mr. Condon led the hospital to become Northwest Florida’s only American College of Surgeons-verified level 1 trauma center and to earn a Leapfrog Health Grade “A” for five consecutive years. Earlier, as president of Studer Family Children’s Hospital in Pensacola, he led the opening of the region’s flagship pediatric hospital, establishing a regional destination for pediatric specialty care. Mr. Condon chairs the board of directors of Gulf Coast Kid’s House and serves on the board of the Health & Hope Clinic. At 39, he has built his entire career within the health system where he was born, combining deep community ties with a collaborative leadership style across communications, operations, pediatric leadership and executive management roles.
Dustin Connelly. Vice President of Operations for Perioperative Services at New York Presbyterian (New York City). Mr. Connelly leads the strategic and operational performance of perioperative services across New York Presbyterian’s multi-site academic health system as vice president of operations. Mr. Connelly oversees critical infrastructure functions including central sterile processing, patient access and scheduling, revenue cycle and billing operations, pre-admission testing and the project management office. Mr. Connelly has built sophisticated financial models that align case mix, resource utilization and reimbursement dynamics, helping improve contribution margins and identify growth opportunities across hospital sites. Mr. Connelly has led staffing model redesigns using data-informed scheduling and productivity benchmarking that improved operating room utilization and reduced inefficiencies. Mr. Connelly’s focus on team engagement and communication across perioperative teams has contributed to measurable improvements in staff morale, engagement and retention. Mr. Connelly previously held operations leadership roles at West Orange, N.J.-based RWJBarnabas Health and New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health before joining New York Presbyterian. Mr. Connelly also serves as an adjunct professor at Rowan University.
Liza Cooper. Vice President of Strategy at Englewood (N.J.) Health. At 35, Ms. Cooper serves as vice president of strategy at Englewood Health, a $1 billion health system, where she oversees enterprise strategy, communications and marketing. She began her career at the organization as chief of staff to the president and CEO, leading high-priority initiatives, strengthening operational alignment and helping cultivate community partnerships. Ms. Cooper then furthered her education in business and joined Bain & Company, where she advised healthcare and life sciences organizations on growth and transformation. She returned to Englewood Health in 2024, bringing that consulting experience back to the system. Ms. Cooper has played a leadership role in Englewood Health’s definitive agreement to become part of West Orange, N.J.-based RWJBarnabas Health, an initiative aimed at expanding clinical integration and access to specialty care for the communities the system serves. She also oversees marketing, communications and public relations, aligning organizational priorities with physician engagement and community outreach.
Jennifer Crabtree. President of the Tampa (Fla.) Medical & Research District and Senior Vice President at Tampa General Hospital. Ms. Crabtree leads the strategic vision and development of the Tampa Medical & Research District, a health innovation district anchored by Tampa General Hospital and USF Health Morsani College of Medicine that is expected to generate more than $8.3 billion in annual economic impact for Florida. As senior vice president at Tampa General, she also oversees all corporate communications across the health system, including external, internal and legislative communications, and the organization’s C-suite thought leadership strategy. Ms. Crabtree previously served as vice president of corporate communications and chief of staff for the office of the president and CEO, where she built the C-suite thought leadership program that drove a notable increase in national awards, speaking engagements, media interviews and op-ed placements for Tampa General’s senior leaders. Her work strengthening internal communications and culture helped lift team member engagement scores to the 87th percentile. Earlier, as director of marketing and consumerism, Ms. Crabtree led development of a unified marketing and public relations reporting system and oversaw the health system’s website redesign, and helped launch Tampa General Hospital Innoventures, now TGH Ventures, where she is a member of the investment committee. She was named to the Tampa Bay Business Journal‘s “25 People to Watch in 2026” list. Ms. Crabtree serves on the boards of the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Area YMCA, the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council and the Tampa Bay Downtown Partnership, and is a member of Leadership Florida’s Connect Class.
Shana Jo Crews. Regional Vice President of Advocacy and Government Relations at Loyola Medicine and Saint Joseph Health System (Maywood, Ill.). Ms. Crews leads advocacy and government relations for Loyola Medicine and Saint Joseph Health System, building relationships with local, state and federal officials to shape health policy and expand access to care for underserved communities. Over the past year or so, her advocacy work helped secure additional federal investment for Illinois hospitals, increasing net hospital reimbursement by $1.47 billion, an average 65% increase over current state-directed payment levels. That victory built on a 10% Medicaid base rate and physician reimbursement increase Ms. Crews helped secure for Illinois hospitals and providers in 2024, worth more than $620 million a year. She also helped Loyola reduce patient readmissions by 44% by creating a meds-to-beds program funded through 340B discounts, and in 2026 she helped Illinois pass legislation protecting the 340B program from pharmaceutical restrictions. Under Ms. Crews’s leadership, Illinois became the first state to host a “Magnet Nurse Day” at the Capitol, bringing 55 Illinois hospitals and more than 100 nurses to educate lawmakers on acuity-based staffing models and workplace violence in healthcare. Ms. Crews serves on the advocacy outreach team of the Illinois Health & Hospital Association, on the University of Illinois advocacy council board, and is a member of the Illinois Women’s Institute for Leadership.
Kelli Dancer. Administrative Chief of Staff at Sarasota Memorial Health Care System (Sarasota, Fla.). Ms. Dancer serves as administrative chief of staff for the 1,109-bed regional health system, acting as a strategic advisor and operational partner to the CEO and a key liaison between executive leadership and staff. She has been instrumental in guiding the planning, design and construction of more than $1 billion in new facilities, including Sarasota Memorial’s third acute-care hospital and the expansion of its Brian D. Jellison Cancer Institute and Kolschowsky Research and Education Institute. Ms. Dancer led the health system’s cancer service line expansion, bringing together physicians, nursing leaders and philanthropy partners around a shared vision that helped reduce patient migration from more than 70% to less than 30%. Under her leadership, Sarasota Memorial’s radiation oncology center saw an 80% increase in patient volume within its first two years, and she helped negotiate vendor agreements that generated approximately $2 million in capital and operational savings. She established a cancer institute physician membership group uniting more than 80 employed and community physicians, and partnered with the Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation on a philanthropic campaign that secured $93 million in donor commitments for cancer services. Ms. Dancer also supports the health system’s transition to Epic and mentors young professionals in the system’s administrative fellowship program, where she began her career in 2017.
Audrey Daniel. Director of Marketing at Russellville (Ala.) Hospital. Ms. Daniel leads all strategic marketing, communications and community engagement efforts as a one-person marketing department at Russellville Hospital, a rural acute care facility. Ms. Daniel has grown the hospital’s social media presence significantly, using consistent storytelling to strengthen its connection with patients and the community. Ms. Daniel played a key role in getting the hospital enrolled in the “Rural Tax Credit Incentive” program, helping raise more than $250,000 to support facility growth and patient care services. Ms. Daniel has planned and promoted large-scale community events, including a 50th-anniversary celebration that brought together community leaders, staff and families to enhance visibility and trust. Ms. Daniel also created employee engagement and recognition initiatives to boost staff morale and retention, and supports recruitment through targeted campaigns and employer branding. Ms. Daniel also serves as president of the Russellville Hospital Foundation. Under her leadership, the hospital was recognized as one of the “Cleanest Hospitals” in 2023 according to CMS ratings, and earned certification as an acute stroke-ready hospital through the Joint Commission and American Heart Association.
Michael DeCicco. Director of Patient Experience and Culture at NYU Langone Hospital—Suffolk (Patchogue, N.Y.). Mr. DeCicco oversees six departments at NYU Langone Hospital—Suffolk, including patient experience, spiritual care, patient relations, language services, volunteer services and concierge services. Under his leadership, the hospital’s Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems willingness-to-recommend scores improved significantly over two years. Mr. DeCicco also led a 65% reduction in the time required to close patient grievance investigations by refining workflows and strengthening accountability. He spearheaded initiatives to improve care experiences for Hispanic and Latino patients following a review of demographic data, work that was recognized by the Joint Commission during its health care equity certification review. Mr. DeCicco helped secure a donation to establish a hospital-based food pantry, addressing food insecurity alongside the hospital’s existing patient clothing closet. He serves as a reviewer for the Patient Experience Journal with the Beryl Institute. Mr. DeCicco previously worked at New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health as a project manager, employee relations specialist, and patient and customer experience coordinator.
Kayce Degenhardt. Vice President of IT Clinical Applications at Inova Health System (Fairfax, Va.). Ms. Degenhardt serves as vice president of IT clinical applications at Inova Health System, leading the design, integration and optimization of the health system’s clinical application ecosystem. In her first year, she led a systemwide reset of IT clinical applications operations that produced an 87% reduction in the application backlog within six weeks. Ms. Degenhardt then launched “The Reset,” an enterprisewide initiative to standardize and optimize Epic workflows across Inova. The program cut provider documentation time by approximately 35% across many specialties, saving more than 900 clinician hours each month, and reduced advanced imaging appointment wait times in radiology by six days. Under her leadership, Inova attained Epic configuration “Level 10” and utilization “level 8,” along with Epic “Honor Roll Summa Cum Laude” status, placing the system in the top 2% of Epic organizations nationwide. Inova also became the first health system to attain the Joint Commission’s “Responsible Use of Health Data” certification during her tenure.
Mike Degnan. Vice President of Operations at SSM Health St. Charles Market (St. Louis). Mr. Degnan oversees operations for multiple SSM Health hospitals, including 329-bed SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital–St. Charles, 215-bed SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital–Lake Saint Louis, and a 77-bed behavioral health facility called SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital–Wentzville. He also oversees eight outpatient centers, an ambulatory surgery center, and an endoscopy joint venture across St. Charles County, Mo. As vice president of operations at St. Joseph Hospital–Lake Saint Louis, he improved operating margin from negative 1.1% to 7.22%, reduced average length of stay from 4.54 to 3.6 days and drove consistent 10% growth in surgical services. In his first year as market vice president of operations, Mr. Degnan secured and guided delivery of more than $20 million in capital construction while increasing market operating margin from 3.6% to 5.7%. He led both acute hospitals in his market through transition to Joint Commission-designated level 2 STEMI centers from state designations. Mr. Degnan chairs SSM Health’s regional value optimization team, which led product transitions across more than 200 product categories and generated more than $20 million in annual savings across the St. Louis and Southern Illinois markets. From 2024 to 2025, he was the operations executive leading SSM Health’s partnership with St. Louis-based BJC Healthcare to develop St. Louis Healthcare Support Services, a joint-venture laundry operation that now processes 35 million pounds of linens annually and brought 80 new benefits-eligible jobs to St. Louis. Mr. Degnan has been part of the “FOCUS St. Louis Emerging Leaders Program” since 2020 and serves on the board of the O’Fallon Chamber of Commerce.
Manavi Dhakal, MSN, RN. Senior Director and Associate CNO at Boston Medical Center–Brockton (Mass.) Behavioral Health Center. Ms. Dhakal has served as senior director and associate CNO of Boston Medical Center-Brockton Behavioral Health Center since 2024. She provides strategic and operational leadership for all nursing services at the freestanding psychiatric hospital, overseeing staffing, workforce development and clinical education. Under Ms. Dhakal, nursing vacancy has reached 0%, overall vacancy has fallen below 10% and turnover has dropped under 2.5%. She helped advance a just culture framework that encourages incident reporting and non-punitive responses to errors, and has driven a sustained reduction in restraint and seclusion through trauma-informed, least-restrictive care practices. Ms. Dhakal played a key leadership role in Brockton Behavioral Health Center’s successful inclusion in Boston Medical Center’s Magnet designation. She received Boston Medical Center’s “Quality and Patient Safety Champion Award” in 2025. Ms. Dhakal previously served as a clinical instructor and held behavioral health and case management leadership roles before joining Boston Medical Center.
Christopher Dodson. Chief Strategy Officer at Ascension Via Christi (Wichita, Kan.). Mr. Dodson leads strategic planning, business development and growth initiatives for Ascension Via Christi, one of Kansas’ largest integrated health systems. Under his direction, Via Christi launched a multi-facility emergency care strategy anchored by two new freestanding emergency departments and orchestrated the acquisition of a defunct hospital to preserve inpatient medical, surgical and intensive care access for south-central Kansas. Mr. Dodson spearheaded capital planning for a new comprehensive breast center and helped recruit three cardiologists and two cardiothoracic surgeons to strengthen the system’s cardiovascular program. He also deployed four specialized outreach clinics across rural Kansas and formalized partnerships with local federally qualified health centers to expand safety-net primary care for uninsured and Medicaid patients. Mr. Dodson serves on several boards, is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives, and previously served as chief strategy officer and director of business development for Ascension St. Vincent’s in Birmingham, Ala. During his tenure, Via Christi earned Joint Commission comprehensive stroke center certification and the Kansas Hospital Association’s 2025 “Visionary Award” for its first responders cancer screening program.
Natalia Elias Calles. Director of Clinical Research at TMC Health (Tucson, Ariz.). Ms. Elias Calles built TMC Health’s clinical research program from the ground up into a globally recognized enrollment site, giving Southern Arizona patients access to clinical trials they previously had to travel out of state to join. As the health system’s human protections administrator, Ms. Elias Calles maintains exemplary FDA inspection outcomes while overseeing regulatory compliance for the program. Ms. Elias Calles developed TMC Health’s “CARE” expanded access program, which allows patients with terminal diagnoses and no FDA-approved treatment options to receive investigational therapies. Ms. Elias Calles’s leadership helped position TMC Health as the second U.S. hospital to perform transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement and secured the system’s selection for a 2024 first-in-human early feasibility study of a transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement device. Ms. Elias Calles created Spanish-language support programs that substantially increased Latinx participation in clinical trials and serves as faculty across TMC Health’s cardiovascular and structural heart fellowship programs. Ms. Elias Calles was elected to the Association of Clinical Research Professionals board of trustees for 2026 and was named a 2025 American Heart Association “Leader of Impact.” Before joining TMC Health, Ms. Elias Calles spent seven years as a senior clinical research specialist at University of Arizona Health Sciences and developed a peanut allergy prevention program later adopted nationally.
Colby Faust, MSN. System Vice President of Nursing Operations and Quality at Geisinger (Danville, Pa.). Mr. Faust serves as system vice president of nursing operations and quality at Geisinger, a 10-hospital, $8 billion-plus health system serving 1.2 million people across Pennsylvania, where he leads enterprisewide nursing standardization, quality improvement and technology-enabled care transformation. He began his Geisinger career as a high school cooperative education student in 2009 and a bedside ICU nurse in 2012, rising through four progressive leadership roles to his current systemwide post. Mr. Faust led the creation of standardized chart audit automations that eliminated more than 300,000 annual manual review hours systemwide, and he co-developed “POLI,” Geisinger’s AI-enabled policy assistant chatbot, which launched enterprisewide in May 2026 and is projected to reclaim more than 25,000 hours annually. He championed a central line-associated bloodstream infection reduction initiative that improved rates by 51%, from 1.53 to 0.75 per 1,000 line days, across his region, and increased priority discharge identification by 70% through a daily regional capacity huddle. Mr. Faust was instrumental in Geisinger Medical Center’s fourth consecutive Magnet designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and oversaw a $26 million enterprise bed and stretcher replacement program alongside nursing operations for a $900 million hospital expansion. He was named an “Emerging Professional Voices Honoree” by the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and has maintained a 100% engagement score among his direct reports. Mr. Faust is a published co-author in Nurse Leader on the “Achieving Collaborative Excellence” model of care, a care delivery model he co-designed.
Brian Filadelfia, DNP, RN. Chief Nurse and Clinical Executive at Emanate Health Queen of the Valley Hospital (West Covina, Calif.). Mr. Filadelfia serves as chief nurse and clinical executive at Emanate Health Queen of the Valley Hospital, where he leads a workforce of approximately 900 full time employees, including 12 directors, 19 managers and six educators across nursing and clinical services. He launched and now chairs the hospital’s inaugural hospital performance improvement committee, a multidisciplinary body aligning clinical and operational leaders around quality, safety and performance priorities. In May 2025, Mr. Filadelfia led a project that reduced emergency department length of stay for admitted patients by 39.36% in two months, nearly four times the original 10% target. He directed the hospital’s Covid-19 resurgence plan, saving $500,000 in workforce costs, and helped raise its Leapfrog hospital safety grade from a “C” to a “B” within a year. Mr. Filadelfia founded the hospital’s clinical excellence committee, which achieved a 55% reduction in reportable pressure skin injuries and zero harm for central line-associated bloodstream infections from the fourth quarter of 2021 through 2023. His operational initiatives have also raised unit productivity averages from 94% to 104% and led to EHR conversions that saved $250,000.
Sham Firdausi. Deputy CFO at County of Santa Clara Health System (San Jose, Calif.). Mr. Firdausi serves as deputy CFO of the County of Santa Clara Health System, a $4.5 billion public safety net and academic teaching system that includes four hospitals and 16 clinics. He joined the system in September 2025 with direct oversight of finance, revenue cycle and supply chain operations. Mr. Firdausi implemented a finance business partner model that embeds financial leadership alongside operational teams while preserving a centralized finance structure. He is leading a systemwide revenue cycle transformation focused on upskilling teams and deploying technology to capture revenue the system is owed, as federal cuts threaten more than $1 billion in anticipated revenue losses over the next several years. His supply chain leadership has driven significant vendor savings while protecting the integrity of patient care. Mr. Firdausi was named as a Managed Healthcare Executive “Emerging Leader” for 2026 and is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army.
Brett Fischer. Senior Vice President of Business Development at RWJBarnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.). Mr. Fischer is senior vice president of business development at RWJBarnabas Health, where he leads mergers and acquisitions and oversees complex transactional work across medical practices, ambulatory surgery centers, dialysis providers, imaging centers, physical therapy and home health providers. Mr. Fischer also serves within the legal department as assistant general counsel, overseeing supply chain and corporate contracting alongside healthcare transactions. An attorney by background specializing in healthcare mergers, acquisitions and regulatory law, Mr. Fischer has led and closed more than 100 strategic transactions that built out RWJBarnabas Health’s ambulatory network, including 46 medical practices, 32 ambulatory surgery centers, 48 dialysis centers, 38 imaging centers and 177 physical therapy locations. Mr. Fischer implemented a systemwide deal-flow process that integrates stakeholders across business development, managed care, legal, credentialing, treasury, finance and operations to streamline transaction execution. Mr. Fischer has also designed physician buy-in and buy-out methodologies that facilitate generational ownership transitions while preserving valuation integrity. Beyond business development, Mr. Fischer led the implementation of a systemwide legal contracting model and the creation of an in-house IT contracting function, strengthening risk management across the organization.
Jennifer Fitzgerald. CFO at Belmont Behavioral Health System (Philadelphia). Ms. Fitzgerald has served as CFO of Belmont Behavioral Health System, part of Franklin, Tenn.-based Acadia Healthcare, since 2022. She oversees financial operations for the system’s 252-bed inpatient hospital, outpatient services and specialty programs, including New Oaks Academy and the Philadelphia Children’s Crisis Response Center. Before joining Belmont, Ms. Fitzgerald led financial operations and special projects at multiple behavioral health and medical/surgical hospitals in the Philadelphia suburbs. Acadia Healthcare previously recognized Ms. Fitzgerald with its 2024 “Best Revenue Cycle Performance” award.
Jordan Frazzetta. Director of the Neurosciences Service Line at UChicago Medicine. Ms. Frazzetta provides strategic, operational and financial leadership for UChicago Medicine’s neurosciences service line, overseeing a program spanning neurology, neurosurgery, neuro-infusion, neuro-oncology and sleep medicine that generates more than 52,000 outpatient visits, 2,000 inpatient discharges and 1,300 surgical cases annually. Ms. Frazzetta leads a team of 66 full-time employees and manages a portfolio representing $238 million in net revenue. Between 2020 and 2026, Ms. Frazzetta engineered the operational infrastructure to double the neurology and neurosurgery faculty clinical effort, nearly doubling ambulatory volume from 23,756 to 51,988 annualized visits while scaling the program from three clinical sites to nine. Ms. Frazzetta has grown the service line’s advanced practice provider team from six to 17 since 2024 and operationalized initiatives such as imaging supported by AI, telestroke activations and community epilepsy monitoring unit expansions. Ms. Frazzetta also oversees the comprehensive stroke program, supporting more than 1,000 stroke activations and 650 procedural cases annually across a four-hospital telestroke network, with quality improvement initiatives under her leadership achieving a 9.7% improvement in patient length of stay and a 27.1% reduction in readmissions. Ms. Frazzetta rose to her current post after serving as administrative fellow, practice manager and assistant director within UChicago Medicine’s neurosciences service line.
Wilson Gabbard. Vice President of Quality and Condition Management at Advocate Health and President of Advocate Physician Partners (Charlotte, N.C.). Mr. Gabbard serves as vice president of quality and condition management at Advocate Health, as well as president of Advocate Physician Partners. Advocate is the third-largest nonprofit integrated health system in the nation and a leader in population health. Advocate Physician Partners is one of the largest and most successful clinically integrated networks, representing over 800 clinics and having distributed over $2 billion in clinical integration funds since its inception. Mr. Gabbard leads quality and risk adjustment strategy across more than 2.3 million value-based lives, overseeing over $5 billion in risk-based revenue. His work spans a diverse portfolio of contracts, including fully delegated capitation, shared savings, upside/downside risk, and pay-for-performance arrangements. Previously, he served as executive director of population health operations at Chapel Hill, N.C.-based UNC Health Care, where he led work that supported the system’s transition from fee-for-service to value-based care. Under his leadership, the population health team grew from two to over 200 professionals. Earlier in his career, he held operational leadership roles at Greenville, N.C.-based Vidant Medical Group, overseeing regional primary and specialty care practices, as well as emergency and hospitalist service lines. Mr. Gabbard is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and currently serves on The National Association of ACOs quality committee.
Benjamin Galvan. Director of Infection Prevention at HCA Florida JFK, South Tampa, West Tampa and Brandon Hospitals (Atlantis). Mr. Galvan serves as director of infection prevention for HCA Florida JFK Hospital, as well as HCA Florida South Tampa Hospital, HCA Florida West Tampa Hospital and HCA Florida Brandon Hospital. He leads infection prevention programs that align clinical practice standards with CDC, Joint Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and CMS requirements to support successful reaccreditation surveys across multiple sites of care. Under his leadership, HCA Florida Brandon achieved a 77% year-over-year reduction in CMS-reportable hospital-acquired infections between 2024 and 2025, an estimated financial impact of more than $300,000, while HCA Florida South Tampa achieved a 100% reduction between 2022 and 2023, saving an estimated $42,000. Mr. Galvan led two successful Joint Commission reaccreditation surveys across three hospital sites. He has partnered with division and facility executive leadership on several multimillion-dollar construction projects, including two endoscope reprocessing suites, multiple operating rooms and a renovated sterile processing department. Mr. Galvan also worked with division executive leadership to implement standardized communicable disease exposure protocols across 14 sites of care.
Meeta Gandhi. COO at Orlando Health Melbourne (Fla.) Hospital. Ms. Gandhi serves as COO of Orlando Health Melbourne Hospital, a 119-bed acute care hospital in Brevard County that logs more than 27,000 emergency department visits, 68,000 outpatient visits and nearly 5,000 inpatient cases annually. Before joining Orlando Health in 2025, Ms. Gandhi was director of operations at Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center, a 624-bed academic medical center in Charlotte, N.C., reducing emergency department boarding times by 150 minutes and directing an $87 million inpatient renovation completed ahead of schedule and under budget. Ms. Gandhi also supported the opening of a $165.9 million heart, vascular and cancer institute and served as interim leader for centralized patient placement across six hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since joining Orlando Health Melbourne Hospital, Ms. Gandhi has led the organization’s post-acquisition integration, including the implementation of Epic and the restoration of mammography services. Under Ms. Gandhi’s leadership, the hospital has earned six consecutive Leapfrog “A” safety grades. In addition, Ms. Gandhi’s oversight of surgical services has pushed first-case on-time starts to 83%, surpassing the department’s goal, with multiple days reaching 100% on-time performance. Ms. Gandhi was named a Charlotte Business Journal “40 Under 40” honoree.
Michael Grand. Vice President of Decision Support and Cost Transformation at Allina Health (Minneapolis). Mr. Grand leads the evolution of Allina Health’s enterprise financial decision-support capabilities and the system’s multiyear cost transformation roadmap, partnering with leaders across the organization to identify, evaluate and track initiatives that improve financial sustainability. He led the system’s newly created cost transformation center of excellence, overseeing initiatives that established new variable labor targets and premium pay reductions. Under his leadership, the center directed a systemwide effort that identified and executed $105 million in cost reduction opportunities across corporate areas and fixed cost centers. Mr. Grand also created the system’s revenue analytics center of excellence and led the system’s finance-side Covid-19 tracking and recovery efforts, including cost reductions, furloughs, and funding secured through the CARES Act and Federal Emergency Management Agency. Earlier in his career, he served as director of Finance at New Ulm (Minn.) Medical Center, one of Allina Health’s busiest community hospitals, and held roles as director of financial planning and business support and as an ACO consultant and financial analyst within Allina Health. Before joining Allina Health, Mr. Grand worked as an external consultant, leading back-end revenue cycle enhancement initiatives for various health systems.
Sundeep Grandhe, MD. CEO and Senior Medical Director at Central Valley Hospice Palliative Medicine (Fresno, Calif.). Dr. Grandhe leads clinical quality, operational performance, strategic growth and physician leadership across hospice and palliative care services in California’s Central Valley as CEO and senior medical director of Central Valley Hospice Palliative Medicine. He trained in hospice and palliative medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and completed a bioethics fellowship before returning to the medically underserved Central Valley to build care infrastructure there. Dr. Grandhe led the expansion of telehospice and telepalliative care services across the region, improving access to symptom management and advance care planning for patients with advanced cancer and complex chronic illness who previously faced geographic and transportation barriers. He became the youngest physician ever inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and is also one of the youngest physician executives inducted as a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Dr. Grandhe serves on the board of directors of the California Medical Association and as a volunteer clinical professor of hospice and palliative medicine at UCSF Fresno. He previously served as associate medical director at Saint Agnes Medical Center in Fresno. Dr. Grandhe was named to Central California’s “40 Under 40” business leaders list in 2025.
Danielle Griggs, PharmD. Chief Pharmacy Officer at UVA Health (Charlottesville, Va.). Dr. Griggs leads a systemwide pharmacy enterprise at UVA Health, overseeing 23 licensed pharmacy locations, more than 500 full time employees, an $800 million operating budget and $2.8 billion in patient revenue. She developed the pharmacy department’s first-ever strategic plan, aligning its services with UVA Health’s broader institutional goals. Dr. Griggs increased pharmacy revenue by more than 40% while managing the $800 million expense budget, and she led an organizational redesign of reporting structures spanning hospital, ambulatory, retail, specialty and infusion pharmacy operations. She expanded UVA Health’s ambulatory pharmacy network and doubled its centralized prescription fulfillment capacity to improve patient access. In March 2026, Dr. Griggs launched the UVA Health Pharmacy Central Services Center, a 40,000-square-foot facility that increased prescription fulfillment capacity by nearly 50% and uses robotics and automation to process up to 4,000 prescriptions per shift. The center supports patients across Virginia and more than a dozen additional states through expanded home delivery services. Dr. Griggs received the 2025 “Distinguished Alumni Award” from the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy and led UVA Health to Premier Inc.’s 2024 “High-Value Pharmacy Award.”
Tristan Hall. Senior Vice President and CHRO at OhioHealth (Columbus). Mr. Hall is the youngest CHROs in OhioHealth’s 135-year history and among the youngest at any large U.S. health system, overseeing workforce strategy across 16 hospitals and 200 care sites. He has introduced equity-focused recruitment and mentoring initiatives aimed at increasing the number of Black, Indigenous and people of color providers and leaders, and onboarding minority-owned partners and suppliers. Mr. Hall co-founded the central Ohio chapter of the National Association of Health Services Executives, which builds mentorship and pipeline programs for Black healthcare professionals. He serves on the Columbus Urban League’s board of directors, which saw a 76% increase in new businesses created and $4.6 million in additional salaries for constituents over a three-year period. Mr. Hall spent eight years on the board of directors of “ICE Mentors,” an organization whose mentored young adults are 55% more likely to enroll in college and 130% more likely to hold leadership positions. He was selected as a fellow of the African American Leadership Academy and now serves as the academy’s advisory board vice chair. In fiscal year 2025, OhioHealth provided approximately $493.5 million in community benefit, including $137.1 million in charity care, under the executive leadership team Mr. Hall belongs to.
Kevin Harrell. Vice President of Data and Analytics at Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.). Mr. Harrell directs Sutter Health’s data services and analytics teams, overseeing enterprisewide data strategy and analytics operations that support clinical operations, population health, business strategy and AI initiatives. He sets the strategic vision for data governance and quality while advancing the use of business intelligence, predictive analytics and AI in decision-making across the system. After joining Sutter in 2023, Mr. Harrell’s leadership in digital access drove upgrades to the “MyHealth Online” patient portal, adding self-service features for appointment scheduling, medication refills, lab results and virtual visits alongside tools such as fast pass digital waitlists and text-based appointment confirmations. Since transitioning to data and analytics in 2025, he has spearheaded a major data modernization initiative migrating legacy systems to modern, cloud-based platforms in partnership with Epic and Microsoft. Mr. Harrell led the unification of Sutter’s previously siloed analytics teams into a single enterprise data and analytics division, standardizing data architecture and tools under a “One Sutter” approach. Sutter Health was named to Fortune‘s list of “America’s Most Innovative Companies” in 2023 and 2026, in part thanks to these initiatives. Prior to his current role, Mr. Harrell served as vice president of digital access at Sutter Health.
Jordan Haygood. Regional Vice President of Managed Care at SSM Health (St. Louis). Mr. Haygood creates the strategic roadmap and oversees fee-for-service contracting with large and small payers for SSM Health, an integrated health system operating more than 23 hospitals and 490 physician offices, outpatient centers and urgent care facilities across four states. He negotiates directly with payers across multiple regions, aligning contracting strategy with both regional and systemwide organizational goals, and works closely with the revenue cycle team to ensure consistent communication with payers. After taking over the managed care team, Mr. Haygood completed a reorganization and created a tracker to monitor key performance metrics, helping the team surpass goals on key performance indicators including denial recovery and fee-for-service negotiations. He serves as executive leader of SSM Health’s LGBTQ business resource group and is past president of the Oklahoma Hospital Managed Care Association. Prior to his current role, Mr. Haygood served as senior counsel and regional director of managed care for SSM Health Oklahoma, and as regional vice president overseeing managed care across SSM Health’s Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin regions.
Jason Hinkle. CFO at Deaconess Illinois (Marion). Mr. Hinkle serves as CFO for Deaconess Illinois, an affiliate of Evansville, Ill.-based Deaconess Health System, leading the finance function for four hospitals across Southern Illinois. He facilitates monthly financial performance reviews for system executive leadership and monitors operational and financial key performance indicators, payer denial trends and staffing alignment across the region. Mr. Hinkle designed and implemented a systemwide tool for tracking key financial initiatives to ensure planned savings and growth opportunities are realized. Since he joined Deaconess Illinois in 2025, the hospitals have seen a more than 33% increase in volumes and a year-over-year operating margin improvement of more than 900 basis points. During that time, Deaconess Illinois Medical Center earned primary stroke center designation, installed a first-in-the-nation 3T MRI and formed new partnerships with local universities. Mr. Hinkle previously served as regional director of finance operations at Maywood, Ill.-based Loyola Medicine and as a finance manager at Charlotte, N.C.-based Advocate Health.
Dolethea “Dody” Hollins. Director of Support Services at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center (Rockford, Ill.). Ms. Hollins is director of support services at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center, a level 1 trauma center serving northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, where she oversees facilities, environmental services, security, telecommunications, patient transport, volunteer services, biomedical engineering, and food and nutrition services. Ms. Hollins built her career at OSF HealthCare through progressive leadership roles, beginning as a clinical operations business analyst before advancing through operational and executive positions to her current director role. Ms. Hollins oversees the hospital’s emergency management operations and incident command activities, coordinating emergency preparedness exercises and developing active threat education programs to strengthen organizational resilience. Ms. Hollins previously led hospital throughput and length-of-stay initiatives, helping drive measurable operational improvements through physician engagement, data analytics and process redesign. Beyond her hospital role, Ms. Hollins serves as a captain in the U.S. Air Force Medical Service Corps, where she has led medical readiness programs supporting more than 1,000 service members. Ms. Hollins also serves on the Rockford Park District Foundation board and was nominated for the YWCA “Women of Achievement Promise Award.”
Christina Hong. Vice President of Service Lines at Emanate Health (Covina, Calif.). Ms. Hong serves as vice president of service lines at Emanate Health, where she oversees business and service line growth, cancer center operations, strategic finance and marketing, communications and public relations for the health system. She has worked at Emanate Health for more than 12 years, advancing through progressive finance and strategy roles before being named to her current position. Ms. Hong led the strategy and development of the Emanate Health Cancer Center, which opened in September 2023 and has since grown nearly 40% in volume under her and the chief medical officer’s oversight. She has delivered the organization’s highest year-over-year service line growth in each of the past four years. Ms. Hong partnered with the health system’s president and CEO on bond issuances totaling $85 million in 2025 and $170 million in 2020 to finance strategic construction projects, and has helped secure and maintain favorable bond ratings from S&P Global Ratings and Fitch, including a triple-notch upgrade. She also created Emanate Health’s family medicine residency program, from the initial application through accreditation, with its ninth cohort set to join in July. Ms. Hong co-leads the strategic planning, marketing and community benefit committee of Emanate Health’s board of directors, becoming the youngest leader to hold that role.
Robert Hsu, MD. Director of Lung Cancer at Los Angeles General Medical Center. Dr. Hsu is a hematologist/oncologist who serves as an assistant professor of clinical medicine in USC’s division of medical oncology and as director of lung cancer at Los Angeles General Medical Center, specializing in thoracic and head and neck oncology. He leads clinical operations and multidisciplinary care teams while conducting research focused on improving access to clinical trials for patients. Dr. Hsu has centered much of his work on cancer disparities affecting the diverse patient population USC serves across Southern California. He is the recipient of the “Robert A. Winn Excellence in Clinical Trials Career Development Award,” which funds his research into subcutaneous immunotherapy that allows lung cancer patients to receive much of their treatment at home. He has served as site principal investigator on multiple thoracic oncology clinical trials, including two National Cancer Institute studies on NUT carcinoma, a rare cancer. Dr. Hsu was named one of 30 early career investigators in thoracic oncology worldwide by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer Academy, and he mentors more than 30 medical trainees and researchers. He also provides strategic direction for Los Angeles General Medical Center’s cancer program, aligning care decisions with the needs of its underserved community.
Max Hubel. Vice President of Budget, Financial Planning and Operational Finance at Baptist Health (Jacksonville, Fla.). Mr. Hubel oversees financial planning and analysis for Baptist Health’s six-hospital system, delivering financial reporting to senior leadership, the executive team, the finance committee and the system board of directors. Mr. Hubel joined Baptist Health in 2014 as a financial analyst and, in 2023, became the youngest vice president in the health system’s 70-year history at age 31. Mr. Hubel administers end-to-end financial accountability, including budget preparation and financial reporting, for the $3.5 billion system’s six inpatient facilities and outpatient clinic network totaling 1,445 beds. Mr. Hubel leads the development of Baptist Health’s five-year balance sheet plan, which targets $18 billion in top-line revenue, $2 billion in operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and an $800 million operating margin. Mr. Hubel partners with the executive team, hospital and provider operations, and the strategy team to evaluate the financial impact of major strategic decisions. Mr. Hubel has chaired Baptist Health’s United Way campaign executive committee and serves as a head coach for his neighborhood athletic association.
Jenna Jansen. Vice President of Operational Excellence at WellSpan Health (York, Pa.). Ms. Jansen serves as vice president of operational excellence at WellSpan Health, leading enterprise strategic initiatives from concept through implementation and overseeing the health system’s administrative fellowship program. She brings more than 12 years of progressive leadership experience in quality, population health, patient safety and health equity, having built and led the quality management structure supporting 10 service lines across WellSpan. Through innovative staffing models and data-driven decision-making, Ms. Jansen helped generate more than $15.5 million in return on investment through pay-for-performance and value-based programs. She helped design a breast cancer screening initiative that narrowed disparities in preventive care access and eliminated gaps for Hispanic patients within WellSpan’s communities. Working with WellSpan Innovations and Hippocratic AI, Ms. Jansen led clinical and operational evaluations of emerging AI solutions, including AI-enabled outreach programs that improved colorectal cancer screening completion rates. Her leadership led to a 2026 promotion into the newly created vice president role, following her previous position as senior director of service line quality and innovative programs. Ms. Jansen is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, and WellSpan received the American Hospital Association’s “Quest for Quality Prize” during her tenure leading systemwide quality initiatives.
Ava Johnson. Director of Ambulatory Clinical Documentation Quality Improvement at Mount Sinai Health System (New York City). Ms. Johnson directs ambulatory clinical documentation quality improvement at Mount Sinai Health System, overseeing risk adjustment coding, documentation integrity and provider education initiatives across the system’s metropolitan and downstate New York regions. Since joining Mount Sinai in 2019, Ms. Johnson has advanced through multiple leadership roles, from clinical documentation quality improvement specialist to her current director position. Ms. Johnson completed more than 30 advanced American Academy of Professional Coders certifications spanning coding, auditing, compliance and clinical documentation improvement in about a year and a half while working full time as a healthcare executive. Ms. Johnson serves on the American Academy of Professional Coders national advisory board and as an American Academy of Professional Coders exam committee board exam writer, helping shape the certification examinations used to evaluate coding professionals nationwide. Ms. Johnson is also an approved instructor and a national speaker at various conferences on risk adjustment, coding compliance and clinical documentation integrity. Ms. Johnson founded Zion Academe of Coders and Consultants and has personally funded educational opportunities, including books, mentorship and certification support, for more than 15 unemployed individuals pursuing careers in medical coding and healthcare administration. Ms. Johnson previously served as associate director, manager and specialist of clinical documentation quality improvement at Mount Sinai.
Kelly Jones. Director of Revenue Cycle at RWJBarnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.). Ms. Jones provides strategic leadership for performance improvement initiatives across hospital, physician and research revenue cycle operations at RWJBarnabas Health, leading a team spanning all three billing functions. Ms. Jones developed a systemwide Epic Pulse metric and trophy tracker that enables revenue cycle leaders to monitor month-over-month performance trends and drive improvement across key performance indicators. Ms. Jones standardized escalation protocols for claim resolution, reducing average claim cycle times by five days, and led efforts that eliminated more than $10 million in client billing self-pay balances. Ms. Jones spearheaded a systemwide initiative to modernize and centralize research revenue cycle operations across RWJBarnabas Health and Newark, N.J.-based Rutgers Health, covering both oncology and non-oncology studies. That effort reduced a research workflow backlog by more than $20 million within six months and established key performance indicator dashboards that gave executive leaders greater visibility into research revenue cycle performance. Ms. Jones and the revenue cycle leadership team helped earn RWJBarnabas Health a top 10 ranking for “Hospital Billing Financial Pulse” and a top 10 ranking for “Professional Billing Automation Pulse” from Epic.
Brice Jones. Regional Director of Health Equity and Human Impact at Trinity Health Illinois and Indiana Markets. Mr. Jones leads systemwide health equity, safety and quality strategy as regional director of health equity and human impact for Trinity Health’s Illinois and Indiana market, directly overseeing five hospital sites and influencing care delivery across the broader system. Mr. Jones has built and chaired interprofessional health equity councils that bring together clinicians, executives, educators, data analysts and community partners to identify disparities and align improvement efforts with community needs. Mr. Jones embedded equity review into core clinical accountability mechanisms, integrating equity principles into morbidity and mortality committees, root cause and apparent cause analyses, and social determinants of health documentation and coding. Mr. Jones led the design and rollout of Trinity Health’s foundations of health equity course, reaching thousands of providers systemwide. Before joining Trinity Health, Mr. Jones served as a health equity director at the American Medical Association, serving on the core leadership team for the Rise to Health Coalition and co-leading national collaboratives that supported 998 organizations in implementing structural equity interventions. Mr. Jones has also contributed to firearm violence prevention work through fellowships with the Chicago Gun Violence Research Collaborative, the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship and Brady United Against Gun Violence. Mr. Jones was recognized as a “40 Under 40 Leader in Health” by the National Minority Quality Forum.
Bill Kilmer. CHRO at Adventist Health (Roseville, Calif.). Mr. Kilmer serves as CHRO at Adventist Health, where he oversees labor management, human resources technologies, benefits administration, payroll operations and an internal contact center for the multistate health system. He leads a diverse team of corporate and local human resources professionals and has focused his tenure on strengthening employee engagement, wellbeing and retention. Under Mr. Kilmer’s direction, Adventist Health achieved an all-time low in workforce turnover while employee engagement and wellbeing reached record highs systemwide. He is known for bridging frontline workforce needs with systemwide strategy and for building high-performing teams that prioritize inclusion and professional growth. Before his current role, Mr. Kilmer held several human resources leadership positions at Adventist Health, including human resources executive, administrative director of workforce planning and labor management, system director of human performance, and division director of human resource and operational informatics. His approach combines operational rigor with a people-centered philosophy he credits as foundational to delivering high-quality patient care.
Joshua Lahav. Vice President of Cancer Center Operations at Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia). Mr. Lahav oversees inpatient hospital operations and 10 ambulatory locations as vice president of cancer center operations for Temple Health’s Fox Chase Cancer Center, managing an annual operating budget exceeding $50 million across 16 departments and more than 500 employees. In 2025, Fox Chase surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue, and Mr. Lahav helped lead the cancer center through a series of expansions that reached new patients across the region. He has led more than $12 million in campus infrastructure investments and played a key role in building and expanding five outpatient locations across Southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Mr. Lahav tracks “Days to First Visit” as a key access metric, and his team achieved a two-day reduction in average time to an appointment over the past two and a half years even as patient volumes grew 10% year over year. He recently led the conversion of underutilized consultation rooms into private examination rooms, enabling 100 more clinical appointments each week. Mr. Lahav is also a founding champion of Fox Chase’s “CHEER Committee,” which focuses on employee engagement and recognition across every shift and location in the network. He serves as a board member of the Association of Cancer Executives and as a board member and advisor to the McKeown Foundation.
Christopher Lee. Assistant Vice President of Public Policy and External Affairs at RWJBarnabas Health (West Orange, N.J.). Mr. Lee helps lead RWJBarnabas Health’s public policy and external affairs strategy across federal, state and local government, engaging directly with members of Congress, the New Jersey State Legislature and senior executive branch officials. Mr. Lee previously served as an aide in the New Jersey Legislature, as deputy chief of staff to the republican conference leader, and within the New Jersey Department of Human Services. At RWJBarnabas Health, Mr. Lee played a key role in securing more than $200 million in state funding to strengthen the system’s “Our Healthy Communities” initiative, which addresses social determinants of health. Through partnerships with more than 50 local organizations across New Jersey, the initiative connects patients to food, nutrition counseling, transportation and housing support alongside medical care. Mr. Lee’s work has helped deliver 1.7 million pounds of food, provide more than 150,000 free rides to medical appointments and connect more than 140,000 patients with community health workers. Mr. Lee also coordinates RWJBarnabas Health’s lobbying efforts and oversees its relationships with trade associations, coalitions and advocacy partners to secure and protect funding that supports the system’s mission.
Roger Li. Executive Director of Budget and Financial Planning for MemorialCare (Fountain Valley, Calif.). Mr. Li is a rising leader in healthcare finance, driving strategic planning and operational excellence across MemorialCare in Southern California. He oversees operating and capital budgets, long-term financial plan and monthly performance reporting for the four hospitals, as well as MemorialCare Medical Foundation, MemorialCare Medical Group and MemorialCare Shared Services. He collaborates closely with entity CFOs and leadership to align local initiatives with systemwide goals, ensuring financial targets are met and sustained in the system’s $3.4 billion operating budget. He led transformation in labor and productivity benchmarking, including a current $40 million savings initiative at MemorialCare Long Beach (Calif.) Medical Center. His data-driven approach to staffing models and workflow redesign contributed to significant improvements in operating margins across the system post-Covid. Over the last three years, he remodeled and tracked over $300 million of cost-saving and revenue-generating initiatives, working directly with hospital CFOs to track progress and outcomes, and improving system operating margin by more than 4%. He helped develop financial health education for MemorialCare’s leadership development program, encouraging leaders to understand the basics of healthcare economics and translate financial insights into data-driven decision-making. Since joining MemorialCare in 2019, he has brought deep expertise in financial intelligence, change management and strategic planning to the organization.
Justin Lockwood. Medical Director of Pediatric Hospital Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Colorado (Aurora). Dr. Lockwood has served as medical director of hospital medicine at Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus since 2021, providing clinical leadership for hospitalist practice across the medical-surgical acute care environment. Board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric hospital medicine since 2022, he progressed from instructor to assistant professor in 2018 and to associate professor of pediatrics in 2024 at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Dr. Lockwood leads the hospital’s “RAPID” program, which addresses recognition, activation and prevention of in-hospital deterioration, and has co-led the “Codes Program,” the “Surgical Hospitalist Assisted REcovery” program and the vascular access team. He has authored or co-authored more than 25 peer-reviewed publications since 2018, largely focused on pediatric sepsis recognition and treatment and care escalation, appearing in journals including Pediatrics, JAMA Network Open and Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Lockwood co-investigates a 2025 National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development R01 grant of approximately $4 million studying pediatric sepsis criteria and clinical decision support. He was selected in 2026 to the national leadership team of the Society of Hospital Medicine’s pediatrics special interest group and was named a national finalist for Denver Business Journal‘s “40 Under 40” in 2025. Dr. Lockwood has also received the Children’s Hospital Colorado “Inpatient Patient & Family Experience Award” and multiple “Top Quality Improvement Project” honors.
Komal Lodaria. Senior Director of System Care Experience at NYC Health + Hospitals (New York City). Ms. Lodaria leads patient experience and employee engagement initiatives across every care setting at NYC Health + Hospitals, from inpatient and emergency care to post-acute, ambulatory surgery, behavioral health and community services. Under Ms. Lodaria’s direction, the system’s 2025 employee feedback survey achieved a 59% response rate, capturing 35,693 voices and raising the engagement score to 3.83 out of 5.00. Ms. Lodaria’s “ICARE with Kindness” initiative has trained more than 33,000 employees, with 39,000 pledging to uphold the system’s core values. Ms. Lodaria’s work has driven double-digit gains in patient satisfaction, including an 11-percentile-point increase in the emergency department’s overall rating of care and a 15-point increase in post-acute patients’ likelihood to recommend. Ms. Lodaria also helped all 11 of the system’s acute care hospitals achieve significantly higher Google star ratings. In 2023, Ms. Lodaria earned the “Gage Honorable Mention Award” for quality improvement from America’s Essential Hospitals for a care-improvement contest that increased physician and nursing communication systemwide. Ms. Lodaria previously served as director, assistant director and program manager of care experience at NYC Health + Hospitals after beginning her career as an organizational change management associate at VNS Health in New York City.
Amanda Lopes-Edson. Director of Human Resources Shared Services at Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare. Ms. Lopes-Edson serves as director of human resources shared services at Hartford HealthCare, overseeing enterprise timekeeping operations and the human resources intake service center for thousands of employees across multiple hospitals, medical groups and business units. She leads teams responsible for payroll accuracy, schedule management, leave coordination and compliance with union contracts and wage-and-hour regulations. Following Hartford HealthCare’s acquisition of Greater Manchester (Conn.) Region hospitals, Ms. Lopes-Edson mobilized her team to provide on-site support for approximately 75 employees at Manchester Memorial Hospital and 25 in Rockville, Conn., processing more than 6,000 missing punch corrections during the transition. She identified an on-call pay configuration issue affecting approximately 831 employees that resulted in nearly $600,000 in underpayments, leading the root-cause analysis, remediation planning and implementation of stronger controls to prevent future issues. Ms. Lopes-Edson has held progressively senior roles at Hartford HealthCare since 2008, including scheduling coordinator and Kronos Workforce Management specialist and senior specialist, before being named director of shared services in 2021. She also leads strategic initiatives focused on operational transformation, system optimization and workforce scheduling modernization across human resources shared services.
Brendan Malik, MD. Vice President of Physician Enterprise Development and Chief Medical Officer at BayCare’s St. Joseph’s Hospital-South (Riverview, Fla.). Dr. Malik serves as vice president of physician enterprise development and chief medical officer of BayCare’s St. Joseph’s Hospital-South, where he leads clinical strategy and oversees safe, high-quality, patient-centered care. Dr. Malik has helped launch new service lines and high-acuity programs, including electrophysiology, gastroenterology and hematology/oncology, while expanding virtual care capabilities. Under Dr. Malik’s leadership, physician engagement and alignment scores rose more than 10 percentile points to the 88th percentile, and the hospital achieved a CMS 4-star rating. Dr. Malik also implemented a pharmacy-led diabetes care program that improved patient outcomes. Dr. Malik supports BayCare’s physician enterprise strategy in Manatee County, including oversight of graduate medical education programs tied to the development of BayCare Hospital Manatee in Palmetto/Parrish, Fla. A board-certified internal medicine physician and practicing hospitalist, Dr. Malik previously served as chief of staff, department of medicine chair and associate medical director at St. Joseph’s Hospital-South. Dr. Malik brings a frontline clinical perspective to executive decision-making across BayCare’s systemwide quality and governance initiatives.
Steven Mauk. Director of Physician Relations and Network Development at UChicago Medicine. Mr. Mauk leads, builds and mentors the physician relations outreach team that maintains UChicago Medicine’s field presence across key geographies, service lines and specialties, aligning fieldwork with the health system’s clinical growth priorities to capture, expand and retain external physician referral pipelines. Mr. Mauk serves as the bridge between clinical leadership and corporate development, partnering with business development, marketing and service line chairs to build provider campaigns and leading market assessments when UChicago Medicine expands into new regions. Mr. Mauk designed and scaled an analytical infrastructure that integrates Marketware patient relationship management tracking, internal Epic encounter data and external LexisNexis medical claims data, giving institutional leadership real-time visibility into referral trends and market opportunities. As assistant director, Mr. Mauk designed and scaled the outreach strategies behind various hospital partnerships, driving market growth into Northwest Indiana and Northbrook. Mr. Mauk is now leading the pre-launch regional outreach strategy for UChicago Medicine’s oncology portfolio ahead of a new cancer pavilion set to open next April. Mr. Mauk was promoted to director in October 2025 after serving as assistant director of physician relations from 2021 to 2025 and senior physician relations associate from 2019 to 2021.
Sean McCleary. Vice President of Professional Services at Inova Health System (Fairfax, Va.). Mr. McCleary leads strategic and operational priorities across Inova Health System’s diagnostic imaging, interventional radiology, clinical and anatomic pathology, pharmacy, respiratory therapy, clinical nutrition and blood donor services lines. He also serves as administrator of the clinical platforms service line, giving him oversight of an unusually broad set of clinical platforms for a single executive. Mr. McCleary joined Inova in March 2020 as vice president of imaging and laboratory services after an eight-year tenure at Richmond, Va.-based Bon Secours Richmond Health System, which he joined through an administrative fellowship following his 2012 graduate studies. Mr. McCleary has received the “Distinguished Recognition Award” from America’s Blood Centers.
Jake Mellmer. Vice President of Operations at Sanford Health Bismarck (N.D.). Mr. Mellmer leads more than 500 employees, including 69 physicians, 64 advanced practice providers and 236 nurses, representing the largest span of clinical leadership within Sanford Health’s Bismarck region. He oversees all primary care operations across 17 clinics, along with all rural clinic locations across central and western North Dakota, directing strategic planning to expand access in underserved communities. Over the past five years, clinic volumes under Mr. Mellmer have increased by nearly 22%, while urgent care patient encounters have risen more than 15% and reached record volumes in 2025. He has led the development of new rural access points, including a new clinic and a new site under development. Mr. Mellmer also championed an initiative to place a behavioral health counselor in every primary care clinic in the region, expanding access to behavioral health support. Under his leadership, Sanford Bismarck was named a 5-star hospital by Forbes in 2026, was included on Newsweek‘s “World’s Best Hospitals” list in 2025 and ranked No. 2 among North Dakota hospitals by U.S. News & World Report in 2025. Mr. Mellmer is also active in the community, volunteering with the Pursuit Wrestling Club, St. Mary’s High School Wrestling and the Bismarck Sanford Health Foundation.
Steve Meth. Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore). Mr. Meth joined Johns Hopkins Medicine in June 2023 as vice president and chief experience officer, leading patient- and family-centered care efforts across the health system. He and his team implemented a low-cost, high-touch post-acute care discharge phone call process that has produced statistically significant improvements in Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems scores and reductions in preventable 30-day readmissions. Mr. Meth doubled utilization of Epic MyChart Bedside in the emergency department, helping raise emergency department patient experience scores. He has partnered with hospitalists, emergency providers and nursing leaders to host high-stress communication workshops that have reached more than 300 participants, who report greater confidence approaching emotionally charged patient and family encounters. In 2024, Mr. Meth was appointed to the federal Partnership for Quality Measurement’s pre-rulemaking measure review clinician committee recommendation group, which recommends quality measures for use in CMs quality programs. Under his leadership, Johns Hopkins Medicine has achieved double-digit improvements in nationwide percentile rankings for patient experience. Before joining the system, he served as CXO for both Danbury, Conn.-based Nuvance Health and Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare.
Stephen Miller. Chief of Operations at USC Norris Cancer Hospital (Los Angeles). Mr. Miller serves as chief of operations for USC Norris Cancer Hospital, where he leads a multiyear initiative to align clinic locations and services, including oncology, hematology, surgery and radiation therapy, across Keck Medicine of USC’s cancer service line. During his tenure, Keck Medicine of USC, including USC Norris Cancer Hospital, received the “LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leader” designation from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2026 healthcare equality index. Mr. Miller also served on the leadership committee for Blood Cancer United’s 2026 “Visionaries of the Year” campaign, which raised nearly $1 million for blood cancer research, patient services and advocacy. Before joining Keck Medicine, he was executive director of clinical operations at Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai, overseeing the cancer center clinics, infusion center, and academic and research operations for radiation oncology. He also held progressive leadership roles at Duarte, Calif.-based City of Hope, including director of service line operations. Mr. Miller is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and serves on the Society for Radiation Oncology Administrators’ board of directors, along with the Association of Cancer Executives, Blood Cancer United and the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Catherine Mims, MD. Vice President and Associate Chief Physician Executive of Ambulatory Practice at OU Health (Oklahoma City, Okla.). Dr. Mims oversees ambulatory operations across approximately 70 clinics at OU Health, Oklahoma’s only comprehensive academic health system, while also serving as program director of the combined internal medicine-pediatrics residency program. Since assuming ambulatory executive leadership in 2023, Dr. Mims has helped lead a transformation in patient access that increased annual ambulatory visits from approximately 650,000 to more than 945,000, with the system on track to exceed 1 million visits annually. Dr. Mims has driven access-focused initiatives including online scheduling, a fast pass program and e-consults, alongside Epic implementation and optimization. Dr. Mims has also advanced value-based care strategies, improved cancer screening metrics and co-led the organization’s managed Medicaid transition. Promoted to vice president and associate chief physician executive in 2025, Dr. Mims now co-chairs the community partnership allocation governance committee and the OU Health Partners board operations committee. Dr. Mims continues to practice medicine and lead physician education as residency program director, and she played a significant role in the acquisition and integration of a $40 million ophthalmology practice. Dr. Mims has been recognized as a 405 Magazine “Top Doctor” and received the internal “Outstanding Pediatric Faculty Award” and “Best Outpatient Teaching Physician” honors.
Mark Moeremans. CEO at Spectrum Medical Care Center (Phoenix). Mr. Moeremans leads Spectrum Medical Care Center, one of Arizona’s longest-standing LGBTQ+ healthcare providers, overseeing a team of more than 40 clinicians and staff across primary and specialty care services. At 36 years old, he is driving Spectrum’s growth strategy, including development of a new 22,000-square-foot facility that will triple exam capacity and house an independent pharmacy. He is also championing the “Full-Spectrum Queer Gyno Care Initiative,” a first-of-its-kind program addressing care gaps for queer women and gender-expansive individuals. Mr. Moeremans has expanded access to HIV prevention services such as PrEP and PEP, growing two mobile health units, and scaling a PrEP navigation program that helps patients move from education to initiation. In 2025, Spectrum conducted 216 community events, performed more than 1,000 HIV tests and distributed more than 118,000 condoms throughout the Phoenix metro area through its mobile clinic. He has publicly shared his own experience receiving Yeztugo, a long-acting HIV prevention injection, drawing media coverage including a segment with Fox 10 Phoenix and coverage in The Arizona Republic. Prior to joining Spectrum Medical, Mr. Moeremans served as CEO and managing director of The Journey Venture Studio and senior vice president of entrepreneurship and venture development at the Arizona Commerce Authority.
Robyn Morrissey. Chief Strategy Officer at Ascension Saint Thomas (Nashville, Tenn.). Ms. Morrissey leads strategic planning, market development and long-term growth initiatives for Ascension Saint Thomas, one of Tennessee’s largest integrated health systems. She works across hospitals, ambulatory sites and physician partnerships to expand access to care, strengthen clinical service lines and guide capital planning throughout Middle Tennessee. Before her current role, Ms. Morrissey served as chief strategy officer for Ascension’s ambulatory surgery centers, helping shape growth strategy for one of the nation’s largest ambulatory surgery platforms. Earlier, as system vice president for the neurosciences service line, she led systemwide efforts to improve care delivery and strengthen physician alignment across multiple markets. Ms. Morrissey was named to the Nashville Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list in recognition of her professional accomplishments and regional influence. During her tenure, Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital was ranked a top 10 hospital in Tennessee by U.S. News & World Report‘s for 2026-27, while Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital West was named one of Newsweek‘s “Best-in-State Hospitals” for 2026.
Naomi Murphy. Associate Vice President of Revenue Realization at Montefiore Einstein (Bronx, N.Y.). Ms. Murphy leads revenue cycle operations across multiple Montefiore Einstein facilities as associate vice president of revenue realization, with oversight of billing operations, accounts receivable and denial management, cash posting and correspondence management. She has led strategic initiatives to optimize revenue capture, improve billing accuracy and timeliness, and implement best-practice workflows and technology solutions that reduce errors and streamline operations. Ms. Murphy has also partnered with cross-functional departments to implement automation solutions that reduce manual work, improve efficiency and lower the cost to collect. Ms. Murphy previously served as senior director of revenue recovery at Montefiore and as assistant vice president of revenue cycle at Mount Sinai Medical Center of Florida in Miami.
Brianne Neuburger Simon. Vice President of UHealth Operations and Chief of Staff at University of Miami Health System. Ms. Neuburger Simon helps drive enterprise strategy execution, operational alignment and performance for the University of Miami Health System. As a strategic advisor to the CEO, she helps translate institutional priorities into operating plans and governance structures and leads cross-functional initiatives for clinical, academic and administrative operations. Her work includes aligning leaders across growth, workforce, quality, financial performance and digital strategy. She provides oversight of enterprise operations and access strategies supporting 2,200 providers, over 35 sites and 1.3 million annual outpatient visits. She leads health system access transformation, including scheduling optimization, capacity expansion and performance governance, and helps advance AI-enabled operational initiatives for access, scheduling, demand forecasting, workforce productivity and patient experience. She develops enterprise scorecards and standardized operating models to strengthen accountability and scalability. During her career at UHealth, she has held progressively senior roles spanning performance excellence, ambulatory operations, human resources and enterprise leadership. She was chief of staff at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and interim CHRO. A certified Six Sigma Black Belt, she taught process improvement at University of Miami Herbert Business School and Miller School of Medicine. She serves on the South Florida Hospital & Healthcare Association board and was named a South Florida Business Journal “40 Under 40” honoree for 2026.
Jordan Ottoson. Vice President of Operations at Sanford Health’s North Network (Fargo, N.D.). Mr. Ottoson serves as vice president of operations for Sanford Health’s North Network within the Fargo Region, providing executive leadership for rural clinics and critical access hospitals across northwestern Minnesota and eastern North Dakota. In 2023, he helped launch Sanford Health’s first virtual satellite clinic in Lidgerwood, N.D., a model combining in-person nursing support with virtual provider visits to expand access to primary, urgent and specialty care. Mr. Ottoson also led the opening of the new Sanford Edgeley Clinic and is guiding expansion efforts in Hawley and Breckenridge, Minn. After a catastrophic flood damaged Sanford’s Jamestown 5th Avenue Clinic, he coordinated the relocation of affected services and used the disruption to redesign workflows and improve service integration. He has also strengthened Sanford Health’s Epic Connect partnerships, helping independent and affiliated organizations achieve seamless EHR integration and improved care coordination. Under his leadership, teams in the North Network have achieved some of the highest employee engagement scores in the organization. Prior to his current role, Mr. Ottoson served as director of clinic operations for three of Sanford Health’s clinics from 2010 to 2018 and previously held a hospital leadership role at North Country Health Services in Bemidji, Minn.
Kayla Parcelluzzi. System Director of Health Equity and Access at TMC Health (Tucson, Ariz.). Ms. Parcelluzzi leads enterprisewide initiatives to improve access, equity, patient experience, regulatory compliance and quality across TMC Health. Ms. Parcelluzzi oversees strategy for language access, accessibility, patient rights, Americans with Disabilities Act compliance, patient advocacy, grievance management and community engagement. Ms. Parcelluzzi led a multidisciplinary “Quality Sprint” that produced measurable improvements within 30 days, uniting physicians, nurses, quality leaders, pharmacists and infection prevention specialists to strengthen mortality performance, infection prevention, Foley catheter utilization, surgical site infection reduction and congestive heart failure care. Ms. Parcelluzzi redesigned the health system’s language access and accessibility program through a partnership with the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing, working directly with the local deaf community to reshape policies, workflows and education. Ms. Parcelluzzi also built one of TMC Health’s first comprehensive health equity and section 1557 programs, establishing governance structures, policies and operational processes for the system. Ms. Parcelluzzi rose to her current post after serving as manager of patient relations, manager of patient relations and patient experience, and director of patient experience at TMC Health.
Jai Patel. Associate Vice President of Translational Research at Advocate Health (Charlotte, N.C.). Dr. Patel provides strategic oversight across translational research and shared-resource infrastructure spanning Advocate Health’s two cancer center campuses, working to unify the research enterprises of Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute and Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center. As associate director of shared resource management for the system’s National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, he oversees nine shared research cores and led the shared resources management section of the center’s NCI cancer center support grant. Dr. Patel has led the systemwide implementation of DPYD genotyping for fluoropyrimidine therapy, an initiative credited with reducing severe treatment-related toxicities, hospitalizations and health care costs, and which earned the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists’ “Best Practice” and “Literature” awards. He has authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, editorials and abstracts, and holds a pending National Institutes of Health grant on universal DPYD genetic screening across dozens of community-based cancer centers. Dr. Patel serves in national leadership roles for Standardizing Laboratory Practices in Pharmacogenomics and the Pharmacogenomics Global Research Network, and has delivered more than 60 invited lectures and keynote presentations. His honors include the “Double Helix Award for Excellence in Advancing Pharmacogenomics Through Collaboration,” a “40 under 40” award from Value-Based Cancer Care and a “30 under 30” award from Charlotte Agenda.
Samir Patel, MD. Vice President, Associate Chief Medical Officer and Executive Clinician at Saint Francis Health System (Tulsa, Okla.). Dr. Patel serves as vice president, associate chief medical officer and executive clinician at Saint Francis Health System. In addition, he is chief medical officer of Saint Francis Hospital Muskogee (Okla.), where he directs clinical operations, quality, safety and administrative performance for the large community acute care facility. He also provides systemwide executive clinical oversight of hospital medicine, managing enterprise operations for more than 110 clinicians across multiple campuses and directly supervising four hospital site medical directors and the system quality medical director. Dr. Patel maintains a front-line perspective as an executive clinician hospitalist, bridging administrative policy with daily patient care. He has spearheaded service line expansions that significantly grew regional market share while maintaining strong length-of-stay and mortality metrics despite a complex case mix index. He also launched a transitional care clinic and post-discharge strategies to reduce readmissions and improve value-based care performance. Under his leadership, Saint Francis Hospital Muskogee earned the “Everest Award” from Premier and a CMS 4-star rating two years in a row, while the health system ranked in the top three nationally among medium-size systems by PINC AI Premier for 2025 and 2026. Before joining Saint Francis, Dr. Patel served as associate chief medical director at Texas Health Huguley Hospital in Burleson, Texas and as vice president of the North Texas Chapter of the Society of Hospital Medicine.
Ryan Patton. Vice President of Carson Tahoe Health Physicians Clinic at Carson Tahoe Health (Carson City, Nev.). Mr. Patton oversees the strategic, operational and financial performance of Carson Tahoe Health’s employed physician enterprise and ambulatory care network, spanning primary care, urgent care, specialty care, surgical clinics and oncology services across Northern Nevada. He has worked exclusively in healthcare for more than 20 years, progressing through leadership roles focused on physician enterprise operations and ambulatory care growth. Before joining Carson Tahoe Health three years ago, Mr. Patton served as vice president of practice operations for Dallas-based Steward Health Care, overseeing physician group operations for hundreds of providers across a tri-state region spanning Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. Since his arrival, the number of employed providers within Carson Tahoe Health’s medical group has grown 28%, expanding access to primary and specialty care throughout the region. Mr. Patton has also helped deliver millions of dollars in year-over-year financial improvements for the physician enterprise through initiatives targeting operational efficiency and clinic performance. He is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, serves on the board of the Boys & Girls Club of Western Nevada and was named its “Nevada Area Council Liaison of the Year” in 2025.
Ganesh Persad. Vice President and CIO at Cottage Health (Santa Barbara, Calif.). Mr. Persad serves as vice president and CIO at Cottage Health, where he leads the organization’s information systems strategy as a member of the executive leadership team. He oversees the transformation and implementation of technology solutions across the health system and directs both strategic and tactical IT planning. Mr. Persad brings more than 20 years of experience in healthcare information management, with expertise in digital transformation, clinical systems and enterprise technology rollouts aimed at improving patient and workforce experience. He previously served as corporate director of digital patient experience and transformation at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta. Mr. Persad is the past president of the South Florida chapter of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
Victoria Pocknell, PhD. Area Director of Psychological Services at Hartgrove Behavioral Health System and Garfield Park Behavioral Hospital (Chicago). Dr. Pocknell serves as area director of psychological services for two psychiatric systems of care in Chicago, Hartgrove Behavioral Health System and Garfield Park Behavioral Hospital. She is certified in dialectical behavior therapy, a nationally approved clinical supervisor and a recognized health service psychologist. Dr. Pocknell oversees psychological assessment and therapy services delivered by counselors, psychologists and a psychometrist across inpatient, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs, tracking symptom reduction scores to measure clinical impact. She serves as clinical lead for four specialty programs, including trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and DBT services for children, adolescents and adults, as well as gender-affirming care for LGBTQ+ pre-adolescents and adolescents. Dr. Pocknell also oversees five training programs for psychology and social work graduate students, and personally supervises doctoral-level psychology students each year. She was awarded the 2023 Association of Chicagoland Externship and Practicum Training “Outstanding Clinical Supervisor Award,” launched a bachelor’s-level psychology and social work externship program in May 2026, and co-created Hartgrove’s 16-bed neuro-resiliency program, an inpatient DBT unit. Under her leadership, the hospital systems’ trauma-focused inpatient, partial hospitalization program and intensive outpatient program now serves nearly half of all admitted patients.
David Price. Executive Director of Patient Access and Financial Services at City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.). Mr. Price oversees enterprisewide patient access operations and financial services strategy across City of Hope’s four regional markets in California, Arizona, Illinois and Georgia, leading a 200-plus-employee organization within the $5.5 billion National Cancer Institute-designated academic health system. He led the enterprise ambulatory care model redesign, which reduced provider in-basket burden by 30% while delivering double-digit gains in productivity, visit utilization and cycle time. Mr. Price also standardized intake, navigation and transfer workflows, reducing time-to-first-appointment by four days and increasing identification of clinical trial-eligible patients by 10%. He designed and implemented City of Hope’s enterprise inpatient transfer center, improving emergent oncology transfer throughput by approximately 20% within one year. Mr. Price co-led the health system’s digital front door transformation, implementing automated eligibility verification and referral triage that reduced manual work and scheduling delays by 20% while improving front-end capacity and patient experience by 15%. He also strengthened revenue cycle performance by aligning clinical workflows and documentation standards, reducing preventable denials from approximately 6% to under 2%. Mr. Price supported the operational and financial integration of Cancer Treatment Centers of America following its acquisition by City of Hope, and he co-led a national advocacy effort that contributed to the modernization of FDA blood donation policies.
Matt Pruitt. Vice President of Finance and CFO of Memorial Hermann Health System’s Academic Hospitals (Houston). Mr. Pruitt led the financial strategy for the expansion of Memorial Hermann Cancer Center-Texas Medical Center, an $11.6 million net capital investment that increased infusion bays from 16 to 31, semi-private infusion rooms from four to 23 and exam rooms from 16 to 35 to help cut a referral-to-infusion turnaround that had stretched to 44 days, more than double the 21-day industry standard. Mr. Pruitt shaped a $48.4 million growth plan for Children’s Memorial Hermann focused on pediatric heart care, imaging, infusion, dialysis and oncology infrastructure. He also played a key role in the financial strategy behind an upgrade of Memorial Hermann’s Life Flight fleet, one of the nation’s largest hospital-based aeromedical programs, which completed more than 4,100 missions in 2025 and expanded its reach from a 150-mile to a 250-mile radius. He serves on the board of the Houston chapter of the National Association of Health Services Executives and mentors three to four mentees through the organization, in addition to mentoring five more through Memorial Hermann’s aspiring leader program.
Tauqeer Qazi, MD. Chief Medical Officer at Vernon Health (Viroqua, Wis.). Dr. Qazi serves as chief medical officer of a rural critical access hospital and multi-clinic system in southwestern Wisconsin, where he provides clinical leadership across inpatient, emergency, surgical, obstetric and ambulatory services. He has direct responsibility for more than 60 physicians and advanced practice providers and has held cumulative leadership oversight of more than 100 clinicians across his career. Dr. Qazi oversees clinical quality, patient safety and regulatory compliance, and partners with executive leadership on physician alignment and operational sustainability. He serves as a senior administrative leader within the organization’s ACO and sits on a multi-hospital clinical integration committee guiding alignment with CMS value-based payment models, including the Medicare Shared Savings Program. Before his current role, Dr. Qazi was lead medical director and quality specialist for a national utilization review organization, where he oversaw the work of more than 45 physicians nationwide managing Medicare grievances and appeals. He has expertise in medicine, business, healthcare administration, Lean Sigma Six, health informatics and applied AI in medicine.
Maruf Rahman. Vice President of Population Health at RWJBarnabas Health System (West Orange, N.J.). Mr. Rahman is vice president of population health and community health at RWJBarnabas Health, where he leads systemwide initiatives advancing population health strategy, value-based care transformation and community health programs. Mr. Rahman oversees payer strategy and value-based contracting, care management operations, medical economics and primary care service line development across the system. Mr. Rahman leads the system’s primary care service line, coordinating more than 1,200 primary care physicians who manage more than 400,000 patients under value-based care models. Mr. Rahman manages a department of more than 70 professionals with an annual operating budget exceeding $35 million and oversees a self-funded employee health plan serving more than 45,000 members. Mr. Rahman also developed a systemwide community health worker program addressing social determinants of health, with a strategic plan to deploy more than 120 community health workers across hospitals, outpatient clinics, emergency departments and ambulatory practices. Before joining RWJBarnabas Health, Mr. Rahman served as director of managed care contracting at Molina Healthcare and director of hospital delivery system at Healthfirst.
Eric Risedorph. Director of Revenue Cycle Management Integration and Client Services at Parkview Health (Fort Wayne, Ind.). Mr. Risedorph is director of RCM integration and client services at Parkview Health, where he provides enterprise leadership across revenue cycle integration and client-facing operations during acquisitions, system transitions and ongoing optimization. Mr. Risedorph leads integration planning for newly acquired entities, coordinating due diligence, change management, workflow standardization and post-go-live stabilization. Mr. Risedorph has standardized billing, coding and registration workflows, coordinated EHR and revenue cycle alignment, and stabilized post-acquisition performance while monitoring key performance indicators for revenue integrity. Mr. Risedorph also leads staffing planning and leadership alignment initiatives during transitions to ensure continuity of service and reduce operational risk. Mr. Risedorph works across payer enrollment strategy and workflow optimization efforts aimed at reducing payment risk and improving cash flow, serving as a connector between operations, technology and executive leadership as Parkview’s revenue cycle capabilities scale.
Amy Robinson, MSN, RN. System Director of Nursing Excellence at BJC HealthCare (St. Louis). Ms. Robinson leads systemwide strategies to advance nursing practice and clinical excellence across BJC HealthCare’s 14 hospitals, influencing the professional practice environment for more than 8,000 nurses. She oversees nursing excellence efforts, including support for Magnet recognition and redesignation across the system’s East Region, which includes two Magnet-designated hospitals, two recognized with Magnet with distinction and three organizations pursuing Magnet designation. Ms. Robinson led St. Louis-based Missouri Baptist Medical Center’s successful pursuit of Magnet with distinction, making it the first adult hospital in Missouri to earn the designation, while also standing up nursing professional governance structures at six hospital service organizations. She led nursing retention efforts at a hospital that produced a more than 6% drop in RN turnover over two years. Ms. Robinson was named “St. Louis Nursing Administrator of the Year” by St. Louis Magazine in 2024 and has been recognized by the March of Dimes for her nursing leadership. She is a two-time published author and is pursuing a PhD at the University of Kansas while continuing to lead systemwide nursing initiatives. Ms. Robinson also serves as a corporate advisor for Lindenwood University’s “Women in Leadership” program and as an advisor for the Alpha Xi Delta chapter at Southern Illinois University.
Brooke Russell. Chief Marketing Officer at Avala (Covington, La.). Ms. Russell leads Avala’s brand, digital, communications and experience strategy, positioning marketing as a driver of enterprisewide growth rather than a support function. She has built marketing frameworks that tie initiatives directly to patient volume, payer mix and long-term brand equity, and has advanced Avala’s digital engagement and “digital front door” capabilities to improve how patients discover and access care. Ms. Russell partners with clinical, operational and executive leaders to align marketing strategy with care delivery and business outcomes across the health system. She previously served as Avala’s executive director of marketing and experience and director of marketing, after roles in marketing and business development at Veriforce. Ms. Russell serves on Avala’s fiduciary committee and is active with the Louisiana Hospital Association. She was recognized as a Northshore “40 Under 40” honoree for her leadership and mentorship of emerging talent.
Nichole Rydahl. Assistant Vice President of Operations at Wellstar Paulding Medical Center (Hiram, Ga.). Ms. Rydahl serves as assistant vice president of operations at Wellstar Paulding Medical Center, where she leads strategic, operational and growth initiatives, including a $300 million expansion that will double the hospital’s inpatient capacity. The project’s first phase, opening in November 2027, will add 56 beds while expanding heart and vascular services and imaging capacity, with another 56 beds to follow by 2029. Ms. Rydahl led research-based planning and the design and execution of the expansion’s eight-story acute care tower and parking deck, and she navigated the regulatory process that secured the project’s certificate of need. She also partnered with Paulding County commissioners to win support for a $200 million bond issuance financing the tower expansion. Under her leadership, extending hours for all imaging modalities increased volumes by 24%, and the addition of a second linear accelerator drove 35% year-over-year growth in oncology patient volume. Wellstar Paulding has achieved the 91st percentile in outpatient consumer engagement and earned Magnet with distinction recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center in 2026, joining a group of only 80 hospitals nationwide. The hospital, which became the first in Georgia to receive the “Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award” from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2020, has held an “A” Leapfrog hospital safety grade since spring 2023, one of just 19 Georgia hospitals to do so in the most recent cycle.
Danielle Sample. Chief of Staff at University of Utah Health (Salt Lake City). Ms. Sample is a driving force behind systemwide transformation at University of Utah Health, the only academic health center in Utah and the Mountain West, encompassing five hospitals, 12 community clinics, 2.5 million annual patient visits, 30,000 employees, a $6.2 billion expense budget and $579 million in research funding. As chief of staff to the executive vice president for health sciences and CEO of University of Utah Health, she is leading one of the most ambitious integration efforts in the system’s history, including a 730,000-square-foot hospital and health campus under development in West Valley City, Utah, projected to create more than 1,200 jobs and expand access in one of the state’s most underserved communities. As executive sponsor for systemwide transformation goals, Ms. Sample led a goal-setting process across nearly 30 medical school departments and University of Utah institutes, synthesizing submissions into five shared strategic themes spanning clinical care, research and education. The effort connected organizational priorities with leadership review, operational planning and performance incentives across three historically distinct missions. She also restructured executive governance, translating long-term strategy into measurable annual priorities systemwide. Ms. Sample extends her reach on the national stage, organizing the Health Summit at Sundance, an annual convening of influential health care thinkers, elevating the health system’s role in innovation, access and workforce.
Luke Schademan, BSN, RN. Vice President of Operations for MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center (Laguna Hills, Calif.). Mr. Schademan, who will take on this new role Sept. 27, has been part of the medical center team for nine years, serving in a variety of clinical and operational leadership roles. He currently is executive director of critical care and neurosciences, overseeing emergency services, intensive care, neurosciences, stroke program and other clinical and support services. As vice president of operations, he will provide executive leadership for food and nutrition, hospice, imaging, rehabilitation services, social services and volunteer services, with lab services and pharmacy services to follow. In his new role, Mr. Schademan will help guide hospitalwide operational planning and performance, working closely with leaders, physicians and team members to advance strategic priorities, improve operational effectiveness and support delivery of safe, high-quality care. A thoughtful and collaborative leader who understands both the clinical and operational challenges facing the medical center, he has earned the trust of physicians, leaders and team members across the organization through his ability to listen, build strong partnerships and lead through change. Mr. Schaedman is a certified Lean leader and received the “Emerging Nurse Leader Award” from the Association of California Nurse Leaders. While conducting a search for his successor, he will continue to serve in his current role.
Ashley Schweid. Senior Director of Tallwood Urology and Kidney Institute at Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare. Ms. Schweid serves as senior director of Hartford HealthCare’s Tallwood Urology & Kidney Institute, where she helps lead strategy, operations, growth and program development for the organization’s urologic and kidney specialty programs. She joined Hartford HealthCare as an administrative fellow in 2018 and advanced through the Tallwood Institute as program manager and director before being promoted to senior director in 2024. Ms. Schweid works alongside physician and administrative leaders to expand access to specialized urologic and kidney care and coordinate programs across Hartford HealthCare’s statewide network. She is involved with the Connecticut Association of Healthcare Executives and healthcare innovation forums. During her tenure, Hartford HealthCare has been named a Great Place to Work in 2026 and received the American Hospital Association’s “Quest for Quality” prize in 2025.
Michael Slisz. Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer at Novant Health–Charlotte (N.C.) Region. Dr. Slisz oversees clinical operations across seven medical facilities as chief clinical officer of Novant Health’s Charlotte region, partnering with hospital and regional leaders to advance quality, safety and physician engagement. Dr. Slisz led the launch of the Charlotte Transfer and Operations Center, which standardized transfer processes and improved patient throughput and placement across the region. Under Dr. Slisz’s leadership, three of the region’s hospitals earned CMS 5-star ratings and two more earned 4-star ratings, reflecting sustained quality performance across the market. Dr. Slisz also led a systemwide “Boarding Safely” initiative that reduced mortality and length of stay for patients awaiting inpatient placement amid capacity constraints. Dr. Slisz spearheaded an enterprise glycemic management transformation, transitioning 18 facilities and more than 100 clinicians to a Novant Health-developed protocol that generated approximately $1 million in annual savings and implemented 29 systemwide standardized order sets. Dr. Slisz provides oversight for seven facilities and 1,336 beds in Novant Health’s largest and fastest-growing market, and chairs the system’s enterprise transfer council and continuing medical education committee. Dr. Slisz also serves as a board member for MEDIC, Charlotte’s 911 emergency medical service.
Matt Smith. COO of Mercy Hospital South (St. Louis). Mr. Smith serves as COO of Mercy Hospital South, a 757-bed hospital in St. Louis that includes a 72-bed inpatient behavioral health hospital and a multispecialty clinic with more than 200 providers, and that operates as a level 2 trauma center, level 1 ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction treatment center and comprehensive stroke center. He is responsible for enterprise net revenue of more than $800 million, with direct oversight of the emergency department, operating room, facilities, pharmacy, lab, food and nutrition services, and primary, specialty and ambulatory care operations, as well as contract management, acquisitions and construction. Mr. Smith led the 2019 construction of a freestanding emergency room in Oklahoma City and became an early project leader in 2023 for the Kathryn Ann Meinders Digestive Health Institute there, and he is now leading a Mercy Hospital South emergency room expansion set to be complete in 2027. In fiscal year 2026, he led Mercy South to a $31 million improvement in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization over the prior year and 22% annual growth in surgery and imaging modalities. He also led a health systemwide redesign of the referral intake process for specialty clinics. Mr. Smith serves as Mercy’s lead for access and network integrity and chairs the health system’s robotic committee, and he sits on the boards of Mercy Rehabilitation Hospital in St. Louis and the Fenton Chamber of Commerce.
Kara Spanswick. Vice President of Operations at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg (Bethlehem, Pa.). Ms. Spanswick oversees day-to-day operations at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg, a 247-bed hospital that includes 195 acute care beds and 52 inpatient behavioral health beds, with accountability for hospital performance, strategic initiatives, facilities and capital planning, and financial sustainability. She designed and implemented the broader system’s advanced spine patient pathway, including access strategy, care coordination and the activation of new physical locations. Ms. Spanswick also led multiple initiatives focused on safe opioid weaning and championed multi-institutional, grant-funded partnerships with Stanford that advanced innovation and best-practice adoption. In 2026, she led three hospitals to their first-ever “Titanium”-level wins in the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania “Gift of Life Challenge,” uniting teams around organ donation awareness and performance improvement. Ms. Spanswick previously served as assistant vice president of clinician compensation and employment agreements at Allentown, Pa.-based Lehigh Valley Health Network, where she led strategic planning for approximately $750 million in annual compensation investment. Earlier in her career, she held progressive leadership roles at the system’s orthopedic institute, and at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and Children’s National, both in Washington, D.C. Ms. Spanswick received the Lehigh Valley Health Network’s “Guldin Award for Efficiency and Innovation” in 2023 and was named a 2026 “40 Under 40” honoree by City & State Pennsylvania.
Tyler Stapp. CEO at Trego County Lemke Memorial Hospital (WaKeeney, Kan.). Mr. Stapp became CEO of Trego County Lemke Memorial Hospital in June 2026. At 27, this makes him one of the nation’s youngest rural hospital CEOs. In the role, Mr. Stapp oversees all hospital operations, works with the board of trustees on strategic priorities, and manages financial performance and regulatory compliance. Mr. Stapp began his health care career in ancillary roles before working as a certified nursing assistant, then was named assistant administrator at Pineville (Ky.) Community Health Center at 23 and promoted to COO at 25. As Pineville’s COO, Mr. Stapp helped lead an operational and financial turnaround, expanding service lines including orthopedic surgery, general surgery, urology, cardiac rehabilitation, infusion therapy, geriatric behavioral health, palliative care and outpatient pharmacy. Mr. Stapp also oversaw major facility expansion and modernization projects and strengthened provider recruitment efforts before concluding his service at Pineville. Mr. Stapp is now focused on establishing himself in the Trego County community, and is addressing limited local housing availability as both a challenge and a potential development opportunity.
Kayla Sutton. Executive Director of Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital (Baltimore). Ms. Sutton serves as executive director of patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, leading a multidisciplinary team of more than 25 clinical and non-clinical professionals and overseeing operational and foundation-funded budgets totaling approximately $6.7 million. She designed and implemented the hospital’s “Zero Harm” program, which achieved a greater than 15% reduction in hospital-acquired conditions in its first year. Ms. Sutton also created the hospital’s “Health Disparities Elimination Program” and its “Blood Transfusion Safety Officer” program. She previously served as chief of staff for administration and executive liaison to the board of trustees, advising the hospital president and guiding governance activities across eight corporate entities. Ms. Sutton has led the hospital’s participation in U.S. News & World Report and Leapfrog quality initiatives; under her tenure, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital ranked No. 1 in Florida on U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” list in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, earned Leapfrog “Top Children’s Hospital” recognition in 2022 and 2024, and achieved Magnet redesignation in 2024. In 2025 and 2026, she presented at national conferences including the Armstrong Institute Quality, Safety and Service Summit, the Pediatric Quality and Safety Symposium, the Press Ganey Pediatric Summit and the Mid-Atlantic Patient Safety Center Conference.
Ruchika Talwar, MD. Medical Director of Episodes of Care Population Health at Vanderbilt Health (Nashville, Tenn.). Dr. Talwar leads the operationalization and scaling of MyHealth Bundles, a value-based bundled payment program at Vanderbilt Health, and has overseen its expansion to regional Vanderbilt facilities. Through December 2025, more than 11,000 patients had participated in MyHealth Bundles across various specialty bundles, collectively reducing out-of-pocket spending by $3.4 million while self-insured employers saved an average of $1.4 million annually from the highest-volume bundles. Under her leadership, the program cut average wait times for cochlear implants from 152 days to two days, reduced diabetes-related spending by 40% and decreased C-section rates by nearly 5% compared with market benchmarks. Dr. Talwar also maintains an active clinical practice as a urologic oncologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, performing robotic and open urologic cancer surgery, and consults for other health systems seeking to replicate the bundled-payment model. She held the H. Logan Holtgrewe Legislative Fellowship, working on Capitol Hill to advise on health legislation, and has served as chair of the American Urological Association’s residents and fellows committee. Her research on drug pricing and value transformation, including a study evaluating cost-saving opportunities through the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company model, has been published in JAMA and the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The MyHealth Bundles program’s five-year track record was recently featured in a New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst study, and Dr. Talwar is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Xavier Torres, DNP. Director of Patient Experience and Patient Safety at Midland (Texas) Health. Mr. Torres began his career at Midland Health as a patient care assistant before advancing through the organization to become nurse manager of the progressive care unit, and in 2021 he was named director of patient experience and patient safety. He applies his doctoral-level nursing training to data-driven strategies for improving patient experience, safety culture and quality outcomes. Mr. Torres translates patient feedback, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems performance data, safety data and national benchmarking into strategies for the health system, and he collaborates with accreditation, risk management and regulatory leaders to ensure survey readiness and compliance with DNV, CMS and state regulatory requirements. He also leads root cause analyses, develops improvement plans and coaches executives and providers through disclosure conversations, while championing high reliability principles and just culture practices that encourage caregivers to report safety events. Mr. Torres serves as District 2 director on the board of the Texas Organization for Nursing Leadership and is chair-elect of the Young Professionals of Midland. He was an inaugural recipient of Midland’s “Top 20 Under 40” recognition.
Amanda Valentine. Director of Ambulatory Operations at Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston). Ms. Valentine leads operational standardization, access improvement and performance management across Memorial Hermann Health System’s outpatient service areas at the Texas Medical Center, including the gastrointestinal lab, cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation, gamma knife, radiation oncology, and hyperbaric oxygen and wound care programs. Her work spans referral leakage reduction, provider schedule optimization, staffing ratio frameworks and workflow standardization, including initiatives in Epic optimization, telemedicine, oncology navigation and AI-enabled documentation adoption. Ms. Valentine is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and holds various other healthcare certifications, and she is currently a doctoral student in health policy and management at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. She serves on the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s e-health advisory committee and chairs the American Society for Quality’s master black belt exam committee. Ms. Valentine was named a 2026 Texas Women’s Foundation “Young Leader,” a 2025 Houston Business Journal “Women Who Mean Business honoree and a 2026 Alpha Kappa Alpha South Central Region “40 for 40” honoree.
Michelle Vassallo, BSN, RN. Vice President of Clinical Enterprise Operations at Inova Health System (Fairfax, Va.). Ms. Vassallo is responsible for the strategy and execution of patient access and flow across Inova Health System, Northern Virginia’s leading nonprofit healthcare system. In March 2020, she assumed the role of administrative lead for the system’s Covid-19 coordination center, becoming a trusted voice internally and in the community throughout the pandemic response. Ms. Vassallo joined Inova Fairfax Medical Campus as a staff nurse in the adult emergency department and trauma center in 2007 and rose over nearly 18 years to associate CNO in 2017, a role in which she reported directly to the CNO and partnered with service line vice presidents to advance quality, service, affordability and employee engagement goals. Along the way, she served as nurse manager from 2010 to 2014, clinical director of the adult emergency department and trauma center from 2014 to 2015, then as senior director of nursing beginning in 2015, overseeing emergency services across three sites of care, the adult observation unit, nursing operations and capacity management. Ms. Vassallo was named to Washingtonian Magazine‘s “50 Outstanding Nurses” list in 2021 and received the Healthcare Council of the National Capital Area’s “Employee of the Year” award in 2016.
Pooja P. Vyas, DO. System Vice President for Care Coordination Liaison, Physician and Provider Advisement at SSM Health (St. Louis). Dr. Vyas serves as system vice president for care coordination liaison, physician and provider advisement, unifying care coordination, utilization management, case management, clinical documentation integrity, coding and clinical denials strategy across all SSM Health regions and hospitals. She launched and operationalized a three-tier clinical denials operating rhythm consisting of clinical denials governance, clinical denials workgroup and concurrent denials weekly huddle, thus creating the system’s first systemwide governance structure with defined scope, membership and escalation pathways. Using weekly Microsoft Power BI analytics and mid-month projections, Dr. Vyas’s governance model has produced measurable declines in final denial adjustments and improved performance in authorization denials. She led the unification of SSM Health’s clinical documentation integrity, coding and quality teams around shared 2026 operating plans and standardized key performance indicators, including diagnosis-related group downgrades, complication or comorbidity and major complication or comorbidity capture, documentation accuracy and denial overturn rate. Dr. Vyas developed Epic-based physician documentation training to strengthen diagnosis related group accuracy, coding integrity and denial prevention, and she coaches regional associate vice presidents on strategic communication and system-level leadership. She also publishes on payer policy, administrative burden and negotiation strategy, representing SSM Health in payer relations, regulatory discussions and national forums.
Ana Sofia Warner, MD. Associate Chief of Value-Based Care at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Warner has driven transformational change in clinical operations, quality improvement and financial performance since joining Boston Medical Center in 2022. As the hospital’s former associate medical director of population health, she designed and implemented the “Hospital reAdmission Reduction Program,” a transition-of-care program for high-risk patients that helped reduce Medicare readmissions. As associate chief of the medical center’s value-based care program, Dr. Warner oversees chronic disease management programs including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic kidney disease, and partners with the cardiology department on care for patients with congestive heart failure. Under her leadership, the chronic kidney disease program has achieved more than $500,000 in cost savings, while CMS stars ratings climbed from one to five stars for the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease program and from three to five stars for the congestive heart failure program. Dr. Warner also provides clinical care to patients in Boston Medical Center’s Women’s Health primary care group, part of the Belkin Breast Health Center. Dr. Warner previously served as the system’s medical director of value-based care and associate medical director of primary care and general internal medicine. She serves as an assistant professor at Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and is a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and Boston Medical Center’s clinical equity and vitality advisory committee.
Taylor Warwick. COO of Mercy Hospital Springfield (Mo.). Ms. Warwick serves as COO of Mercy Hospital Springfield, a $2 billion community that includes more than 200 clinics, 1,000 integrated providers and more than 9,000 caregivers. She has led the opening of more than a dozen clinics across her career, including large multispecialty clinics, convenient care, urgent care and imaging centers. She previously led the acquisition of an ambulatory surgery center and several multi-specialty clinics, freestanding imaging centers, and urgent care and sports medicine services with more than 20 providers and 100 staff. Under Ms. Warwick’s leadership, Mercy Hospital Springfield’s net patient service revenue has grown 8.5% year-over-year while labor costs decreased by more than $5 million, and the hospital has seen more than 10% growth in surgical volume and more than 20% growth in imaging volume over the past two years. She led the implementation of a partnership to develop a more robust laborist program and change the delivery of anesthesia services at Mercy Springfield. Ms. Warwick has participated in Mercy’s mentoring program for the past decade, including as a reverse mentor early in her career, and serves on the boards of the Downtown Council of Champions in Springfield, Mo., and Springfield Innovation Inc. She is a fellow of the American Hospital Association.
Amanda Welch. Vice President and COO at UVA Health Haymarket (Va.) Medical Center. Ms. Welch oversees hospital operations and strategic initiatives to improve patient access, quality and experience as COO of UVA Health Haymarket Medical Center. Over a two-year period, she helped increase operating margin by 4%, drive a 17% increase in perioperative revenue and a 9% increase in radiology revenue, while reducing contract labor costs by 86%. Under her leadership, employee engagement scores rose from 3.88 to 4.13 with a 95% participation rate within her first two years. Ms. Welch developed a multidisciplinary onboarding structure that supported the launch of new surgical specialties, including surgical oncology, breast oncology, colorectal surgery and plastic surgery. She also expanded emergency department surge capacity by five beds and established a collaborative equipment replacement committee to improve implementation timelines and provider satisfaction. The hospital has earned multiple American Heart Association “Get With The Guidelines” awards under her tenure, including recognitions for ST-elevation myocardial infarction, stroke and Type 2 diabetes care, along with three resuscitation excellence awards. Ms. Welch also led UVA Health’s first aid support efforts for the 2024 Ladies Professional Golf Association Solheim Cup, coordinating volunteers and emergency response partners while developing a playbook for future large-scale events.
Josiah Wells. COO of Parkview Regional Medical Center and Affiliates at Parkview Health (Fort Wayne, Ind.). Mr. Wells is COO of Parkview Regional Medical Center and Affiliates at Parkview Health, overseeing day-to-day operations for the system’s flagship Parkview Regional Medical Center, Parkview Randallia, the Parkview Southwest outpatient center and the Parkview Behavioral Health Institute. Mr. Wells has risen through Parkview’s leadership ranks since joining in 2015 as a site supervisor, advancing through practice manager, director and vice president of operations roles before being named COO of the medical center and then COO of Parkview Regional Medical Center and Affiliates in September 2025, at age 36. Mr. Wells is a key leader on the ongoing $45 million renovation of Parkview Randallia Hospital to bring the Parkview Behavioral Health Institute inside the hospital’s walls, an 82-room expansion expected to open in January 2027. Mr. Wells also served as operational leader for Parkview’s $100 million South Tower expansion, which opened in August 2020 as the system treated 70% of the region’s Covid-19 patients and will add a final 25 beds in November for a total of 160 new beds, including a dedicated 14-bed hospice unit. Mr. Wells assisted with the opening of the $65 million Parkview Southwest campus in fall 2023 and serves as executive sponsor for length-of-stay reduction efforts that have cut length of stay by 10% over the past three years. Under his leadership, the medical center has earned straight “A” Leapfrog hospital safety grades and ranked No. 6 in Indiana on U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals” list, while Parkview Randallia has received “A” grades on both of its first two safety report cards. Randallia is also completing six new postpartum beds and a new level 2 neonatal ICU with 12 private rooms, further expanding maternal and newborn care capacity.
Drew Wilkinson. Vice President of Provider and Ambulatory Operations at Boone Health (Columbia, Mo.). Mr. Wilkinson oversees the performance, strategy and daily operations of a network of more than 160 employed providers across primary care, specialty care and hospital-based services as vice president of provider and ambulatory operations at Boone Health. He leads physician and advanced practice provider recruitment and retention efforts and drives the health system’s accountable care organization and Medicare Shared Savings Program performance. Mr. Wilkinson standardized clinic workflows and introduced data-driven scheduling management to maximize provider capacity and patient access, and integrated AI-supported tools to reduce administrative burden and improve physician work-life balance. Under his leadership, the ACO and Medicare Shared Savings Program have posted consistent year-over-year gains, nearly doubling shared savings contributions to the health system. He also led a redesign of clinic operations and leadership structure to streamline decision-making and improve accountability across the ambulatory enterprise. Mr. Wilkinson began his career at Boone Health in high school working in nutrition and food services, then after higher education returned and rose to director of laboratory services, then emergency department director overseeing the hospital’s ambulance service.
Christopher G. Wilson, MSN, RN. CNO at NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan (New York City). Mr. Wilson has served as CNO of NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan, a 338-bed academic community hospital, since 2022, overseeing nursing, advanced practice, radiology, laboratory, social services, respiratory care, behavioral health and pastoral care services. Under Mr. Wilson’s leadership, Metropolitan Hospital became the first facility in the world to receive the “Pathway to Excellence with Distinction Award” and earned two “GOLD Beacon Awards” from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses for its neonatal ICU and ICU. Mr. Wilson has reduced agency nursing staff by more than 95%, converting at least 60% of agency nurses to permanent positions, while cutting RN turnover from 28.54% in 2022 to 2.26% in 2025. Mr. Wilson expanded the hospital’s education department from two to 14 educators, more than half holding PhDs or doctor of nursing practice degrees, and recruited more than 35 nurse leaders while hiring 138 RNs in 2024 alone. Mr. Wilson’s teams also reduced hospital-acquired pressure injuries and catheter-associated urinary tract infections by more than 75% and increased the hospital’s certified nurse rate from roughly 13% to 40%. Mr. Wilson received the 2023 “Claire Murray Best Practice Award” from the New York Association of Nurse Leaders. He is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and serves as vice president of the board of directors for Mazzoni Center, Philadelphia’s largest LGBTQ+ health center.
Rebekah Wright. COO at Springbrook Behavioral Health System (Travelers Rest, S.C.). Ms. Wright serves as COO of Springbrook Behavioral Health, a Joint Commission-accredited psychiatric residential treatment facility, having advanced over a 13-year career from direct care staff to executive leadership. She provides strategic and operational oversight for the organization, leading more than 100 employees across initiatives in quality care, regulatory compliance, financial performance and workforce development. Ms. Wright increased staffing levels by 15%, restructured leadership teams to improve efficiency and accountability, and expanded payer and state partnerships. Through strategic bed reallocation and service optimization, she generated an average annual revenue increase of more than $500,000 while maintaining a strong focus on quality outcomes and patient safety. In 2025, Ms. Wright was named one of Greenville Business Magazine‘s “Best & Brightest Under 35” professionals, and she has also received the South Carolina Business “Top 100 Women” award and the “Women in Leadership Award” from Greenville Business Magazine. Prior to becoming COO, she held roles including mental health associate, director of quality, risk and group living director, and director of milieu services at Springbrook.
Jessica Yates, DNP, RN. Vice President of Virtual Nursing and Central Telemetry at Advocate Health (Charlotte, N.C.). Ms. Yates serves as vice president of virtual nursing and central telemetry for Advocate Health, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, leading the strategy, growth and operational performance of virtual nursing and centralized telemetry services across Wisconsin, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia and beyond. She previously served as enterprise director of virtual nursing, where she rapidly expanded virtual nursing services to five new sites and 18 acute care units, including the implementation of Wisconsin’s first virtual nursing co-care model. As a hospital nursing leader, Ms. Yates developed predictive workforce management strategies that reduced premium labor utilization and eliminated reliance on contingent staffing, while leading quality improvement efforts that cut patient falls by 30% and sustained more than a year without a catheter-associated urinary tract infection or central line-associated bloodstream infection. She partners with clinical, operational and technology leaders to scale virtual care models and has helped accelerate Advocate Health’s “Room of the Future” nursing strategy. Ms. Yates also serves as an adjunct professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering College of Nursing, mentoring undergraduate and graduate nursing students, and is an elected board member of the Wisconsin Organization of Nurse Leaders. She has presented nationally on nursing innovation and health care technology, including at the American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet Conference.
Other Healthcare Leaders
Dennis Alex, DNP. Director of Market Strategy and Solutions and Business Development at Acentra Health (McLean, Va.). Dr. Alex leads clinical growth and strategy across Medicaid, state and government-sponsored healthcare programs as director of market strategy and solutions, business development at Acentra Health. He brings clinical and operational expertise to complex public-sector programs, tailoring solutions to vulnerable Medicaid populations while helping states improve efficiency. He partners across clinical operations, product development, AI, finance, legal and executive leadership to guide clinical strategy on active bids and long-term product roadmaps. Mr. Alex previously led the New York Independent Practitioner Panel, managing a team of 20 nurse practitioners and physician assistants and integrating face-to-face and telehealth delivery models across New York State. His work has helped Acentra Health secure a 100% contract retention rate in a competitive public-sector market, and he has done consultative work optimizing AI models for clinical solutions. Mr. Alex sharpened his leadership skills as a hospitalist in a Covid-only facility during the height of the pandemic, managing risk and communication under extreme pressure.
John Beadle. Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Aegis Ventures (New York City). Mr. Beadle leads company-creation strategy, health system partnerships, portfolio formation, executive recruiting and capital formation at Aegis Ventures, a venture studio building AI-native healthcare companies with health systems, clinicians and entrepreneurs. Under his leadership, Aegis has launched Ascertain, Caregentic, Avandra, Hume AI, Optain Health and Wavelet, six companies that have collectively raised more than $250 million from investors. Mr. Beadle architected and leads the Aegis Digital Consortium, a collaboration of 14 health systems, including New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care, Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt Health, Pittsburgh-based UPMC, New Orleans-based Ochsner, Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health, Los Angeles-based Keck Medicine of USC and Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare, representing more than $130 billion in operating revenue and roughly 9% of the U.S. health system market. By late 2026, Aegis expects all its companies to have advanced from seed to Series A funding, compared with a 13% industry benchmark, and the firm’s returns have exceeded the 95th percentile for comparable fund vintages. Mr. Beadle was named to Rock Health’s “Top 50 in Digital Health” and Crain’s “Notable Leaders in Healthcare Technology” in 2025.
Michelle Boe. Vice President of Advancement at HealthPartners (Minneapolis). Ms. Boe was promoted in 2025 to the newly created role of vice president of advancement at HealthPartners, where she built a centralized leadership structure spanning all eight foundations, including events, annual giving, stewardship and planned giving. She leads systemwide campaigns, principal and transformational giving, and strategic fundraising for the HealthPartners Institute and TRIA Orthopedics, and brought in more than $15 million in systemwide transformational gifts in her first year in the role. Ms. Boe also serves as executive director of Lakeview Health Foundation, where she has raised $87 million in a year and a half, including the largest gift in HealthPartners history, to fund a new hospital and specialty clinic. She led the campaign’s feasibility study and goal-setting process, recruited a campaign committee of local and statewide leaders, and worked with HealthPartners senior leadership on donor engagement strategy. Ms. Boe implemented a “grateful patient” program and an education initiative for staff and board members, and established a major gift model with tracked performance metrics. She was named a 2026 “40 Under 40” honoree by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.
Lexi Branson. Vice President of Health Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Washington, D.C.). Ms. Branson leads the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Healthcare Policy Center, which she founded, overseeing national policy strategy, advocacy and membership engagement across employer-provided coverage, healthcare affordability, innovation and consumer health. Before she built the center, no dedicated healthcare policy function existed there, and she established it as a hub for policy development, thought leadership and advocacy. Under her leadership, the center launched the inaugural “America’s Health Advantage” Summit, which drew nearly 600 attendees including senior executives, federal policymakers and healthcare innovators. Ms. Branson also serves as executive lead of the Protecting Americans’ Coverage Together coalition, which she has grown through new investments and expanded stakeholder participation. She previously served in the White House public liaison and presidential personnel offices, as deputy vice president of advocacy at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and as director of federation relations and chamber programs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Her work has generated new sponsorship and membership investment for the Chamber and expanded engagement among employers, health plans, providers and trade associations around common healthcare policy goals.
Karolina Brook, MD. Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at Prenuvo (Redwood City, Calif.). Dr. Brook leads quality strategy across Prenuvo’s expanding international clinical network as it scales its whole-body MRI screening and early disease detection model. Previously at Boston Medical Center, she served as director of quality and safety for the department of anesthesiology and medical director of quality and safety for hospital-based care. There, Dr. Brook created a mandatory anesthesia quality assurance form and a companion Tableau dashboard to track and trend unanticipated events, and she developed an anesthesia-specific reporting module that produced a statistically significant increase in filed safety reports. She also helped improve sepsis bundle compliance through EHR optimization, order sets and clinician recognition programs. Nationally, Dr. Brook has served as vice chair of the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ committee on patient safety and education and has contributed to the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation’s work on safety culture. She has authored dozens of peer-reviewed publications and speaks nationally and internationally on adverse event transparency and just culture. Dr. Brook also mentors residents, fellows and students through a resident quality-improvement curriculum she created.
John Byrnes. COO at Banner|Aetna (Phoenix). Mr. Byrnes serves as COO of Banner|Aetna, an integrated insurer and provider partnership covering more than 400,000 lives across Arizona. Before joining Banner|Aetna in April 2025, Mr. Byrnes spent more than a decade at Aetna and CVS Health, where he led planning and due diligence for a $38 billion acquisition and later led strategic planning for a $650 million consumer health division, building joint venture strategies with five of the largest hospital systems in the country. He was directly involved in post-acquisition integration following the $69 billion CVS Health-Aetna merger and went on to serve as executive director of clinical and network operations, overseeing a $2 billion budget and 16,000 employees. In that role, Mr. Byrnes mobilized a cross-functional team across nine workstreams that produced more than $100 million in medical cost improvements and operational efficiencies over 12 months. Since arriving at Banner|Aetna, Mr. Byrnes has grown membership more than 7% year-over-year, delivered more than $800,000 in operating efficiencies and lifted the organization’s net promoter scores above comparable health plans in the market. He has represented Banner|Aetna in national forums, with his perspectives featured in the American Journal of Managed Care and speaking engagements with the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Kevin Campbell, MD. Co-Founder and CEO at STREAMD (Chicago). Dr. Campbell co-founded STREAMD, a healthcare technology company that uses AI to deliver physician-specific digital care pathways for patient communication, and has served as its CEO for the past 10 years. He has led the platform’s expansion from its orthopedic roots into a multi-specialty tool used by physicians in orthopedics, bariatrics, oncology, cardiothoracic surgery, colorectal surgery and ophthalmology across the U.S., Canada and Australia. Seven academic research studies of STREAMD’s platform have demonstrated reductions in hospital readmissions, emergency department utilization, narcotic consumption and staff call burden, and the platform has surpassed 10 million patient text interactions. Dr. Campbell continues to practice full time as a board-certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon specializing in primary and revision hip and knee replacement at Appleton, Wis.-based Orthopedic and Sports Institute of the Fox Valley, where he also serves as managing physician overseeing the practice’s ambulatory surgery center. He began developing an interest in data and research as a bioengineering research assistant at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo., a focus he has carried into STREAMD’s emphasis on clinical validation. His work has earned him the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ “Innovator of the Year” award, recognition by the Chicago Sun-Times as one of the “Hardest Working Voices in Healthcare,” and a 2026 “40 Under 40” honor from Insight Publications.
Daniel Cawood. Senior Manager of Product Management at MCG Health (Seattle). Mr. Cawood oversees product development for MCG Health’s interoperability solutions supporting clinical authorization processes, after beginning his tenure managing the Indicia suite of hospital clinical decision support and value-based care solutions. He is a frequent thought leader on compliance with the CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization Final Rule, speaking at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and other conferences. Mr. Cawood provided critical market insight that helped shape MCG Path, the company’s flagship compliance solution, which has been adopted by more than 25 payer organizations since launch. In recognition of his work advancing interoperability, he was named a 2023 Health Level Seven “Da Vinci Project Community Champion” for contributions to the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard. He is one of three MCG technology leaders participating in the Da Vinci Project, a collaborative initiative bringing together payer, provider and health IT organizations to advance interoperability. Before joining MCG, Mr. Cawood was a product owner for research and development solutions at Optum Technology and a business architect at UnitedHealthcare, working on provider network operations.
Andrew Chang. National Vice President of Strategic Accounts at Aledade (Bethesda, Md.). Mr. Chang leads growth and partnership strategy for health systems, clinically integrated networks, independent practice associations, critical access hospitals and other enterprise healthcare partners nationwide as national vice president of strategic accounts at Aledade. He structures and negotiates value-based care partnerships that enable providers to succeed in Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial risk arrangements. As market president for Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, Mr. Chang oversaw a portfolio of ACOs and value-based contracts that generated nearly $100 million in cumulative shared savings. He played a central role in launching and scaling accountable care initiatives across Georgia and South Carolina, including helping establish one of the states’ highest-performing ACOs. Mr. Chang transitioned into his national role in 2025 and serves on the board of directors of the Florida Association of Accountable Care Organizations. Aledade generated more than $1 billion in cumulative Medicare savings in 2024 and has grown to support more than 30,000 clinicians and over 2,000 practices nationwide.
Carter Childs. Head of Strategic Partnerships at Revecore (Franklin, Tenn.). Mr. Childs leads Revecore’s partner program, identifying and building partnerships that fill service line gaps with capabilities such as complex claims resolution, zero-balance underpayment identification and denials recovery. In the role, he combines seamless technology integrations with data-driven insights to help partners deliver differentiated value to their mutual hospital customers, aiming for a win-win economic model rather than a traditional alliance. He brings more than 15 years of experience building partner programs, beginning in business development before moving into a channel coordinator role at Navicure, where he generated more than $419,000 in new annual revenue from new partner business. Mr. Childs advanced through increasingly senior channel and partnership roles, including channel manager and senior channel manager for strategic partnerships at Navicure, vice president of strategic channel sales at ClearGage and senior channel manager at LeaseQuery, before becoming director of healthcare channel sales and strategy at Paymentus. Since joining Revecore, he has been credited by leadership with quickly making an impact, and colleagues have described him as a standout partner known for professionalism and relationship-building. Revecore has been named #1 “Best in KLAS for Complex Claims Management” for 2024, 2025 and 2026, and it earned a “Stevie Gold Award” from the American Business Awards in 2026.
Michael Ciullo. Founder and CEO at Nsight Health (Miami). Mr. Ciullo is founder and CEO of Nsight Health, which he built into the fastest-growing remote care company in the U.S., serving more than 110,000 patients across more than 1,600 provider teams nationwide without outside capital. He leads a 437-person organization, including nearly 200 clinical professionals, overseeing six clinically managed remote care programs: remote patient monitoring, chronic care management, principal care management, behavioral health integration, collaborative care model and remote therapeutic monitoring. Under his leadership, Nsight achieved 140% year-over-year revenue growth in 2025 and cumulative revenue growth exceeding 23,000% since 2021, while growing its workforce from 100 to 437 employees in two years. Mr. Ciullo also oversees PRVNT, Nsight’s proprietary AI-powered remote care platform, which integrates with more than 500 EHR systems and processes 362 million automated patient updates per year. The platform’s clinical outcomes include a 49% reduction in critical hypertensive alerts across 11,148 patients, a 72% reduction in critical heart failure indicators within two months, and a sustained average blood glucose reduction of approximately 50 mg/dL over 12 to 18 months. He previously founded Nsure Healthcare Services, an “Inc. 500”-recognized revenue cycle management company, and Nsight has since been named an inaugural preferred services partner of Hippocratic AI and a preferred partner of Elation Health. At 35, Mr. Ciullo has built two nationally recognized healthcare companies.
Corina B. Clark. COO at Donor Network West (San Ramon, Calif.). Ms. Clark serves as COO of Donor Network West, where she oversees operations across the entire donation continuum, including referral intake, family authorization, donor management, organ placement and surgical recovery coordination, ensuring alignment with CMS conditions for coverage. Ms. Clark drives measurable performance improvements in authorization rates, referral conversion, organ yield and case cycle time while overseeing multimillion-dollar operational budgets. She serves as president of the California Association of Healthcare Leaders, the Northern California chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives, and as a Northern California executive board member of the National Association of Health Services Executives. Ms. Clark was named a “Woman of Influence” by the Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2025. Before joining Donor Network West, she served as COO of Gardner Health and as vice president/executive administrator for the San Francisco Health Network. Ms. Clark has also delivered a TEDx talk as part of a broader platform focused on empowering underrepresented executives.
Shelby Delatte. Director of Account Management for Integrated Health Solutions Commercial at Acentra Health (McLean, Va.). Ms. Delatte leads client strategy, account performance and growth initiatives across state, federal and commercial healthcare markets as director of account management, Integrated Health Solutions Commercial at Acentra Health. Over her seven years with the company, she has advanced through multiple leadership roles, including vice president of a high-volume quality and assessments program, before moving into her current position. Ms. Delatte works closely with executive leadership and the board of directors, using market research and industry insights to guide decisions on growth, acquisitions and business performance. She led a major operational improvement initiative that automated Acentra Health’s previously manual independent dispute resolution process, reducing administrative burden, cutting costs and lowering overtime demands. Working with the company’s AI center of excellence, Ms. Delatte championed the adoption of technology-enabled solutions within the quality and assessments business, integrating proprietary tools into existing workflows. She also created standardized client success reporting frameworks and has been appointed for two consecutive years to the selection committee for Acentra Health’s “Lead the Way” award.
Nikole DeVries, RN. Vice President of Hospital and Post-Acute Care Delivery at Inland Empire Health Plan (Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.). Ms. DeVries oversees the strategic direction and operational performance of hospital and post-acute care delivery at Inland Empire Health Plan, leading partnerships with more than 200 hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and post-acute providers. One of the youngest vice presidents in the health plan’s 30-year history, she has overseen the development of dashboards and real-time performance monitoring tools that support care management, business reviews and decision-making across the continuum. Ms. DeVries helped pilot predictive analytics for inpatient care using machine learning, one of health plan’s first uses of machine learning-based inpatient prediction to identify high-risk cases and forecast utilization. Since 2023 she has overseen development of the health plan’s hospital pay-for-performance program, which carries an annual budget of more than $60 million and links financial incentives to quality metrics shared at the regional, state and national level. She also helped launch its first value-based care pilot with a skilled nursing facility, establishing performance incentives tied to quality and cost in the post-acute space. Ms. DeVries chairs the health plan’s hospital and ancillary, skilled nursing facility, and member safety subcommittees, and served as the 2025 vice chair of the American College of Healthcare Executives’ Southern California board of governors committee, mentoring emerging leaders toward fellowship attainment.
Helen Do. Vice President of Managed Care and Payer Contracting for MemorialCare Medical Foundation (Fountain Valley, Calif.). Ms. Do leads the organization’s managed care strategy, contract performance and payor partnerships across commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, health maintenance organization, ACO, direct-to-employer, workers’ compensation and value-based care arrangements. She partners with health plans and executive leadership to advance managed care strategies that improve access, affordability and outcomes. She develops growth strategies and builds collaborative partnerships that create value for patients, providers and health plans. She led onboarding of over 30,000 Covered California members to MemorialCare Medical Foundation, generating over $40 million in incremental revenue while expanding patient access. She led efforts to modernize MemorialCare’s Commercial health maintenance organization and Medicare Advantage agreements, aligning clinical and financial responsibilities with organizations best positioned to manage them while standardizing payment methodologies and strengthening long-term sustainability across health plan partnerships. Expanded responsibilities now include payor partnership and launched MemorialCare’s revenue integrity initiative to strengthen alignment between contract intent and operational execution. By bringing together stakeholders in contracting, finance, operations, analytics and provider relations, she helped optimize contract performance, enhance health plan collaboration and drive measurable financial and operational results. Previously she was executive director of enterprise contracting and payer relations at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Josh Folds. Co-Founder and COO at Pivotal Health (Santa Monica, Calif.). Mr. Folds leads operations, product strategy and development of Pivotal Health’s AI-enabled independent dispute resolution reimbursement platform, which he co-founded in 2023. He has helped build tools that identify eligible claims, optimize reimbursement offers and generate customized position statements from historical and proprietary data. Under his and his co-founder’s leadership, Pivotal processes more than 100,000 independent dispute resolution claims per month and has increased provider reimbursement rates four to five times. Mr. Folds helped integrate AI into Pivotal’s claim position statement builder, raising success rates for submitted claims from 83% to 95% while cutting document generation time by 87%. The company serves more than 200 hospital-based clients nationwide, with an 89% win rate and a 99% client retention rate. At 30, Mr. Folds has previously held product and strategy roles at Canal, Future Motion and FanDuel, and co-founded Hyde Belt Co. Pivotal was named to the Forbes “Cloud 100 Rising Stars” list in 2025.
Jennifer Fonzetti. COO at Mindify Wellness and Care (Toms River, N.J.). Ms. Fonzetti serves as COO of Mindify Wellness and Care, where she oversees operations, strategic growth, patient access, human resources, provider onboarding and business development. She leads workforce planning, recruitment, training, compliance tracking and provider credentialing, and works with clinical leadership to optimize provider utilization, streamline patient scheduling and improve referral conversion rates. Ms. Fonzetti has developed operational reporting systems and performance dashboards that give leadership actionable insight into provider productivity, scheduling efficiency and patient engagement. She has also led business development initiatives establishing strategic partnerships aimed at expanding access to behavioral health care throughout New Jersey. Her organization has received a Global Recognition Award, and she previously held vice president of operations, director of operations and regional director of operations roles earlier in her career. At 39, Ms. Fonzetti has built a track record of scaling operational infrastructure across children’s, adolescent, adult and senior behavioral health services.
Nehal Gheewala, DO. Chief Medical Officer at ClareMedica Health Partners (Miami). Dr. Gheewala serves as chief medical officer of ClareMedica Health Partners, where he leads clinical strategy across 33 senior-focused primary care centers, overseeing care for more than 140,000 Floridians, including 30,000 seniors enrolled in a fully value-based care model. Dr. Gheewala has championed ClareMedica’s deployment of Zio by iRhythm, a continuous AI-powered cardiac monitor that captures up to 14 days of real-time data to catch atrial fibrillation and other arrhythmias, and Creyos, a digital cognitive health assessment tool addressing one of the most underdiagnosed conditions in senior populations. Before joining ClareMedica, Dr. Gheewala spent six years at ChenMed in national clinical and growth strategy roles and later served as senior vice president of clinical strategy at Miami-based Clinical Care Medical Centers and Conviva Senior Primary Care. Under his clinical leadership, ClareMedica has earned Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set quality performance recognition from UnitedHealthcare, CarePlus and Humana and has been named a “Great Place to Work” for two consecutive years. ClareMedica has also received “ACCESS” designation from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration for its work expanding care in historically underserved communities. His clinical philosophy of preserving mobility, minimizing medication burden and managing chronic disease to protect quality of life guides both individual care plans and ClareMedica’s broader clinical strategy.
Megan Gibbs. Director of Customer Success at Michigan Health Information Network (Lansing, Mich.). Ms. Gibbs built and leads the customer success organization at the Michigan Health Information Network, establishing the processes, team structures and operational frameworks that support customer onboarding, implementation and ongoing engagement. She has led efforts to standardize processes, streamline onboarding and create scalable systems that improve consistency across the customer experience. Under her leadership, the network has supported more than $7 million in new annual revenue and achieved more than 1,000 customer go-lives in a single year. Ms. Gibbs is also a member of the Civitas Network’s emerging leaders council, and her work has been recognized with a Civitas “Governance Gold Medalist Community Excellence Award.” Beyond operational results, she has focused on employee development, investing in tools, resources and career growth opportunities for her team.
Jack Gierlich. Chief Marketing Officer at Leal Health (New Jersey). Mr. Gierlich leads growth and marketing strategy at Leal Health, focused on reaching as many people with cancer as possible. He has grown the organization from zero to 300,000 people with cancer served, building a network of more than 7 million. Mr. Gierlich established the company’s marketing strategy and scalable acquisition approach, and he has helped top 10 enterprise pharmaceutical companies meet their clinical recruitment goals. He also serves as a founding advisor of Actually Health and a marketing advisor for Glimpse. Leal Health has been recognized among Fast Company‘s “Most Innovative Companies” and in Forbes during his tenure. Before Leal Health, Mr. Gierlich founded Ferus Solutions.
Sandeep Gupta. Co-Founder and President at Innovaccer (San Francisco). Mr. Gupta co-founded Innovaccer in 2014 and has served as the operational architect behind its growth from a startup into a healthcare AI platform deployed across more than 1,600 hospitals and clinics with 96,000-plus clinicians nationwide. As president, he built Innovaccer’s enterprise presence and go-to-market engine from the ground up, establishing the company’s foundational client relationships across more than 140 healthcare organizations. Mr. Gupta oversees operational performance of Innovaccer’s platform, which integrates with more than 80 EHRs, has unified data for more than 80 million lives, and has enabled more than $2.4 billion in documented healthcare savings for customers. Under his operational stewardship, a Pacific Northwest health system reduced avoidable emergency department visits for urinary tract infections by 12%, cut skilled nursing facility utilization by 17%, and saved Medicare more than $120 million while maintaining a 95% quality score. Innovaccer earned “Best in KLAS” recognition in risk analytics in 2025, scoring 95.9 out of 100, a distinction Mr. Gupta ties to operational execution as much as product quality. He was recognized by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad with its “Young Alumni Achiever’s Award” in 2021.
Jeremy Gurewitz. CEO and Co-Founder at Solace (Redwood City, Calif.). Mr. Gurewitz co-founded Solace in 2022 after watching his mother, a radiologist, struggle to navigate her own pancreatic cancer diagnosis despite her medical expertise. As CEO, he sets the company’s vision and strategy and oversees product, operations, clinical strategy, growth and fundraising for a platform that connects patients with advocates, registered nurses and other healthcare experts averaging 16 years of experience, through a HIPAA-compliant text, phone and video service. Mr. Gurewitz has led Solace’s reimbursement strategy so that advocacy is covered by insurance rather than billed out of pocket, and in April 2026 he guided the company’s expansion from Medicare coverage to most major commercial health plans, including UnitedHealthcare and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. Under his leadership, Solace now serves more than 20,000 patients each month through a network of more than 3,000 advocates, with 10x year-over-year growth and a patient net promoter score of 90. He set fundraising direction for a $14 million Series A, a $60 million Series B and a $130 million Series C that brought Solace to unicorn status at a valuation of more than $1 billion. Mr. Gurewitz has also built partnerships with Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion and the American Diabetes Association’s Diabetes Prevention Alliance, and Solace is a member of the National Health Council.
Andrew Hardin, MSN, RN. CEO and Managing Partner at Athra Systems (San Antonio, Texas). Mr. Hardin sets the strategic direction and vision for Athra Systems as CEO, managing partner and co-founder, overseeing daily operations, financial performance and long-term growth while maintaining compliance with regulatory standards in behavioral healthcare. He is a military veteran with more than 20 years of healthcare executive experience in behavioral health operations, strategy and innovation. Mr. Hardin previously helped start behavioral health divisions at Kindred and PAM Health and served as an executive advisor for multiple healthcare management companies. He and his co-founder launched Athra to address a persistent shortage of qualified psychiatric providers and the associated quality, compliance and cost challenges facing healthcare systems. Under his leadership, Athra has grown from its Texas origins to operate in more than 20 states in under three years, with plans to reach more than 30 states and 200 facilities by the end of 2026. Mr. Hardin’s prior roles include market CEO, senior vice president of strategy and partnerships, division vice president of growth and development, and group CNO, along with service as a Navy nurse.
Will Haver. Founder and CEO at Haver AI (Boston). Mr. Haver leads Haver AI’s mission to build a governance layer for healthcare AI, covering identity, permission, audit and recall for every agent a health system deploys. He sets product strategy, drives go-to-market across ACOs, payers and provider organizations, and works directly with CIOs and CMIOs to translate emerging health AI governance requirements, including national playbooks issued in May 2026, into deployment controls that let clinical and operational AI move forward without exposing organizations to compliance, audit or recall risk. Mr. Haver founded Augmented Health AI, a patient-engagement company, and sold its underlying intellectual property to VBCare in 2025 before launching Haver AI to build that governance layer for the industry. He also co-founded a state-Medicaid real-world evidence venture with the former director of Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System and a CMS deputy administrator, applying Haver AI’s governance layer to the value-based care stack they are building together. He serves as a limited partner across multiple healthcare-AI-focused venture funds, giving him working relationships with founders, fund managers and health system operators shaping the next generation of clinical and operational AI tools. Boston-based, Mr. Haver is an active participant in the New England health IT and ACO community, regularly convening operators, investors and policy voices around how AI should be governed inside care delivery.
Florian Hillen, MD. CEO and Founder at Videa (Boston). Dr. Hillen founded Videa in 2018 and has led the company from an MIT research project into one of the most widely adopted dental AI platforms in the country. Under his leadership, Videa has secured more than $60 million in funding, earned 34 FDA-cleared AI indications, and built a platform used by more than 90,000 clinicians across more than 100 dental organizations. Dr. Hillen guides the company’s product roadmap, spanning AI-powered diagnostics, workflows, analytics and revenue optimization tools, while overseeing commercialization and regulatory strategy. He launched the AI Leadership Council, a consortium of executives and clinicians from major dental organizations including Heartland Dental, Great Expressions Dental Centers, 42 North Dental, Gen4 Dental Partners, Riccobene Associates and Cherry Tree Dental, to help define best practices for AI adoption in dentistry. Dr. Hillen has deep expertise in electrical engineering and computer science and in technology and policy, along with in the medical and business fields, and he previously founded the digital pregnancy startup Ninu, contributed to the AI-enabled stethoscope company Eko, and worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Videa was ranked No. 28 nationally and No. 1 in Massachusetts on the 2025 Inc.com “Inc. 5000” list, and was named an “Outstanding Company in Diagnostics” for TIME‘s “World’s Top HealthTech Companies” for 2025.
Zack Jacobson. President of the Health Plan Division at Optum Rx (Eden Prairie, Minn.). Mr. Jacobson leads external health plan strategy, client partnerships, sales growth and service delivery across an Optum Rx portfolio representing more than 15 million covered lives. He oversees a team of more than 200 professionals focused on growth, retention and member experience for health plan clients nationwide. Mr. Jacobson partners with many of the nation’s leading health plans to shape pharmacy benefit strategies, drive cost savings and improve clinical outcomes, and he is accountable for end-to-end client performance. He has been a key architect of Optum Rx’s transparency initiatives, leading development of pricing models underpinning what the company describes as the industry’s first fully transparent pharmacy care model. Previously, as chief pricing and underwriting officer, Mr. Jacobson led a team of about 200 professionals across pricing strategy, underwriting and contract development, supporting major client wins including AmeriHealth Caritas and Blue Cross North Carolina. He also mentors emerging leaders across Optum Rx’s underwriting, pricing and strategy functions. Mr. Jacobson’s work has contributed to Optum Rx’s sustained, market-leading growth in the pharmacy benefit management space over the past three years.
Alyssa Jaffee. Partner at 7wire Ventures (Chicago). Ms. Jaffee is a partner at 7wire Ventures, where she leads investment strategy for the digital health-focused venture capital firm, sourcing deals, conducting due diligence and managing a portfolio that has helped grow the firm to more than $750 million in assets under management. She holds board seats at Noto, Summer Health, Transcarent, Brightline, Zerigo Health, Jasper Health and WellTheory, partnering with chief executives and leadership teams on governance, strategy and capital allocation. Ms. Jaffee has been elected to the board of directors of the National Venture Capital Association and also serves on the Illinois Venture Capital Association board and as an inaugural member of the Milken Institute’s Women’s Health Network. She founded the Digital Health Women’s Leadership Forum, which convenes hundreds of senior women executives for mentorship and peer learning, and also founded the VC Moms Group Chicago; more than 50% of 7wire Ventures’ portfolio company chief executives are women. She previously worked as an investor at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, co-founded TransparentCareer, and served as senior director of healthcare performance technology at the Advisory Board Company. Ms. Jaffee has been named to Business Insider‘s “30 Under 40 in Healthcare,” Crain‘s “40 Under 40” and Rock Health’s “Top Innovators” list.
Najib Jai, MD. COO at Arbital Health (San Francisco). Dr. Jai leads strategy, workforce development, cross-functional execution and clinical oversight of Arbital Health’s value-based care measurement platform as COO, working with clinical, commercial, actuarial and product teams to shape Arbital AI, the company’s actuarial AI tool for value-based contract management. Before joining Arbital Health, he co-founded and served as CEO of Conduce Health, raising $5.5 million in venture funding and partnering with ACOs covering 120,000 lives and approximately 250 nephrologists and cardiologists. Conduce was acquired by Switchboard Health in October 2025. Since joining Arbital Health as COO, Dr. Jai has helped scale the organization with more than 20 hires and guided clinical oversight of its actuarial AI infrastructure. In a typical 50,000-member Medicare Advantage population, Arbital Health’s platform has identified 40% of all future avoidable admissions, with interventions on half leading to $4 million in savings, and has recaptured $21 million by identifying 25% of missing or suspect hierarchical condition categories. Arbital Health was named to the 2025 CB Insights “Digital Health 50,” raised a $31 million Series B round in 2025, and has scaled to support more than 600,000 patient lives and 40 healthcare organizations within its first two years.
Erica Jain. Co-Founder and CEO at Healthie (New York City). Ms. Jain co-founded Healthie, an EHR and infrastructure platform, in 2016 with its chief technology officer. She leads Healthie’s strategy, product vision and customer relationships, growing the platform to serve 35,000 clinicians and 20 million patient lives across behavioral health, women’s health, nutrition, primary care and other outpatient specialties. Under Ms. Jain, Healthie has raised $42 million to date, remained profitable for the majority of its history, and now processes 2.5 billion API calls monthly while holding various certifications. At least eight of the 150 organizations accepted into CMS’s inaugural “ACCESS” program cohort 1 are Healthie customers, reflecting the infrastructure readiness she has built across the company’s customer base. Ms. Jain has also shaped Healthie’s approach to AI, keeping clinicians accountable while tools like its AI scribe product saw usage triple since January at greater than 99.9% reliability. Healthie has been named the “No. 1 Best Place to Work” in both New York City and Los Angeles by Built In, recognized on eight Built In “Best Workplaces” lists, and named to the “Digital Health New York 100” by Digital Health New York for four consecutive years, while Ms. Jain herself was recognized by Rock Health as a “Top 50 in Digital Health” honoree.
Kristina Jolley. Senior Vice President of Operations at Revecore (Franklin, Tenn.). Ms. Jolley oversees Revecore’s complex claims division, including the management of motor vehicle accident and third-party liability, workers’ compensation, and Veterans Affairs claims. She has spent more than 16 years at the company, leading her team through the implementation of automation and AI to improve efficiency as claim volumes have grown. Ms. Jolley’s team processes more than 124,000 complex claims per month and over $10 billion in accident claims annually while keeping days to pay low. Her leadership of operations has been a key factor in Revecore’s No. 1 “Best in KLAS” ranking for complex claims management for six consecutive years, a record since the category’s inception. She also shares performance and trend data with Revecore’s business development and client success teams to support the company’s client growth. Revecore earned a “Stevie Gold Award” from the American Business Awards in 2026.
Irena King, PhD. Founder and CEO at Surgicure Technologies (Boston). Dr. King founded Surgicure Technologies and, as CEO, sets the company’s strategic vision while overseeing product development, clinical validation, regulatory strategy and fundraising for its flagship “HORSESHOE” endotracheal tube securement device. She guided the device through human factors validation, cadaveric testing and a clinical pilot deployment at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital while building a quality system ahead of commercial launch. Dr. King has raised more than $2.5 million in funding and secured multi-region distribution partnerships with MetroMed and Med Alliance Group, bringing the “HORSESHOE” device to more than 600 acute care hospitals across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Dr. King also serves as managing director of Sovereign Solutions, advising early-stage medical technology and life sciences companies. Her recognitions includes the MedTech World “Startup of the Year” award, a SXSW Pitch win and BostInno‘s “40 Under 40” honor.
Varun Kopparthy, PhD. Chief Technology Officer at BMI OrganBank (Winston-Salem, N.C.). Dr. Kopparthy leads the scientific, engineering and regulatory strategy behind BMI OrganBank’s organ preservation technology, overseeing perfusion systems for vascular composite allografts, whole eyes and solid organs. Dr. Kopparthy played a central role in advancing the OrganBank Kidney platform, which recently received FDA “Breakthrough Device” designation, and leads the company’s FDA pre-submission strategy and long-term pathway toward market clearance. He also drives the organization’s federal funding strategy, authoring proposals to the National Institutes of Health, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health and the Department of Defense that have helped position the company as a national leader in organ preservation innovation. Dr. Kopparthy has authored more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, more than 50 scientific abstracts and a book chapter, and is an inventor on a U.S. patent and several pending patent applications. In 2026, the Organ Donation & Transplantation Alliance recognized him as a “40 Under 40 Outstanding Professional” for his national impact on the future of transplantation. Before joining BMI OrganBank, Dr. Kopparthy served as a staff scientist at Cleveland Clinic, and is a senior member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Ryan Lamb. Vice President of Enterprise Accounts at Medical Solutions (Omaha, Neb.). Mr. Lamb oversees program management and strategic and operational oversight across a portfolio of enterprise partnerships at Medical Solutions, including 50% of the company’s top managed service provider programs, representing more than $250 million in spend under management. He has led a team of 15 to place nearly 4,000 clinicians, driving a 3.5% increase in revenue year-over-year while reducing client price points by nearly 6%. Mr. Lamb also led Medical Solutions’ launch of Ciro Insights, the company’s business intelligence platform providing clients real-time utilization data, market trends and forecasting, and he developed the company’s market demand report covering region- and specialty-specific pricing and demand trends. His retention and expansion strategies, including new direct-hire programs leveraging domestic and international clinicians and a large-scale technology implementation, have helped retain approximately $60 million in business. Mr. Lamb has served as a thought leader on topics including technology and AI adoption and employee engagement, co-hosting market-facing webinars with organizations including The Advisory Board, Culture X and the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a member of the American Staffing Association and the Young Professionals Group of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce, and supports hospital foundations including the Foundation of Onvida Health, St. Luke’s Health Foundation and Morgantown, W.Va.-based WVU Medicine’s Thomas Health Foundation.
Charles Lin. Vice President of Sales and Implementation at Longevity Health (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.). Mr. Lin leads growth strategy and implementation for Longevity Health, a national Institutional Special Needs Plan, overseeing sales, client implementation, provider and facility partnerships, and onboarding across multiple markets. From 2019 to 2026, he helped grow membership from approximately 800 to more than 13,000, a more than sixteenfold increase, while expanding the organization from two markets to 15. Mr. Lin also played a key role in growing Longevity Health’s long-term care network from 15 partnered nursing homes to approximately 500, more than doubling the number of active partnered nursing homes over the past three years. During his tenure, Longevity Health earned three national Pharmacy Quality Alliance “Quality Awards” in 2026, placing its Medicare Advantage plans among the top 1.6% of Medicare Advantage and Part D contracts nationwide. The company was also named among U.S. News & World Report‘s “Best Insurance Companies for Medicare Advantage” and achieved a 5-star Medicare rating for its New Jersey plan the same year. Beyond his operational role, Mr. Lin serves as treasurer of the New York Chinese Association and assistant secretary of the South Brooklyn Kiwanis, and has received the “President’s Volunteer Service Award” from AmeriCorps along with commendations from the Staten Island Borough President and members of the New York State Senate for his community contributions.
TingJia Lorigiano, MD. Vice President, Regional Medical Director and Quality Leader at Erickson Health Medical Group and Erickson Advantage (Baltimore). Dr. Lorigiano serves as vice president, regional medical director and quality leader at Erickson Health Medical Group and Erickson Advantage, overseeing care delivery across a national network of 23 senior living communities in 11 states serving more than 35,000 residents. She directs clinical strategy for a Medicare Advantage plan that has sustained 5-star performance for six consecutive years, including its transition to an ACO-aligned model in partnership with UnitedHealthcare. Dr. Lorigiano leads enterprise efforts in medication safety, care gap closure and population health, including systemwide initiatives to deprescribe high-risk medications such as benzodiazepines, opioids and anticholinergics. Before joining Erickson, she served as senior medical director and operations co-lead for the division of hospital medicine at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she helped redesign discharge processes and improve care transitions. Dr. Lorigiano was named a 2026 McKnight’s Women of Distinction honoree and has also received the Johns Hopkins “Hospital Achiever Award,” the Johns Hopkins “Distinguished Teaching Society Award” and the American College of Physicians award.
Abdel Mahmoud, MD. Founder & CEO at Anterior (New York City). Dr. Mahmoud is founder and CEO of Anterior, a healthcare AI company building infrastructure for payer clinical operations, where he leads product development and enterprise partnerships with health plans covering more than 50 million lives. Under his leadership, Anterior’s clinical AI reasoning platform has reduced decision timelines from weeks to seconds, a greater than 90% acceleration across utilization management, prior authorization, care management and clinical documentation review workflows. The platform can complete certain oncology approvals in approximately 155 seconds, often while the patient is still in the consultation room, and has achieved 99.24% clinical accuracy in live production as validated by KLAS Research. More than 40% of Anterior’s team are clinicians working alongside engineers to translate real-world workflows into scalable AI systems. Dr. Mahmoud has helped raise $64 million in total funding from investors including Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates and the co-founder of DeepMind. Before founding Anterior, he worked as a product manager at Google, a consultant at Boston Consulting Group and a doctor with the National Health Service in England, and he won the Accenture “HealthTech Innovation Challenge” in 2024.
Alex Maiersperger. Global Head of Healthcare Product Marketing at SAS Institute (Cary, N.C.). Mr. Maiersperger leads global strategy for positioning, launching and scaling a $100 million-plus healthcare platform and solutions portfolio across provider, payer and government markets at SAS. He owns end-to-end go-to-market strategy, including product positioning, messaging, segmentation and sales enablement, and regularly presents to C-suite leaders and health system executives on how technology, analytics and AI can be operationalized to solve real-world healthcare challenges. Under his leadership, the healthcare product portfolio grew more than 40% in 2025. Mr. Maiersperger cofounded the Advancement League, a leadership event series that includes the Young Health Leader Summit and Health & Sports Summit and has drawn thousands of attendees and healthcare executives over the past seven years. He hosts the SAS Health Pulse podcast, which has reached hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and ranked in the top 5% of global podcast downloads, featuring guests such as the former CDC director and a Johns Hopkins oncologist. He also serves as an angel investor and advisor to companies including Guaranteed Health, Oma Health and MDEnvoy. Before SAS, Mr. Maiersperger held roles including member experience lead at Geisinger Health Plan and senior strategic advisor at Blue Cross NC.
Max Mangum. Co-Founder and CEO at Pivotal Health (Santa Monica, Calif.). Mr. Mangum leads vision, strategy and growth at Pivotal Health, which he co-founded to help providers navigate reimbursement under the No Surprises Act’s independent dispute resolution process. He oversees product strategy, partnerships, customer growth, fundraising and organizational development. Under his leadership, Pivotal has grown into a partner for more than 200 hospital-based clients nationwide, combining data intelligence, workflow automation and AI-enabled decision support to help providers pursue fair payment. The company’s platform has achieved an 89% win rate and an average four- to five-times lift from initial claim offers. Mr. Mangum scaled Pivotal Health to more than 100 employees within the past year. He previously worked in private equity investing at The Cranemere Group and in investment banking at Barclays. Pivotal was named to the Forbes “Cloud 100 Rising Stars” list in 2025.
Corbin J. Mankin. Regional Director of Operations at Solara Surgical Partners (Edmond, Okla.). Mr. Mankin provides operational leadership and performance oversight across multiple ambulatory surgery centers for Solara Surgical Partners, partnering with physicians, administrators and clinical teams to drive clinical quality, efficiency and financial performance. He began his career in the operating room as a scrub technician before advancing through roles as materials manager and operations manager, giving him a hands-on foundation in surgical workflow. Prior to his regional role, Mr. Mankin served as administrator of Apex Surgery Center in Ada, Okla., where the facility achieved national recognition from Newsweek as one of “America’s Best Ambulatory Surgery Centers” for two consecutive years. He has also played a key role in launching a new ambulatory surgery center from the ground up and continues to serve on its board of directors, along with the boards of other facilities he supports across multiple states. In his current role, Mr. Mankin oversees centers across multiple states, strengthening physician alignment and operational execution while developing high-performing cultures across facilities. He remains active in local chamber events and community initiatives, including coaching youth soccer.
Tess Michaels. CEO and Founder at Clasp (Boston). Ms. Michaels founded Clasp in 2018, building an employer-sponsored student loan repayment model she calls “ROTC Hiring for Healthcare,” in which employers commit to future clinicians up to two years before graduation in exchange for long-term service commitments. Ms. Michaels has raised more than $50 million for the company, including a $20 million Series B round in 2026, and led Clasp through 4x employer growth in 2025, reaching $200 million in student loan repayment commitments from health systems including Boston Children’s Hospital, Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine, Charlotte, N.C.-based Novant Health and Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health. Clasp partners report a 93% new-hire start rate, retention more than 2.5 times higher than traditional recruitment models and employer return on investment reaching 440%. Beyond the company, Ms. Michaels helped secure healthcare employer representation on the U.S. Department of Education’s “AHEAD” negotiated rulemaking committee and launched a $75 million no-cosigner loan impact fund to expand access to clinical education for first-generation and lower-income students. To date, more than 10,000 individuals have been supported through the platform, and Ms. Michaels has built a leadership team in which women hold 70% of leadership roles and 60% of board seats. She was named to the Forbes “30 Under 30” list.
Ren Mullinix. CEO at ClareMedica Health Partners (Miami). Mr. Mullinix has served as CEO of ClareMedica Health Partners since 2022, leading the organization through growth from approximately $50 million to more than $600 million in revenue while extending its value-based primary care model to more than 30,000 seniors and 140,000 Floridians. Under his leadership, ClareMedica has grown to more than 700 employees, achieved “ACCESS” designation through the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration and earned “Certified Great Place to Work” status for two consecutive years. Before ClareMedica, Mr. Mullinix served as vice president of the operations division at Farmers Branch, Texas-based Southwestern Health Resources from 2019 to 2022, where he oversaw value-based operations for an ACO covering approximately 800,000 attributed lives and $5 billion in annual risk-based revenue, managing 170 team members and a $65 million operational budget. He earlier held senior consulting roles at Navigant Consulting, now Guidehouse, leading strategic transformation and operational improvement initiatives for health systems and ACOs nationwide. Mr. Mullinix also supported healthcare transformation efforts in the Kansas Governor’s Office, contributing to KanCare, the nation’s first fully capitated statewide Medicaid program. In 2026, he made his debut on the South Florida PBS Health Town Hall, joining regional healthcare leaders in discussions on innovation in primary care and chronic disease management.
Matt Murphy. CEO and Co-Founder at Cascala Health (Boston). Mr. Murphy leads Cascala Health, an AI-enabled clinical intelligence platform he co-founded to improve care transitions between providers, patients and value-based care organizations. Since its 2024 launch, Cascala Health has raised $11.23 million, including an $8.6 million seed round in August 2025 co-led by Flare Capital Partners and Eniac Ventures, and has deployed with one of the nation’s largest Medicare ACOs and more than 1,000 acute and post-acute facilities supporting care coordination for over 300,000 patients. Early users of the platform report double-digit reductions in administrative workload, with Cascala’s technology cutting manual documentation effort by more than 50% for care coordinators and facility intake teams. Before Cascala, Mr. Murphy served as executive vice president of clinical development at Cohere Health, where he helped grow the company from five employees and no revenue to more than $30 million in annual revenue and over 500 employees within 18 months, launching three clinical specialty lines supporting more than 100,000 providers. He earlier helped scale Circulation Health through its Series A round and subsequent acquisition by ModivCare, later leading a national network of more than 60,000 provider organizations for the combined company. At Boston Children’s Hospital, Mr. Murphy established the hospital’s first digital health venture accelerator, directing more than $2 million annually to commercialize clinician-led innovations.
Dana Nettles, PhD. Director of Health Advocacy and Philanthropic Giving at Genentech (South San Francisco, Calif.). Dr. Nettles leads the strategic design and execution of Genentech’s U.S. philanthropic initiatives aimed at advancing health equity and improving outcomes in underserved communities. She oversees a multimillion-dollar portfolio of investments across priority states, including North Carolina and Texas, aligning corporate giving with therapeutic areas such as oncology, ophthalmology, neuroscience and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Nettles develops cross-sector partnerships with health systems, community-based organizations and academic institutions to address barriers to care, leading philanthropic programs from strategy development through impact evaluation. She has led the creation of community-informed funding strategies that integrate community health workers and use data to identify high-risk populations, expanding access to screening and care navigation. Before Genentech, Dr. Nettles served as director of medical capabilities at AbbVie and held roles of increasing responsibility at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, including associate director of medical excellence and senior medical science liaison in oncology. She also served as a U.S. Public Health Service officer and health science project manager at the Food and Drug Administration, and began her career as a clinical pharmacist with the Rockville, Md.-based Indian Health Service, providing direct patient care in underserved communities.
Jonathan Ng, MBBS. Founder and CEO at Iterative Health (Cambridge, Mass. and New York City). Dr. Ng founded Iterative Health in 2017 and has built it into a global clinical research site network spanning more than 100 locations across four therapeutic areas and four continents, with 250 employees worldwide. The network reaches 15 million patients in the U.S., holds relationships with more than 80% of gastroenterology and hepatology trial sponsors, and has accelerated trial enrollment milestones by up to 12 months. Across phase 2 and 3 inflammatory bowel disease trials, Iterative Health sites enrolled patients at roughly three times the rate of published industry benchmarks and activated studies in a median of 74 days, twice as fast as benchmarks. Dr. Ng recruited a senior leadership team with domain expertise in cardiology, hepatology and obesity to expand the site-serving model beyond its original gastrointestinal focus. He most recently closed a $77 million Series C led by Intrepid Growth Partners and GV, following earlier investment from Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. Before founding Iterative Health, Dr. Ng spent 14 years building healthcare infrastructure in Cambodia, including founding four pediatric hospitals serving rural communities.
Justin Norden, MD. CEO at Qualified Health (Palo Alto, Calif.). Dr. Norden co-founded and leads Qualified Health, an enterprise AI platform he built around the idea that health systems need a governed, accountable partner rather than another standalone AI tool. He works directly with health system CEOs, chief medical officers, CIOs and boards to define enterprise AI roadmaps and translate them into deployed clinical and operational use cases. At the Austin-based University of Texas System, one institution generated more than $15 million in run-rate return on investment within six months, while Chesterfield, Mo.-based Mercy is targeting $1 billion in annual savings within five years. Dr. Norden led the company’s $125 million Series B and has scaled Qualified Health to support hundreds of thousands of clinicians and staff. Qualified Health was named to CB Insights’ “AI 100” for 2026. He is also an adjunct professor at Stanford Medicine’s department of biomedical informatics research.
Neil Parikh, MD. Principal at HealthQuest Capital (Austin, Texas). Dr. Parikh is a principal at HealthQuest Capital, a healthcare-focused growth equity firm, where he co-leads the firm’s healthcare IT and digital health investing, sourcing, diligence and portfolio support for growth-stage companies. He serves as a board observer for AnswersNow, ENT Specialty Partners, Connie Health and Perspectum, and is involved with TigerConnect and Somatus, partnering with those companies’ leadership teams on growth strategy, go-to-market and governance. In 2026, HealthQuest led AnswersNow’s $40 million Series B to expand access to autism therapy for families facing high costs and long wait times, an investment Dr. Parikh helped drive. He also plays a key role on HealthQuest’s AI committee, helping the firm evaluate where AI can create durable value in care delivery versus where products face workflow friction or weak reimbursement. Before joining HealthQuest, Dr. Parikh practiced as a board-certified radiation oncologist at San Antonio (Texas) Cancer Center. He also completed a radiation oncology residency, where he focused on value-based oncology and technologies including PSMA imaging and stereotactic body radiation therapy for prostate cancer. He also co-founded the medical device company CranioView, and previously worked as an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company. In 2025, Dr. Parikh was named to GrowthCap’s “Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors” list.
Ashley Petkis, DNP, APRN. Director of Clinical Practice at Care Central VNA & Hospice (Gardner, Mass.). Ms. Petkis serves as director of clinical practice for hospice and palliative care at Care Central VNA & Hospice, a role she was selected to establish in 2025. She developed and leads the organization’s “Palliative Care Bridge Program,” which proactively identifies patients at high risk for hospitalization, functional decline or symptom burden and intervenes before a crisis occurs. The program now supports more than 100 medically complex patients and has contributed to a nearly 50% reduction in rehospitalizations among targeted populations, while hospice census has grown more than 30% and length of stay has improved. Ms. Petkis also developed and implemented an agencywide serious illness communication training program that more than 75 clinicians have completed. She previously served as a surgical and trauma critical care senior advanced practice provider at Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health and as a critical care float nurse at UConn Health’s John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington. Ms. Petkis is a doctoral advisor at the University of Connecticut School of Nursing and a published author in peer-reviewed journals. She has received the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts “Innovation Award” and the Homecare Homebase “Community Impact Award.”
Hassan Rao, MD. Associate Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Diagnosis-Related Group Services at Brundage Group (Pinellas Park, Fla.). Dr. Rao serves as associate chief medical officer and vice president of diagnosis-related group services at Brundage Group, all while continuing to practice as a board-certified internal medicine hospitalist. At Denver Health, Dr. Rao strengthened clinical documentation integrity, coding and revenue integrity efforts, helping drive provider query response rates above 97% and approximately $250,000 in increased monthly revenue. At Brundage Group, Dr. Rao developed and launched a physician-led pre-bill diagnosis-related group review service line combining proprietary algorithms, physician advisor expertise and coding collaboration, under which clients have realized an average of more than $1 million in additional diagnosis-related group reimbursement within 12 months. He also oversees onboarding, training, auditing and mentoring for physician advisors and clinical coding teams nationwide, and serves as an expert witness in legal disputes involving medical necessity, coding and payment validation. Dr. Rao has presented at national conferences with the Association of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists and the American Health Information Management Association, and in 2026 partnered with Pinson & Tang as the primary clinical contributor to its publications and webinars. He also serves on the certification council and clinical documentation integrity committee of the American College of Physician Advisors, where he is helping develop the first clinical documentation integrity certification for physician advisors.
Michael Rasbury. Vice President of AccessOne Solutions at Phreesia (Wilmington, Del.). Mr. Rasbury leads Phreesia’s AccessOne solutions work, focused on patient financial engagement, implementation quality and client value. He previously led Phreesia’s client services department, overseeing a global team of consultants across the U.S., Canada and India, and he now oversees about 80 employees. Under his leadership, implementation timelines became 25% faster, and he redesigned the handoff between sales and implementation so project kickoffs begin within one week of contract signature. Mr. Rasbury also led an effort to convert promotional clients to paying customers, driving a 93% promo conversion rate. He has also been featured on a podcast discussing what genuine vendor partnership requires. Over more than a decade at Phreesia, Mr. Rasbury has advanced from project manager to vice president while building teams focused on accountability, recognition and shared ownership.
Jeff Rocker, PhD. Founder and CEO at Rocker Health (Miami). Dr. Rocker is the founder, CEO and clinical leader of Rocker Health, a national mental health organization providing therapy, wellness and performance-based services across multiple states. He oversees clinical standards, provider network expansion and compliance with insurance and healthcare regulations, and directs business development, corporate wellness partnerships and community outreach initiatives. With more than 14 years in the mental health field, Dr. Rocker is licensed in approximately 25 states and has worked with professional athletes in the National Football League, National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball, along with clients in the entertainment and music industries. He created community-based mental health initiatives, including workshops, retreats, and a “Hip-Hop Therapy” concept designed to make therapy more culturally relatable and accessible. Dr. Rocker also founded Rocker Community Health, which runs nonprofit mental health initiatives and youth empowerment workshops for underserved communities, and serves as CEO of Rocker Management, a consulting and branding firm.
Emily Ryan. Chief Marketing Officer at Java Medical Group (Nashville, Tenn.). Ms. Ryan oversees enterprisewide marketing, communications, public relations and brand strategy across Java Medical Group’s portfolio of community and critical access hospitals in multiple states. She works closely with hospital CEOs, executive teams and boards to align marketing strategy with growth, service line performance and provider recruitment. Ms. Ryan leads development of tailored marketing plans across multiple rural markets, covering service line marketing, provider onboarding, digital strategy, crisis communications and media relations. She has taken a central role in campaigns tied to new service launches, facility expansions and leadership transitions, while also supporting hospital fundraising and community outreach efforts. Ms. Ryan also serves as a strategic advisor to executive leadership on market positioning and long-term brand equity. Her work earned her a Nashville Business Journal “C-Suite Award” in 2024.
Yair Saperstein, MD. Co-Founder and CEO at Avo (New York City). Dr. Saperstein co-founded and leads Avo, a clinical AI platform that turns EHRs into intelligent systems of action, now used by more than 42,000 clinicians across over 600 sites of care. Dr. Saperstein has grown Avo’s partnerships with health systems while embedding the platform directly into EHRs such as Epic, MEDITECH and athenahealth. At one large Northeast academic medical center, Dr. Saperstein’s Chart Assist platform was adopted by 167 clinicians and drove an 11.5% case mix index uplift, an estimated $7.3 million in annual reimbursement improvement and a 36x return on investment. At UC San Diego Health, Dr. Saperstein helped redesign thyroid nodule referral and biopsy pathways, cutting the time from scheduling to biopsy from 160 days to 30 days and eliminating unnecessary second visits, work recognized at the health system’s 2026 “Annual Improvement Excellence Awards.” Dr. Saperstein has also extended Avo into rural hospitals to ease documentation burden and strengthen discharge planning. He continues to practice as a hospitalist at New York City-based Mount Sinai and previously served as chief resident leading more than 400 providers at NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County in Brooklyn, N.Y. during the first wave of Covid-19.
Dhara Satija. Managing Director and Healthcare Consulting Leader at Paul Hastings Consulting Group (New York City). Ms. Satija leads healthcare consulting service offerings for hospitals, health systems, physician practices, healthcare investors and healthcare product and service providers as a managing director in Paul Hastings’ Consulting Group, which she joined as an early employee. She has helped co-lead efforts with the firm’s practice leaders to secure more than 25 new healthcare clients, helping establish the firm’s foothold in the healthcare market. Ms. Satija spearheaded the formalization of methodologies, delivery approaches and tools that enabled the group’s scalable growth, including standardized recruiting, onboarding and proposal playbooks. She helped found and co-leads the firm’s medical device working group, a forum where legal and compliance leaders from more than 15 medical device and medtech companies benchmark practices. Ms. Satija also contributed to building two new service offerings applicable across the Consulting Group’s healthcare and life sciences clients, due diligence and integrated risk management, leading development of the go-to-market materials and training staff to deliver them. She is the outgoing president of the 1,300-member Healthcare Financial Management Association’s Massachusetts-Rhode Island chapter, where she has served on the board for more than eight years. During her nearly five-year tenure at Paul Hastings, Ms. Satija has completed more than 20 speaking engagements and 10 publications, and was recently featured in a Journal of Healthcare Compliance article on integrated legal and consulting approaches for healthcare and life sciences.
Rob Scorcia. Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Turner Imaging Systems (Orem, Utah). Mr. Scorcia has served as vice president of sales and marketing at Turner Imaging Systems since 2021, leading global sales, marketing and business development for the company’s portable X-ray imaging solutions, including the SMART-C mini C-arm and ENDURO DR systems. He has expanded the company’s footprint into new markets including Europe, Israel, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore by building distributor and partner networks, while also driving adoption in orthopedics, emergency departments, outpatient clinics and urgent care facilities. Mr. Scorcia champions the integration of AI and edge computing into Turner’s portable imaging products. He also coordinates humanitarian deployments of the company’s battery-powered devices to underserved regions, including Ukraine, Haiti, Peru, Liberia and Chad, to support surgical and orthopedic care in resource-limited settings. The company’s SMART-C received a Medical Design Excellence Awards “Silver Medal.” Beyond Turner, Mr. Scorcia serves as president of Scorcia Capital, an investment firm operating across credit, private equity, listed equities and real assets, and he previously held business development roles at Aspen Imaging and Spellman High Voltage.
Chris Severn. Co-Founder and CEO at Turquoise Health (San Diego). Mr. Severn co-founded Turquoise Health and, as CEO, sets the company’s long-term vision to eliminate the financial complexity of healthcare, overseeing its evolution from a price transparency data company into a broader transaction efficiency platform. He serves as one of Turquoise’s primary external voices, regularly interpreting regulatory developments and communicating the company’s perspective on industry trends and policy changes. Mr. Severn has helped establish Turquoise as a trusted source for healthcare pricing data following federal transparency regulations, aggregating and operationalizing large volumes of newly available pricing information across the industry. He has testified before Congress on healthcare transparency and competition and is recognized as a thought leader on the future of healthcare affordability and payment reform. Before founding Turquoise, Mr. Severn founded Arcosta and worked as a product manager at Triage Consulting Group.
Karan Shah, MD. Managing Partner at Physician Care Coordination Consultants (Louisville, Ky.). Dr. Shah sets strategic vision and oversees operations, client partnerships, service line expansion and technology strategy as managing partner of PC3 Health. Since founding the company in 2023, he has grown it from three employees to 94 employees and from one hospital client to 61 clients across 10 states. Revenue grew from $1.383 million in 2023 to $5.8 million in 2024, an increase of more than 300%, and to $12.8 million in 2025, a further 124% increase. Dr. Shah expanded PC3 Health’s services from utilization management physician advising to include clinical documentation integrity and revenue cycle and denials prevention, building a prevention-focused model. Under his leadership, PC3 Health has helped healthcare organizations generate more than $500 million in revenue impact with an estimated 2,000% return on investment. Dr. Shah also serves as a commissioner on the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact Commission and the Louisville Board of Health, among other board roles.
Pankhuri Sharma. Strategy and Operations Principal at Humana (Louisville, Ky.). Ms. Sharma leads enterprise-level clinical strategy initiatives for Humana’s Medicare Advantage population, the nation’s second-largest Medicare Advantage plan, with work spanning Medicare Stars, population health, value-based care and clinical innovation. She led the annual development and evaluation of Humana’s population health strategy across its Medicare Advantage plans, identifying opportunities to strengthen care for approximately 5.2 million members. Ms. Sharma also developed a new, dynamic model to proactively identify and close care gaps across Humana’s roughly 760,000-member special needs plan population. Beyond Humana, she serves as a strategic mentor to healthcare innovators through “MATTER,” a healthcare innovation incubator, and advises four healthcare startup companies. Ms. Sharma developed “PAVER,” an original framework designed to bridge the knowledge gap between healthcare innovators and payers, which companies are already using to inform their payer engagement strategies. Her writing on population health, value-based care, digital health and AI has appeared in The American Journal of Managed Care, and she has spoken at HLTH and other healthcare conferences. Before joining Humana, Ms. Sharma advised healthcare organizations and investors at L.E.K. Consulting, drawing on a background spanning law, management consulting and healthcare strategy.
Abhinav Shashank. Co-Founder and CEO at Innovaccer (San Francisco). Mr. Shashank co-founded Innovaccer in 2014, and in 2016 he and his co-founders pivoted the company entirely to healthcare to focus on unifying fragmented patient data. As CEO, he sets strategic direction and product vision for a platform now deployed in more than 1,600 hospitals and clinics, serving 96,000-plus clinicians and unifying more than 54 million patient records, with over $2.4 billion in cumulative cost savings generated for customers. Mr. Shashank oversees Innovaccer’s $250 million, three-year investment in its agentic AI platform, Gravity, which is designed to reduce administrative burden and improve population health performance for health systems. Under his leadership, Innovaccer has raised more than $625 million at a $3.5 billion valuation and earned “Best in KLAS” recognition in consecutive years. He also leads the company’s partnerships with more than 140 healthcare organizations and is a frequent writer and speaker on the limits of EHR-centric AI strategies and the economic case for unified platform adoption. Mr. Shashank is also co-founder of z21 Ventures and a member of the Apex Committee in India’s Ministry of Education.
Dennis Sherba. Vice President of Operations and Staff at eHealth Exchange (Vienna, Va.). Mr. Sherba oversees day-to-day operations for eHealth Exchange, one of the nation’s largest health information networks, supporting secure data exchange for more than 300 million patients across providers, health plans, federal agencies and public health organizations. In his first 18 months as vice president of operations and staff, five major national health plans joined the network, expanding trusted exchange between payers and providers. Mr. Sherba helped support the Social Security Administration’s participation in the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement through eHealth Exchange’s Qualified Health Information Network, strengthening nationwide interoperability. He leads the organization’s strategic proposal and business development efforts, helping position eHealth Exchange as a trusted interoperability partner while advancing its pledge to become a CMS-aligned network. He also helped lead a successful demonstration of real-world patient access capabilities with DaVita and b.well Connected Health, supporting CMS’s vision for a more connected healthcare ecosystem. Under his leadership, the organization has earned multiple KLAS “Points of Light” awards, including recognition for advancing automated prior authorization and digital quality measurement. In 2026, Mr. Sherba was elected to the Carequality advisory council, where he helps guide one of the country’s most widely adopted health information exchange frameworks.
Arvin Singh, EdD. Secretary of Health for the State of West Virginia (Charleston, W.Va.). Dr. Singh leads West Virginia’s public health enterprise as secretary of health, directing statewide strategy, overseeing bureaus and programs, and guiding policy for the health outcomes of nearly 2 million residents. He is the chief architect of the “Rural Health Transformation Program,” a five-year initiative to modernize rural care delivery, strengthen community health and expand innovation across Appalachia, which has the potential to bring up to $1 billion in federal investment to the state. Dr. Singh coordinates the program across hospitals, health systems, emergency medical services agencies, academic partners and federal counterparts, and oversees the department’s mission of “Stronger Lives. Healthier Choices. A Better West Virginia.” Dr. Singh also mentors emerging leaders within the department while maintaining direct engagement with front-line staff. Before becoming secretary, he served as vice president of strategy, communications and external affairs at the Baltimore-based University of Maryland Medical System, where he led “Certificate of Need” efforts, and as COO of the largest addiction treatment facility in Louisiana.
Carol Skenes. Chief of Staff and Principal Regulatory Strategist at Turquoise Health (San Diego). Ms. Skenes serves as chief of staff and principal regulatory strategist at Turquoise Health, where she leads cross-functional initiatives tied to the company’s strategic execution, operational excellence and program management as a member of its senior leadership team. She has built out Turquoise’s internal learning and development function, hosts a biweekly internal podcast highlighting company projects and team contributions, and serves as a key liaison for media opportunities. Ms. Skenes has become an influential voice on healthcare price transparency policy, authoring industry analyses on hospital and payer transparency regulations and compliance enforcement. She has contributed to formal public comments submitted to CMS and other federal agencies on transparency rules and patient access to upfront cost information, and testified before Congress on healthcare price transparency in June 2026. Before her current role, she held several other positions at Turquoise, including interim vice president of product, principal strategist, and provider and payer strategist, and previously worked at Gentem Health and nThrive.
Meghan Snyder. COO at ReferWell (Stamford, Conn.). Ms. Snyder oversees the operational infrastructure behind ReferWell’s care navigation services, including operations, customer success, account expansion and human resources, while also driving sales and business development. She previously worked in analytics, consulting and performance improvement roles at The Advisory Board Company and Optum before joining ReferWell. Ms. Snyder leads national partnerships spanning payers, providers and payviders, including seven national health plans as well as regional plans, federally qualified health centers, ACOs and provider groups. In collaboration with Moda Health, she operationalized predictive analytics into member engagement campaigns that achieved 85% engagement rates, boosted Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems ratings by up to 1.4 points and raised plan satisfaction to 9.5 out of 10. Under her leadership, a southwestern Blue Cross Blue Shield plan closed 10 times more Medicare Advantage care gaps, and Medicare Advantage appointment show rates reached about 92%, compared with a 35% to 60% industry average. Her programs have also retained 88% of at-risk members and delivered 8 to 1 to 10 to 1 validated returns on investment across multiple lines of business.
Marilyn Suri. COO and Chief Advanced Practice Provider at Vincenzo Novara MD PA (North Miami Beach, Fla.). Ms. Suri serves as COO and chief advanced practice provider for a large, multisite pulmonary and critical care practice providing inpatient services across hospitals in nearby counties. She oversees clinical operations, workforce management and strategic alignment across the practice’s ICUs, intermediate care units and pulmonary service lines, including scheduling, staffing, credentialing and retention for its advanced practice providers. Ms. Suri leads data-driven operational analyses of ICU staffing models, throughput and resource utilization, and has spearheaded multicenter studies using datasets covering tens of thousands of patient encounters to evaluate advanced practice provider-integrated critical care teams. That research has shown favorable trends in length of stay, severity-adjusted mortality and cost efficiency, with findings progressing toward peer-reviewed publication. She serves on the board of directors of the Florida Academy of Physician Assistants as south regional director and legislative chair, advancing licensure modernization and access-to-care initiatives. Ms. Suri also serves as continuing medical education and legislative director for the Academy of Physician Associates in Legal Medicine and works as an adjunct professor for multiple physician assistant programs, mentoring students and early-career clinicians. She assumed her current executive responsibilities before age 40, overseeing MD residency programs and delivering continuing medical education on critical care, leadership and medical-legal risk.
Chelsea Tibbetts, EdD. Vice President of Divisional Blood Operations at Community Blood Center (Kansas City, Mo.). Dr. Tibbetts serves as vice president of divisional blood operations at Community Blood Center, a division of New York Blood Center Enterprises, where she oversees blood collection, manufacturing and distribution to help ensure a reliable blood supply for hospitals and patients across the region. As a member of the senior leadership team, Dr. Tibbetts contributes to operational strategy, quality and systemwide performance, and represents Community Blood Center in partnerships with healthcare leaders, community organizations and elected officials. In 2024, the Kansas City mayor issued a citywide proclamation recognizing the center’s winter operations as part of National Blood Donor Month. Dr. Tibbetts previously served as vice president of operations and executive director of retinal blood operations at Community Blood Center.
Jessica Tucker. Vice President of Operations at Healthcare Partners Consulting and Billing (Atlanta). Ms. Tucker leads full operational execution of revenue cycle management services for healthcare providers nationwide, overseeing intake workflows, benefits and eligibility verification, claims submission, payment posting, denial management and accounts receivable follow-up. She has built standardized workflows and internal accountability frameworks that let leadership track performance across teams and client accounts in real time, reducing errors and improving reimbursement turnaround. Ms. Tucker also leads client onboarding, creating structured processes that identify risk early and establish clean, sustainable billing operations for new accounts. She manages and mentors a remote team of billing specialists, intake coordinators and support staff, overseeing training, performance management and capacity planning. By analyzing trends in claims, denials and payer behavior, she has implemented systemwide corrections that reduce downstream denials and protect client revenue.
Sid Varshney. Director of Healthcare Investment Banking at Lazard (San Francisco). Mr. Varshney is a director in Lazard’s Healthcare investment banking group, where he advises pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, licensing, royalty monetizations, divestitures, restructurings and capital raises. Over more than 17 years in healthcare, he has advised on more than 30 mergers and acquisitions and capital-raising transactions worth over $30 billion in aggregate value. His deals include ImmunoGen’s $10.1 billion acquisition by AbbVie in 2023, Kinnate Biopharma’s dual-track sale to XOMA alongside the divestiture of its exarafenib program to Pierre Fabre, and Theravance Biopharma’s monetization of royalty interests in a respiratory therapy. Earlier in his career, Mr. Varshney advised on Gilead’s $4.9 billion acquisition of Forty Seven, IDEAYA Biosciences’ $3 billion partnership with GSK, the $1.1 billion sale of Dermira to Eli Lilly and the $1.7 billion sale of Tobira Therapeutics to Allergan. He previously worked in healthcare investment banking at Citigroup and in biopharma strategy consulting at ZS Associates. Mr. Varshney was named a 2026 “Americas Rising Star Dealmaker” by Global M&A Network, an honor recognizing top young dealmakers across the Americas. He also mentors early-stage biotech founders through California Life Sciences’ “FAST” advisory program and is a charter member of Entrepreneurs and Professionals in Partnership for Innovation in Healthcare Global.
Luis Voloch. Co-Founder and CEO at Jimini Health (New York City). Mr. Voloch is co-founder and CEO of Jimini Health, where he leads the company’s strategy, product direction, clinical partnerships and fundraising. Under his leadership, Jimini designed “Sage,” a clinician-supervised, patient-facing AI platform built to support behavioral health patients between scheduled appointments. Mr. Voloch has guided Jimini through a $25 million seed round backed by investors including M13, Town Hall Ventures, Zetta Venture Partners and LionBird, with an advisory board that includes Moderna co-founder and Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital’s chief of psychology. Before Jimini, Mr. Voloch co-founded Immunai, an AI-driven biotechnology company now valued at more than $1 billion, and spent two years on the faculty at Stanford teaching AI. He also previously worked at Palantir building AI systems. Under his leadership, Sage has been deployed across large behavioral health and psychiatry provider organizations and has produced more than a 40% improvement in patient adherence to care in early real-world use.
Malinka Walaliyadde. CEO and Co-Founder at Akasa (San Francisco). Mr. Walaliyadde is CEO and co-founder of Akasa, where he leads company strategy, product vision and partnerships for the company’s generative AI suite for the healthcare mid-revenue cycle. Since the suite’s 2024 launch, Akasa’s revenue has grown more than tenfold, and its technology now reviews 100% of inpatient encounters using health system-specific AI models to improve coding accuracy, efficiency and compliance. Mr. Walaliyadde guides Akasa’s partnerships with health systems including Cleveland Clinic, Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, New York City-based NewYork-Presbyterian and Durham, N.C.-based Duke Health, and the company’s customer base spans all 50 states. Before founding Akasa, he was a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he helped build the firm’s healthcare investment practice, and earlier held roles at Corning Life Sciences, Counsyl and Deloitte. Akasa’s AI solutions have generated $3.1 million in value and 4,270 quality indicators per 10,000 discharges, and the company delivers more than $100 million in annual value to one customer. Akasa was ranked the top revenue cycle management startup to watch by Black Book Market Research.
Luke West. CEO and Co-Founder at Relias Healthcare (Tupelo, Miss.). Mr. West leads enterprise strategy and is responsible for Relias Healthcare’s overall performance and long-term growth. Since co-founding the company in 2016, he has guided its expansion, building a hospital-based physician services platform focused on the clinical practice experience for providers, hospital partners and patients. Relias was named to the Inc.com “Inc. 5000” list of fastest-growing companies in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Mr. West has been recognized by the American College of Healthcare Executives with its “Regents Award for Early Career Healthcare Executive” and named a UAB National Alumni Society “UAB Blazer Fast 40” and “Top 25 Alumni” honoree. He serves on the boards of the Mississippi Telehealth Association and Judah’s Superkids Memorial Fund and is a member of American College of Healthcare Executives and the Emergency Medicine Practice Management Association. Before founding Relias, Mr. West was director of emergency medicine practice, support and patient logistics at North Mississippi Health Services in Tupelo, where he helped implement “Toyota Production System” principles to improve emergency department throughput and patient flow.
Jomel Whittington. President of Avala Physician Network (Covington, La.). Mr. Whittington oversees more than 10 practice locations for the Avala Physician Network, spanning clinical support teams, administrative functions, revenue cycle operations and day-to-day performance. He has led the network’s expansion into service lines including orthopedics, hand surgery, spine surgery, neurosurgery, interventional pain management and primary care, and directed initiatives that increased Avala Pain’s clinic capacity by 50%. Before joining Avala, Mr. Whittington served as director of operations at DISC of Louisiana in Covington, where he doubled the practice’s provider team from two to four physicians and strengthened its market position. At Avala, he led implementation of a new EHR system across the spine, pain and neurology clinics, streamlining clinical workflows and improving data accessibility and care coordination. Earlier in his career, Mr. Whittington contributed to the launch of a startup hospital in Baton Rouge, La., leading business operations and revenue cycle management during a critical growth phase. Mr. Whittington is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Dallas Wolford. Director of Women’s Wellness Surgery at Austin (Texas) Face and Body. Dr. Wolford leads the women’s wellness division at Austin Face and Body, focusing on procedures such as labiaplasty, vaginal rejuvenation, mons reduction and labial augmentation that have historically been underrepresented in mainstream medical care. Dr. Wolford built the division from the ground up, growing its monthly revenue from about $7,000 to more than $70,000 within her first three months at the practice. Beyond the operating room, Dr. Wolford has built an educational platform on social media that has reached more than half a million women seeking reliable information on these procedures. Her surgical background includes five years of general surgery training in Dallas, with experience in trauma, vascular surgery, surgical oncology, hepatobiliary surgery, transplant surgery and high-volume robotic procedures. Dr. Wolford is a diplomate of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery and chairs the membership and marketing committee for the Texas Cosmetic Surgery Society. In 2025, she received the “Robert F. Jackson, MD Award” for the highest score on the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery oral board exam and was named a finalist for the “Austin Under 40 Awards” in medicine and healthcare.
