Appendix B

Biographical Sketches of Moderators, Speakers, and Panelists

Suzanne Bakken, Ph.D., RN (NAM), is the alumni professor of nursing and professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University. Following a doctoral study in nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, she completed a National Library of Medicine postdoctoral fellowship in medical informatics at Stanford University. The goal of Dr. Bakken’s program of research is to promote health and reduce health disparities in underserved populations through application of innovative informatics methods. A major focus of her current grant portfolio is visualization of health care data for community members, patients, clinicians, and community-based organizations. Dr. Bakken currently directs the Center for Evidence-based Practice in the Underserved and the Reducing Health Disparities Through Informatics predoctoral and postdoctoral training program, both of which funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research. She also served as Principal Investigator of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality–funded Washington Heights Inwood Informatics Infrastructure for Comparative Effectiveness Research (WICER) and its follow-up study, WICER 4 U, which is focused on promoting the use of WICER infrastructure through stakeholder engagement. She has also received funding from the National Cancer Institute, National Library of Medicine, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. She has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers. In 2010, she received the Pathfinder Award from the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research. Dr. Bakken is an elected fellow of The New York Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Nursing, American College of Medical Informatics, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Ignatius Bau, J.D., is an independent health care policy consultant for patient-consumer organizations, community-based health and social service organizations, community health centers, minority physician associations, public hospitals, health systems, and state health departments. He works on issues of health care reform, health equity, heath disparities, demographic data, language access, cultural competency, health workforce diversity, health information technology, and the social determinants of health. Mr. Bau has also worked on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender health issues, and on immigration law and policy. He has worked as an interim executive director at the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, and as a program director at The California Endowment, policy director at the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, and staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. Mr. Bau has served on expert advisory panels focused on health equity for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; National Quality Forum; Joint Commission; Institute for Healthcare Improvement; federal Office of Minority Health; Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cindy Brach, M.P.P., is a senior health policy researcher at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). She conducts and oversees research on health literacy, cultural and linguistic competence, system design innovations, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Ms. Brach spearheads AHRQ’s health literacy and cultural competence activities along with coordinating the AHRQ’s work in developing measures, improving the evidence base, and creating implementation tools. She has served on numerous expert panels in these areas for such organizations as the Office of Minority Health, the Joint Commission, the National Quality Forum, and The California Endowment. Ms. Brach also leads the national evaluation of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act Quality Demonstration Grants. Her publications include New Federal Policy Initiatives to Boost Health Literacy Can Help the Nation Move Beyond the Cycle of Costly “Crisis Care”; Evidence on the Chronic Care Model in the New Millennium; America’s Health Literacy: Why We Need Accessible Health Information; Will It Work Here?: A Decision Maker’s Guide to Adopting Innovations; and Integrating Literacy, Culture, and Language to Improve Quality of Health Care for Diverse Populations. Before coming to AHRQ, Ms. Brach was the associate director for research and analysis at the Mental Health Policy Resource Center, where she directed mental health and health policy research projects with an emphasis on managed care. Her earlier health and human services experience includes serving as a welfare reform consultant and provider of technical assistance, a state-level administrator, and a municipal policy analyst.

Ms. Brach received her Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was advanced to Ph.D. candidacy.

Marshall Chin, M.D., M.P.H., is the Richard Parrillo Family Professor of Healthcare Ethics in the Department of Medicine at The University of Chicago. He is a general internist and health services researcher with extensive experience in improving the care of vulnerable patients with chronic diseases. Dr. Chin is the director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Finding Answers: Solving Disparities Through Payment and Delivery System Reform Program Office and was the president of the Society of General Internal Medicine, 2015–2016. He co-chairs the National Quality Forum Disparities Standing Committee and serves on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Community Preventive Services Task Force. His current projects improve diabetes care and outcomes on the South Side of Chicago through health care system and community interventions, evaluate implementation of the patient-centered medical home in 65 safety net clinics across five states, and improve shared decision making between clinicians and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning racial and ethnic minority patients. Dr. Chin’s recent papers include “A Roadmap and Best Practices for Organizations to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care” (Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2012), “Creating the Business Case for Achieving Health Equity” (Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2016), and “Movement Advocacy, Personal Relationships, and Ending Health Care Disparities” (Journal of the National Medical Association, 2017). Dr. Chin received his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and completed his residency and fellowship training in general internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School.

James J. Crall, D.D.S., Sc.D., M.S., is a diplomate of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry and received his D.D.S., master’s degree, and certificate in pediatric dentistry from The University of Iowa. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Dental Health Services Research Scholar at Harvard from 1984–1986, and subsequently obtained master’s and doctoral degrees in health policy and management from the Harvard School of Public Health. In 1997, Dr. Crall was appointed as the first dental scholar-in-residence at the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). He has served as chair, member, or consultant for numerous national and federal advisory panels, and has authored or co-authored more than 90 peer-reviewed publications and more than 40 chapters, policy briefs, and commissioned works (including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Guide to Children’s Dental Care in Medicaid). He has been the principal investigator or project

director for numerous research, training, and program grants and contracts awarded by federal agencies and private foundations, with total funding of more than $33 million. Dr. Crall was the 2015 Chair of the Dental Quality Alliance (DQA) and has chaired the DQA Measures Development & Maintenance Committee and Implementation & Evaluation Committee. Dr. Crall was the director of the Health Resources and Services Administration/Maternal and Child Health Bureau National Oral Health Policy Center from 2000–2008 and project director for the American Association of People with Disabilities National Head Start Dental Home Initiative from 2007–2010. In 2004, he joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as a professor of pediatric dentistry and as chair of that department. He was appointed as chair of the Division of Public Health & Community Dentistry in 2011. He currently directs the UCLA-First 5 L.A. 21st Century Dental Homes Project and Children’s Dental Care Program.

U. Michael Currie, M.P.H., M.B.A., is the vice president of the Health Equity Service Program at UnitedHealth Group. Mr. Currie has led the Health Equity Services Program since its establishment in June 2010 and is responsible for the development and coordination of enterprise efforts, initiatives, and interventions to identify health disparities, as well as the enhancement or implementation of programs and services to address identified health disparities. Prior to joining UnitedHealth Group, Mr. Currie was a major accounts manager at CareFirst Blue Cross and Blue Shield, managing CareFirst’s largest block of public-sector business. He has held roles in both the public and private sectors with responsibilities related to disease prevention, wellness, and health benefits, and has spent more than 20 years of his educational and professional life focused on population health management. Mr. Currie received his M.P.H. from The George Washington University and his M.B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and has served on various boards and committees of organizations such as the National Health Plan Collaborative, the Howard County Community Action Council, and the Mid-Atlantic Business Group on Health.

Jessica Briefer French, M.H.S.A., is a senior research scientist at the National Committee for Quality Assurance, responsible for leading large and complex grants and contracts. Ms. French has worked in health care quality for 20 years in both the private sector and on government contracts and private foundation grants. Over the past decade, her work has focused on the measurement and evaluation of quality of care for vulnerable populations; adults with complex health care and long-term services and support needs, including people dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid; children with special health care needs; racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities; and human research subjects. Ms. French has managed a variety of projects

involving multiple stakeholders. She served as the principal investigator for a research study to understand practices in person-centered, goal-based integrated care for people with complex health care needs, and is the co–principal investigator of the current work of updating accreditation standards for Medicaid Long Term Services and Supports. Ms. French has extensive experience in performance measurement and reporting in Medicaid. She has worked with numerous states to develop measurement strategies and to measure and evaluate the quality of managed care plans serving Medicaid beneficiaries, develop validation methods for performance measures, and publicly report performance. In addition, Ms. French has worked with numerous stakeholders to identify needs, options, and barriers for measuring and reporting on health care quality in Medicaid.

Foster Gesten, M.D., recently retired from the New York State Department of Health as its chief medical officer for the Office of Quality and Patient Safety. He has been the clinical leader at the New York State Department of Health responsible for the development of quality measurement and improvement programs within Medicaid and health insurance plans. Working with an extraordinary team of professionals, he has contributed to making New York a national leader in public reporting of health system performance, developed innovations in the application of quality incentives, and made demonstrable reductions in the health care “quality disparity” between low-income and commercially insured populations. Dr. Gesten helped form and lead an ongoing collaborative of clinicians, hospitals, and payers in a regional multiyear medical home demonstration incorporating care and payment reform, making use of a regional health data exchange, and engaging claims and electronic health record information. This initiative has shown improvements in access to care, primary care workforce, patient experience, quality, and avoidable costs and is the foundation for New York’s State Innovation Model grant of $100 million to facilitate aligned multipayer advanced primary care throughout the state. He created and co-led an initiative to improve primary care services and medical home training across more than 150 ambulatory training sites for resident physicians, in partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Dr. Gesten led New York’s efforts to make timely evidence-based care for patients with sepsis a priority for all hospitals through strategic use of regulation, innovations in the measurement of clinical process and outcomes, and the accountability of public reporting. He was engaged nationally in quality measurement through participation on the Committee for Performance Measurement at the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the Measurement Application Partnership at the National Quality Forum for many years. Dr. Gesten was trained in general internal medicine at Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University.

George Isham, M.D., M.S., is responsible for working with the senior management team of HealthPartners on health and quality of care improvement for patients, members, and the community. Prior to his appointment as senior advisor in 2012, Dr. Isham served as HealthPartners’ medical director and chief health officer, a position he was appointed to in 1993. Dr. Isham is also a senior fellow at HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research. As senior fellow, he is responsible for facilitating progress at the intersection of population health research and public policy. Dr. Isham was a founding board member of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement, a collaborative of Twin Cities medical groups and health plans that is improving triple aim outcomes and implementing clinical practice guidelines in Minnesota. Dr. Isham currently provides leadership to other care delivery systems through service on the board of directors for Presbyterian Health Services in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the External Advisory Board of the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, Wisconsin. Dr. Isham is active nationally and currently co-chairs the National Quality Forum–convened Measurement Application Partnership. He is a former chair of the National Committee for Quality Assurances’ (NCQA’s) Clinical Program Committee and co-chair of NCQA’s Committee on Performance Measurement. He is also a former chair of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Technical Expert Panel on the National Impact Assessment of CMS Quality Measures and was a member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ’s) National Steering Committee for the Development of Measures of Appropriate Clinical Preventive Services for Older Adults. He is a former member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Task Force on Community Preventive Services, AHRQ’s U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and the Advisory Committee to the Director of CDC. Dr. Isham served on a five-member panel that provided a review of the Public Health Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), on the National Advisory Committee for the RWJF-funded Aligning Forces for Quality Grant, and on RWJF’s advisory panel on the spread of a culture of health in the United States. Dr. Isham was a former member of the board of directors of the American’s Health Insurance Plans, the Alliance of Community Health Plans, and the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review at Harvard. Dr. Isham chaired the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Health Literacy for 9 years and is currently co-chair of the National Academies’ Roundtable on Population Health Improvement. He has served on the National Academies Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice and has chaired the National Academies committees that authored the reports Priority Areas for National Action: Transforming Health Care Quality and State of the USA Health Indicators: Letter Report. He was invited to present the Institute of Medicine’s Rosenthal Lecture for 2005 on “Next Steps Toward

Higher Quality Health Care.” In addition, he has served on a number of committees, has presented to a number of workshops, and served as a reviewer of reports and workshop proceedings. In 2003, Dr. Isham was appointed as a lifetime National Associate of the National Academies in recognition of his contributions to the work of the Health and Medicine Division (formerly the Institute of Medicine), and in 2014 was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine. His practice experience as a primary care physician included 3 years in the U.S. Navy, 8 years at the Freeport Clinic in Freeport, Illinois, and 3.5 years as a clinical assistant professor in medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Cara James, Ph.D., is the director of the Office of Minority Health (OMH) at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The principal aim for CMS is better care, healthier people, and smarter spending. To help achieve this aim, OMH ensures that the voices and needs of minority and underserved populations are present in the development, implementation, and evaluation of CMS programs and services. OMH serves as the principal advisor and coordinator to CMS dedicated to fulfilling that commitment for minority and other underserved populations. As such, OMH provides the leadership, vision, and direction to address goals and objectives, identified by CMS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, related to improving minority health and achieving health equity. Under Dr. James’s leadership, OMH has tripled in size and makes consistent strides toward achieving its mission of improved minority health, reduced health care disparities, and the attainment of health equity. Her guidance has led to the development of two of the OMH’s flagship initiatives: From Coverage to Care and CMS’s Equity Plan for Improving Quality in Medicare. These initiatives are aimed at helping consumers understand their coverage and connect to care, and reducing health care disparities across a variety of settings. During Dr. James’s tenure, OMH has committed to strengthening the quality and quantity of patient demographic data to improve the understanding and awareness of health disparities and their causes. Prior to joining the OMH, Dr. James was with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, where she served as the director of the Disparities Policy Project and the director of the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program. While with the Foundation, she worked on a broad array of health and access issues for racial and ethnic minorities, including the potential impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and understanding state-level disparities in health and access to care. Before joining the staff at the Foundation, she worked at the Picker Institute and Harvard University. Dr. James is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and the Elimination of Health Disparities and has served on several National

Academies committees, including the Committee on Leading Health Indicators for Healthy People 2020. She also served on a National Academies consensus study titled A Framework for Educating Health Professionals to Address the Social Determinants of Health. She is well published in the areas of health disparities and minority health and co-authored one of the background chapters for the Institute of Medicine report Unequal Treatment. She is also a board member of Health Care Access Maryland. Dr. James received both her Ph.D. in health policy and her A.B. in psychology from Harvard University.

Yolanda Robles is the founder and president of CulturaLink. Ms. Robles’s vision has been instrumental in helping health care organizations improve the delivery of services to multilingual and multicultural communities. Ms. Robles has developed numerous programs bridging cultural gaps in health care delivery systems, large and small, resulting in a more engaged workforce and improved patient experience. She founded CulturaLink in 2006 as a minority and woman-owned business. Ms. Robles was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the United States when she was a child. She quickly assimilated to American culture and her local community, where she served as an interpreter and cultural navigator for her family. Her personal journey and her professional experiences in training and communications laid the foundation for her life’s work—increasing the level of cultural competence in the American health care system. She is a member of the Joint Commission’s Long-Term Care Advisory Council and the American Hospital Association’s Institute for Diversity in Health Management, a trained consultant for the American Medical Association’s Ethical Force Program’s Communication Climate Assessment Tool, a certified consultant for the Johns Hopkins Clearview Organizational Assessments 360 Certified Consultant Program, and a member of the National Forum for Latino Healthcare Executives and the National Association of Healthcare Service Executives. Ms. Robles is also a member of the Association of Language Companies, American Translator’s Association, the National Council on Interpreting in Healthcare, the International Medical Interpreter Association, and the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration. Ms. Robles’s dynamic presentations have been heard at national and regional conferences, and she has conducted training for audiences of frontline staff and the C-suite across the spectrum of health care delivery and support organizations.

Bernard M. Rosof, M.D., MACP (Roundtable Chair), is at the forefront of national initiatives in the areas of quality and performance improvement. Following completion of a fellowship in gastroenterology at the Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Rosof practiced internal medicine

and gastroenterology for 29 years. He is past chair of the board of directors of Huntington Hospital (Northwell Health) and a current member of the Board of Overseers of the Health System. He is a past member of the National Quality Forum (NQF) board of directors, and the co-chair of the National Quality Partnership (NQP) convened by NQF to set national priorities and goals to transform America’s health care. NQP was advisory to the former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in the development of the National Quality Strategy. Dr. Rosof is the immediate past chair of the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement convened by the American Medical Association that continues to lead efforts in developing, testing, and implementing evidence-based performance measures for use at the point of care. He was a member of the Clinical Performance Measurement Committee of the National Committee for Quality Assurance, and the chair of the Physician Advisory Committee for UnitedHealth Group. He has chaired committees for the New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH) and the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine); he also currently serves as the chair of the National Academies’ Roundtable on Health Literacy as well as the chair of the NYS DOH Committee on Quality in Office-Based Surgery.

Dr. Rosof is CEO of Quality in HealthCare Advisory Group, which provides strategic consultative services to the community of health care providers interested in improving the quality and safety of health care delivery in the United States. Dr. Rosof is also a professor in the Department of Medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell in New York. He is a Master of the American College of Physicians and Chair Emeritus of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Rosof is the recipient of the Laureate Award from the American College of Physicians and the Theodore Roosevelt Award for Distinguished Community Service. He has also received the 2011 Founders Award presented by the American College of Medical Quality in recognition of his longstanding national leadership and exceptional ability to foster and support health care quality improvement. Dr. Rosof is also the recipient of the 2012 Stengel Award from the American College of Physicians for outstanding service and his influence in maintaining and advancing the best standards of medical education, medical practice, and clinical research, and received the New York University Alumni Leadership Award in 2016.

Andrew Sanderson II, M.D., M.P.H., FASGE, is a medical officer at the Office of the Secretary, Office of Minority Health. He recently completed a Commonwealth Fund Mongan Fellowship in Minority Health Policy at Harvard Medical School. Prior to the fellowship, he was an associate professor of medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine/Division

of Gastroenterology; associate program director of the Gastroenterology Fellowship Program; and division chief of gastroenterology at the Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC. From 2007–2009, he was a physician specialist in the Department of Internal Medicine/Gastroenterology at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services; from 2008–2009, he was a clinical instructor in the Department of Internal Medicine/Division of Gastroenterology at the Harbor University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center in Torrance, California. As a member of the diversity committee of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, he has worked on Investing in the Future, a pipeline project for underrepresented minority medical students and residents who are interested in a career specializing in gastrointestinal health. He has worked with the National Medical Association’s Environmental Health and Bioterrorism Task Force to address the problem of elevated levels of lead in the District of Columbia’s water supply, and was the chair of a church-based volunteer program tasked to assist at a men’s shelter. Dr. Sanderson received his medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC, in 2001 and completed his internal medicine residency at Temple University Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2004.

Margaret VanAmringe, M.H.S., is the executive vice president for public policy and government relations at the Joint Commission and heads the Joint Commission’s Washington, DC, office. She is responsible for developing strategic opportunities for the Joint Commission involving the public and private sectors. To accomplish this, Ms. VanAmringe works with government agencies, the Congress, consumer organizations, national professional groups, and purchasers of health care. The Washington office is the Joint Commission’s interface with the federal government and with public policy issues. It is also the office concerned with Medicare and Medicaid oversight of quality and its relationship to private-sector accreditation; relationships with the U.S. Department of Defense, the Veterans Health Administration, and the Public Health Service agencies; and with policy-making institutions such as the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Prior to taking a position with the Joint Commission, Ms. VanAmringe was the director for research and dissemination and liaison at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) in the U.S. Public Health Service. There, she established programs to communicate health services research findings to a wide array of professional and public audiences. She established the agency’s first health information dissemination program to bring practical information gleaned from health services research into

the hands of consumers and their families, and worked to have more health services research information indexed into the National Library of Medicine. She also established an external grants program to explore effective methods for disseminating new medical information to clinicians and for changing medical treatment behavior to reflect evidence-based medicine. Between 1989 and 1990, Ms. VanAmringe was a legislative fellow in the office of the majority leader, Senator George Mitchell. From early 1987 through 1989, she held various positions in the Immediate Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including senior advisor and acting deputy chief of staff. While there, she provided advice on the full range of social and health policy issues. Before joining the secretary’s staff, she spent 10 years working in the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) at HHS, where she was the director of the Office of Survey and Certification, the component that was then responsible for developing health and safety standards for health care organizations reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid, and for ensuring that such federally funded entities met the government’s expectations for delivering quality care. She also worked in the contractor oversight division that dealt with payment operations and in the Office of Legislation and Policy. Ms. VanAmringe holds a Master of Health Sciences degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Knitasha Washington, D.H.A., FACHE, is a master change agent professionally trained in health care and business administration. Shaped by her passion for and belief in social justice, Dr. Washington has earned national recognition as a policy contributor, health care leader, and patient activist. With more than 15 years of professional experience as a consultant, Dr. Washington brings a multidimensional talent focused primarily in the areas of health system performance, patient safety, and quality. Motivated by the many opportunities to improve quality and patient safety while reducing costs, Dr. Washington’s career path has been guided by her vision to be at the helm of change and to ensure a more equitable and values-driven health care system. Her tenure in health care summarizes 9 years in managed care and 10 years in consultative experience improving hospital profit margins through operations efficiency, patient throughput, and labor and nonlabor expense manage projects. Over the years, she has gained extensive knowledge of hospitals and health systems’ operations to include safety net, public, community, private, and academic medical centers. To that end, she is a high-functioning relationship manager who has worked to build effective collaborations among multiple stakeholders to include patients, public officials, governmental agencies, private corporations, allied health associations, hospital administrators, physicians, clinicians, and frontline

workers. After many years of commitment to advocating for the elimination of health disparities, her perspective on the U.S. health system changed dramatically after losing her father to a medical error in 2009. “What I found out firsthand was the bias that is embedded in the fabric of our health systems,” shares Dr. Washington. Today, she serves in multiple roles driving change and innovation nationally. As an advisor to the National Partnership for Patients Campaign, Dr. Washington has been commended for her work to improve equality of health outcomes within the quality domain. She is credited for being the thought leader who forged a pathway to consider health disparities among vulnerable populations a strategic imperative in the nation’s fight to achieve improvement in quality and patient safety. Accordingly, she continues to advocate for greater diversity and minority inclusion in health care leadership through her work as president of the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE). Dr. Washington commonly speaks on the topics of health equity, diversity, quality, and patient safety. She also actively participates in research and is published. Dr. Washington is a fellow of the American College of Health Care Executives (ACHE) and received her Doctorate of Health Administration degree from Central Michigan University, Master of Heath Administration degree from Governors State University, and bachelor of arts with a focus in business administration from Chicago State University. To her credit have been extended many nominations and awards, including the 2014 Governors State University Luminary Pioneer, 2014 Illinois Department of Public Health Champions Award, 2013 ACHE Regents Health Care Leadership Award, 2009 NAHSE National Young Healthcare Executive Award, and the featured cover story Spring 2010 of Girlfriends Health Guide Magazine.

Alicia Wilson received her B.A. in religion and sociology/anthropology from Swarthmore College and began working in the social services field immediately after graduating. She first served as a case manager working with the homeless and working poor in and around Washington, DC, then shifted to working with HIV-positive Latinos at La Clínica del Pueblo. In 2001, Ms. Wilson joined the development department of La Clínica and in 2002 became the director of Grants and Contracts Administration. Ms. Wilson was responsible for overseeing grant writing and fundraising efforts for the agency’s then $7.5 million annual budget, of which 75 percent was grants and contracts, as well as public relations and many longer-term projects for the clinic. After playing an increasing role in the leadership of the clinic, Ms. Wilson was selected to be La Clínica’s executive director, beginning in January 2009. Ms. Wilson is currently the vice president of the board of directors of the DC Primary Care Association and treasurer of the Board of the Institute for Public Health Innovation. She also serves on the DC

Department of Health Bureau of Cancer and Chronic Disease Community Leadership Team, and is a member of the National Steering Committee on Promotores de Salud, convened by the federal Office of Minority Health. She has played an active role in local health care advocacy through her frequent testimony in front of the DC City Council, as well as her work in coalitions across the region. In 2015, Ms. Wilson was named a “Disruptive Woman to Watch” by Disruptive Women in Healthcare.

Michael P. Wright, Ed.D., M.S.Ed., M.Div., is currently vice president of Diversity and Health Equity for Northwell Health. He joined the system in August 2014. Prior to joining Northwell Health, Mr. Wright was the vice president of learning and development and chief learning officer for Shaw Communications, based in Calgary, Alberta. Shaw Communications is Canada’s largest cable and entertainment company. In this role, Mr. Wright was accountable for the identification, development, and implementation of talent strategies to enable, engage, and inspire each of Shaw’s employees to achieve extraordinary business and personal growth. Prior to joining Shaw Communications, Mr. Wright joined Starbucks in November 2010 as their global director of leadership development. As part of the Starbucks management team, he was responsible for codifying and leading the enterprise leadership development strategy, ensuring that the company is building a pipeline of talent to achieve its future leadership growth needs and business strategy. In this role, Mr. Wright leveraged the iconic company brand and a leader-led approach to drive innovation in the leadership development arena while supporting new designs in developing global leaders at Starbucks. Mr. Wright joined Microsoft in 2008, leading the talent management, learning, and development strategy for its entertainment and devices division, before moving to the sales and marketing team in China. Prior to his time with Microsoft, he was director of learning, organizational development, and change management for Constellation Energy, a Fortune 125 energy company based in Baltimore, Maryland. In this capacity, he led a seasoned team of professional learning and organizational development consultants in building a best-in-class centralized learning function. Constellation Energy was named an Association for Talent Development Best Company in 2008 and a Training Top 100 company in 2007. Mr. Wright holds a B.A. from the University of Waterloo, as well as master’s degrees in divinity and education and a counseling psychology degree from the University of Toronto. He completed his doctorate in work-based learning leadership, a joint program between the Wharton School of Business and the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Wright received the medal of the Order of St. John from the Governor General of Canada for his contribution to community leadership and has served on the board of directors for Leadership Tomorrow, a Puget Sound

Region leadership development program. Mr. Wright has also served on the Leadership Council for the Penn Chief Learning Officer (CLO) program. Mr. Wright sits on doctoral dissertation committees as part of the Penn CLO program and is currently adjunct faculty at Hofstra University (executive M.B.A. program) and formerly adjunct business faculty at the University of Maryland, University College.