Speakers

Lisa Allen, Ph.D. joined Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) in September 2014 as the first Chief Patient Experience Officer. In this role she has oversight and responsibility for enhancing and continually improving the overall experience of patients and families by coaching, utilization of best practices, transparency, reporting, and system collaboration. She focuses on person and family centered care and engagement. Her position sits within the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. Her team consists of Coaches, Advocates, Volunteer Services, and Patient and Guest Services.

She has her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology and Community Medicine, a Green Belt in Lean, and is a Certified Executive Coach. Dr. Allen was named in the Beckers Hospital Review list as “130 women hospital and health system leaders to know” for 2015 and 2016.

With a focus on providing exceptional customer service and delivering the highest quality care, Mr. Gierlinger is responsible for building an engaging, innovative and collaborative culture that drives organizational growth and customer loyalty through the customer experience.
He came to Northwell Health from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit where he served as vice president, hospitality and service culture, responsible for creating a superior and consistent service experience for patients, visitors and employees.  Mr. Gierlinger worked closely with leadership to drive culture change around improving the customer experience in every encounter across the system.  Prior to that, he was administrator, hospitality services, for Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, responsible for all aspects of non-clinical operations, the Wellness & Integrative Health Center, retail shops and café, and the customer experience.
Mr. Gierlinger began his career in the luxury hotel business, holding a series of leadership positions with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.  He played a key role in the openings of several Ritz-Carlton hotels in Germany, Japan, Indonesia and the US, responsible for executing and implementing Ritz-Carlton service standards, training staff, and leading teams of trainers.
Mr. Gierlinger is a member of the Association of Patient Experience, The Leader’s Board for Service Excellence, and The Beryl Institute.
He received a bachelor’s degree in hospitality business administration from the Bavaria Hotel Management Academy, Altoetting, Germany.

Alan Dubovsky is the Chief Patient Experience Officer for Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles, California.

In his role, Alan is responsible for the facilitation of all patient experience strategy and operations improvements in the inpatient, ambulatory, emergency, and ancillary areas for the health system.

Alan joined Cedars-Sinai in November, 2016, with 15 years focused on healthcare patient experience improvement. Most recently, Alan was with Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia, serving as the Director of Operations over the entire ambulatory enterprise. In that role, Alan was responsible for the departments of patient experience, physician engagement, special constituent and international patient programs, referral management, education and training, and leadership and talent development.

Alan completed his undergraduate degree in Business Administration at the University of Georgia and his Executive Master in Business Administration at Emory University.

Sara Toomey is Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Managing Director of the Center of Excellence for Pediatric Quality Measurement and is the physician lead for all patient experience efforts at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is an academic general pediatrician and health services researcher. She conducts research that aims to measure the quality of pediatric care, demonstrate the association between quality measures and healthcare outcomes, and develop interventions to improve outcomes. Among her accomplishments, she is one of the lead developers of the Child Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems Survey, known as Child HCAHPS. She received her BA from Holy Cross, MPhil in Social Anthropology and MSc in Comparative Social Policy from Oxford University, MD and MPH from Harvard, and was a fellow in the Harvard-wide Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship.

For over twenty years, Lara has led hospital leaders and physicians through culture change resulting in the highest levels of engagement, service, and operational excellence. Lara is currently the SVP, Chief Patient Experience and Strategy Officer at JPS Health Network in Ft. Worth, Texas. Prior to joining JPS, Lara spent 10 years working as a coach for a large healthcare consulting firm. She has worked with thousands of hospital leaders and physicians at over 150 organizations, which included small rural hospitals, large for-profit and not-for-profit health care systems, and academic medical centers. Her concentration on building and sustaining a culture of excellence has led to organizations achieving their highest outcomes. Lara has a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications/Public Relations and a Master’s Degree in Healthcare Administration. She is also the author of a book titled, Believe in the Journey of Your Dreams.

Amy Friedman is the Chief Experience Officer at Denver Health Hospital and serves as a member of the executive leadership team.  In this role, she provides strategic leadership and guidance focusing on initiatives to improve patient and family experience of care in inpatient and ambulatory settings to promote a patient and family-centered environment.  She has been instrumental in establishing the Patient and Family Advisory Council at Denver Health and has led the development and implementation of programs to ensure that the voice of patients and families is represented to improve quality of care. Ms. Friedman has extensive customer service experience in the private and public sectors, including serving on the governor’s staff.  Ms. Friedman is a member of the Mayor’s Multi-Modal Advisory Committee which supports improved transportation for patients and the community at large.  She has been recently featured on NBC Nightly News, CBS News and in US News and World Report for the Lyft transportation program at Denver Health. 

Dr. Thomas Savides is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California San Diego.  He is the Chief Experience Officer for UC San Diego Health where he oversees patient, team member, and physician experience.  He was named by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of “30 Chief Experience Officers to Know in 2018”.  Additionally, he is the Associate Chief Medical Officer for Physician Affairs for UC San Diego Health.

He is also a clinical gastroenterologist who specializes in interventional endoscopic procedures, especially related to diseases of the pancreas and biliary system, as well as management of precancerous lesions of the luminal GI track.  He has published over 200 original research works, chapters, and invited reviews.  He is listed as one of the top gastroenterologists by San Diego Magazine and is named in Castle Connolly’s America’s Top Doctors and America’s Top Doctors for Cancer.  

Kathy Denton has been a facilitator and leader of change and performance improvement for over 25 years in both the private and public  sectors.  The last 18 years she has been at MD Anderson Cancer Center, with the last four years focusing on improving the patient experience.  She has been instrumental in the development of the Patient Experience Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center.  She has a Six Sigma Black Belt; is a Certified Manager of Quality and Organizational Excellence and is a Certified Professional for Healthcare Quality.  She also serves on the Texas A&M University - College of Education and Human Development - Advisory Board.    

Christine’s entire career has been dedicated to women’s and children’s health. She is currently the Director of the Office of Patient Experience at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, where role is to develop and implement strategies that ensure patients and their families have an extraordinary experience.  Since starting at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford four years ago, she has grown the department from a staff of 1 to staff of 25. 

Christine is ultimately responsible for the implementation and sustainability of service standards, gathering patient feedback, patient navigation, corporate partnerships, and many other experience improvement initiatives.  She has been an advocate and the voice of our patients and families during the planning and execution of a 500,000 square foot hospital expansion set to complete in 2017.

Prior to Packard, Christine spent 25 years in the medical device field. She has served as a Vice President of Marketing and Sales and has also worked in strategy and business development. Christine is on various leadership committees and also served two terms as President of the non-profit Professional Women’s Healthcare Alliance (PWHA).

Christine holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Business Administration degrees.

Brian obtained a dual master’s degree from Xavier University. After finishing a fellowship in Hospital Administration at University of Illinois at Chicago Medical center Brian joined Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation as Practice Manager for Women’s Health. After four years he was recruited to be COO of Olean Medical Group, a 33 provider multispecialty group practice in Olean, NY and served as COO for four years and then CEO for a year and a half. In 2007 Brian came to Vanderbilt University Medical Center first as Administrator for the Vanderbilt Eye Institute and currently as Director of Patient Access and Experience. In his current system level role he oversees both strategy and operations for improving the Patient Experience with particular emphasis in ensuring efficient access to meet our client’s needs.

Amy Searls has over twenty years of leadership experience. She currently is Executive Director, Service Excellence at University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. Originally from the Chicago area, she has held positions as Cancer Center Liaison and Director of Guest Services, and Director of Service Excellence with Banner Health and Providence Hospitals, Columbia, South Carolina. She has helped develop and implement many educational and training programs and resources designed to positively impact the patient and family experience. She has extensive background in many aspects of clinical and non-clinical operations in hospital and ambulatory settings. She’s been recognized for delivering exceptional performance related to the patient experience. She has helped develop and successfully achieve service strategies and operational objectives through innovative planning, service, department networking, effective problem solving, vision and leadership. Her philosophy, which emphasizes mission and purpose in what we do in health care, has helped her successfully impact the patient, guest and team experience.

Brett Duggan is the visionary leader and program director for Yes And Corp. A passionate practitioner and teacher of the art of improvisation, acting, and comedy, Duggan brings to his corporate clients over 25 years of experience, including acting in network television, devising comedy shows at top venues in the country, directing and performing with professional improv troupes, and working as a touring stand-up comic in clubs and colleges nationwide. yesandcorp.com

In the role of senior director, Ms. Cangiano leads patient experience measurement operations, reporting and performance improvement across the Northwell Health enterprise.  Under her direction, the patient experience analytics and performance improvement team is utilizing patient feedback to understand what defines and drives customer experiences.  In addition, Ms. Cangiano is responsible for identifying, developing and implementing technology solutions and supporting processes that enhance patient and customer experience. 

Previously, Ms. Cangiano led the development of Northwell’s workforce engagement measurement methodology and strategy.   As a Talent leader, she worked on large scale transformation efforts including leader development and performance management.

Additional roles at Northwell include director of Health System Operations and program manager for System Orthopedic Services.  Prior to her time at Northwell, Ms. Cangiano worked for 10 years in behavioral health settings in clinical, research and administrative capacities.

Ms. Cangiano received her BA in psychology from Georgetown University, her MS in psychology from Saint Louis University, and her MPH with a concentration in health services management through the executive program at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

James Grayson took advantage of early retirement from a career in air traffic control to start a second chapter. Leveraging his lifelong passion for aviation and the systems that allow it to be safe and efficient, he is pushing a new industry to greater heights. Serving as the West Cancer Center’s Administrative Chief of Staff, he works within executive leadership to power the organization’s reliability efforts. From his unique position in the org chart, James works across all departments to create and sustain interdependencies that enable a highly-reliable patient experience from all perspectives: safety, continuity of care, quality interactions with providers, scheduling – the list goes on.

James, 50, lives in Collierville, Tennessee with his wife of nearly 30 years, Kelly. They have two adult daughters: Amelia who is attending graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Abigail who is an undergrad at Rice University in Houston. James and Kelly love British television, travel, and finding their next great meal. As a Colonel in the Commemorative Air Force, James maintains his love of flight and still looks skyward at the sound of every plane.

Susan Osborne is Registered Nurse with over 30 years of experience in Leadership and has coached Senior Executives, Hospital leaders and Doctors for over 15 years with great results in service, people and quality, growth and financial Pillars. She started with CHRISTUS Health Dec 7, 2016 relocating to the Dallas area from Atlanta, Georgia where she held the position of Vice President for Patient Experience for Piedmont Healthcare. Susan worked as an Executive Coach for the Studer Group for 5 Years so well versed in the Must Haves. She is passionate about improving both the Patient and Associate experience. Susan has proven that staff retention is the key to an organizations success. Under her leadership, she decreased RN turnover in critical care from 34 percent to 9 percent within a 2-year period at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite. Susan is the author of several articles including: Recruitment; Rewarding and retaining your staff.

She helped Piedmont Healthcare become the 2nd organization in the US to provide physician transparency of patient satisfaction results. She was successful in moving ED overall performance as well. Piedmont Atlanta Hospital ED was selected as Press Ganey ED Success Story for 2015.

She is a talented presenter and facilitator who brings fun into the work place. On a personal note, she is Married to Jeff Osborne for 25 years and has two grown up Children Katie & Mckenna. She also has 2 more four legged children - dogs Sadie and Kiki.

Please give a warm welcome to Susan Osborne who will be speaking on Communicating Compassionately through Bedside Shift Report.

Isaac Villanueva is the UI UX Design Manager for Software Design and Development at Stanford Health Care. In this role he leverages a patient centered approach to design and improve features within the patient facing app MyHealth. MyHealth is an online tool that provides patients with instant and secure access to their health information. 

Mary Song, MPH, is the manager of the Patient & Family Partner Program (PFPP) and Volunteer Resources at Stanford Health Care. PFPP is made up of over 120 patient and family volunteers who provide the patient and caregiver perspective as speakers, advisory council members, committee members, or participants of improvement events. Mary onboards and trains new Patient and Family Partners, supports existing and creation of new Patient & Family Advisory Councils, and coordinates all requests from the organization for patient and family engagement. Mary also oversees a volunteer program of over 1,300 volunteers per year across Stanford’s hospital and clinics. Mary received her Bachelors in Community Health and Biopsychology from Tufts University and Masters in Public Health from Tufts School of Medicine. 

Mary spends time meeting with hospital and clinic leaders as well as Medical School faculty to do education and strategic planning around how to better engage patient & family partners in improvement work, facility design, and curriculum building. Prior to this role, she has 10 years of experience in accreditation, quality, and process improvement, and is passionate about integrating the voices of patients and families in how hospitals plan, implement, and evaluate delivery of care. 

Dawn Williams is experienced in consulting with organizations across a variety of industries to assess and improve consumer experience. Her recent work has focused on employee engagement and patient experience improvement in healthcare. She joined Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 2015. Prior to working with Planned Parenthood, Ms. Williams worked in professional roles for over a decade at the Cleveland Clinic, most recently holding the position of Consultant in the Patient Experience Advisory Group, a revenue generating consulting team embedded within the Office of Patient Experience. As a founding member of the consulting team, Ms. Williams was responsible for infrastructure development, client relationship management and project management of client deliverables. She has worked with more than 25 organizations in a variety of consumer-focused industries on organizational culture development, employee engagement initiatives, best practice implementation for experience improvement, service excellence training and patient/consumer experience sustainability. Ms. Williams has a Master’s of Business Administration from Tiffin University and a Bachelor of the Arts in Applied Psychology from Franklin University in Ohio. She is also a Certified Patient Experience Professional (CPXP), a professional designation offered through the Patient Experience Institute (PXI).

Nicolle Marinec, MPH, is the Associate Managing Director of the Center for Managing Chronic Disease at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the VA Ann Arbor. Nicolle led the integration and deployment of the Aspect Patient Experience Platform at Michigan Medicine. She coordinates the development efforts of the integrated mobile health platform, helping investigators and clinicians develop patient outreach and support programs using tools like Interactive Voice Response, text messaging, and web-portals.

Nicolle’s work as a health educator inspired her to pursue a career path developing accessible programs to help clinicians expand the traditional model of care. Working with Michigan Medicine, our team strategically targets opportunities to develop unique programs to engage patients and their families and friends.  Nicolle received her Masters in Public Health from the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Ksenia is the analyst at Santa Monica UCLA, Department of Nursing, with background in healthcare management and a deep commitment to UCLA Health vision of healing humankind, one patient at a time, by improving health, alleviating suffering, and delivering acts of kindness.  After joining the executive team in 2013, Ksenia implemented standardized data tracking, educated staff on empirical outcomes, and facilitated multiple process improvement initiatives including discharge redesign, MD RN rounding, patient education, electronic leadership rounding, and post-discharge phone call.

Lee Ann has spent her career providing digital and marketing services to a myriad of Healthcare clients to optimize opportunities and initiatives for maximum return. As a strategic thinker with a keen business acumen, Lee Ann develops and drives big ideas that produce revenue and integrated solutions incorporating strategy, technology and insights as the foundation – resulting in solutions that deliver compelling patient and staff engagement.Her work has spanned a variety of industries including Agency/Marketing Services and Healthcare, working on prestigious brands that include: BCBS, Aetna, Baylor Scott and White, Tenet Healthcare, Concentra, United Healthcare, St. Luke’s, CVS, TLC Vision, Epsilon, Acxiom and Ogilvy ... to name a few

Shawn Nason started The Nason Group, where the focus is to help their partners meet their consumers where they are at to better inform how they approach current and future products and services.

While he has deep passion for healthcare the tools they employ to impact healthcare are universal and accessible in the context of any organization that wants to join them on the journey towards consumer-centered innovation.He has learned through his career that deeply listening to the consumer is a key tenet of successful organizations and a bold move for leaders to undertake.

His challenge to both small and large organizations is to evaluate deeply your commitment to the consumer. If you aren’t where you feel you need to be, go find someone (it doesn’t have to be The Nason Group) to help you put the consumer at the center of the products and services you offer. Consumers – whether they be direct purchasers or in a B2B environment are asking…demanding more of their relationships. Putting the consumer at the center of your business model will ensure your ability to adapt, adjust, and perform as a business.

Patty Riskind is a dynamic healthcare services leader with demonstrated success leading high performing teams in strategy, operations, client support, business development, product management, sales and marketing. She has achieved exponential growth with both small and large companies, reengineered stagnant operations, and energized company cultures for expansion and growth.

Patty is currently Head of Global Healthcare for Qualtrics, an experience management software company that helps organizations research, gain insights, and act on customer, employee, product, and brand experience.  She also serves as an independent director on two venture-backed healthcare technology boards, PatientWisdom and NarrativeDX, and is a public board member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) on its compensation committee. Patty also founded Blue Horse Ventures LLC, a healthcare consulting and investment firm that she manages for angel investing.  

Previously, Patty was Chief Client Experience Officer (CXO) at Press Ganey Associates (NYSE: PGND, acquired by EQT November 2016 for $2.3 billion). As CXO, Patty had P&L responsibility for all business units, product strategy, operations, business development, and client support.  In this role, Patty set strategy and oversaw execution for maintaining 99% annual quality service levels, 97% annual client retention for a 26,000-client base, 15% annual revenue growth achieving $385 million annual revenue and $140 million EBITDA in 2016.

Bob is CTO and co-founder of Mist, a pioneer in smart wireless networking for the smart device era. 

Bob started his career in wireless at Metricom (Ricochet wireless network) developing and deploying wireless mesh networks across the country to connect the first generation of Internet browsers. Following Metricom, Bob co-founded Airespace, a start-up focused on helping enterprises manage the flood of employees bringing unlicensed Wi-Fi technology into their businesses. Following Cisco’s acquisition of Airespace in 2005, Bob became the VP/CTO of Cisco enterprise mobility and drove mobility strategy and investments in the wireless business (e.g. Navini, Cognio, ThinkSmart, Phunware, Wilocity, Meraki). He also drove industry standards such as Hot Spot 2.0 and market efforts such as Cisco’s Connected Mobile Experience. He holds more than 15 patents

Luke Poppish is Executive Director of OB/GYN Service Line for South Shore Health System in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Luke holds a Master’s degree in Business Operations and is well versed in healthcare operations, organizational transformation, process mapping, strategic planning and KPI strategies for health systems. His experience is broad – ranging from operations management in a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) to his present role. In addition to that primary role, Poppish also has secondary responsibilities related to the analysis and improvement of patient flow on South Shore’s Medical and Surgery Units. Poppish has extensive training and experience in Lean healthcare training and management for multiple health systems.

Kimberly Dever,MD is the Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, MA. It is a busy regional medical center that has approximately 3400 deliveries per year. She is also the Associate Chief Medical Officer. Dr Dever has been on staff at South Shore Hospital since 2002 and served in the United States Army as an ObGyn prior to that. She attended Boston University School of Medicine and completed her internship and residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Girk is currently responsible for running operations of Medrics Corporation that provides location intelligence driven mobile applications for healthcare sector to improve patient experience and operational efficiency. He recently joined Medrics Corporation after working over 20 years in private Information Technology firms in various roles. Girk has an extensive background in many aspects of providing solutions to public organizations and private firms to improve their operations through innovative technologies. 

Girk holds an MBA with Management Information Systems focus and Advanced Certificate on Information Science and Public Policy from State University of New York at Albany.

John, Microsoft’s Healthcare Evangelist, is a true visionary at applying technology to solving Healthcare challenges. John gained much of his hands-on experience early in his career when he was a CIO responsible for developing, deploying and managing all the Information Technology assets and personnel for a county hospital in central Ohio. Building on this foundation, he went on to architect and develop the first Preferred Provider Organization(PPO) ranking system, for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, helped build small to mid-sized Healthcare Information Systems providers and developed Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) systems under a consortium of HMO’s in the state of Michigan. John's contributions to healthcare have global reach as demonstrated when he was involved with creating agreements for the Thailand Ministry of Health to use early forms of TeleHealth to overcome some of the challenges with distributing healthcare into hard to reach rural populations within the country.

Since joining Microsoft in 2011, John has focused his energy on helping Healthcare organizations create engaging experiences focused on health consumers, employees and affiliates which are injected into daily workflows without creating additional effort to their targeted audiences. The secret to these efforts is the ability to spin up new services, test and modify them very quickly based on their measured effectiveness. Increasingly Health organizations are recognizing that offering new experiences in an agile manner requires the support of a robust set of secure, compliant hybrid cloud capabilities that can be easily assembled and deprecated within a business model that has similar flexibility. Mature capabilities in Advanced Analytics, Sensor management, Telecommuting, Cognitive computing and collaboration tools offered within the public cloud are real weapons to improve population health and personalized medicine. A great example would be continuously receiving patient reported data from wearable sensors which can feed analytics models to provide early warning of changing wellness conditions and engage a medical professional for early intervention to control the situation.

A student of the complete healthcare system, John understands the challenges of Healthcare information management and is focused on applying the latest information technology treatments to improve the overall results of the system.

Matt began his career on the front lines of patient care as a Physical Therapist. Since then, he has spent the better part of two decades producing award-winning media content for healthcare organizations. Matt is the co-founder and lead producer for Always Culture—providing patient experience training videos for hospital team members with the patient and family in mind.

Brad Diephuis is a computer scientist and physician focused on using technology to improve physician experience. He served as co-founder and CEO of Herald Health, a health IT startup offering a customizable alerting platform for front-line hospital providers, recently acquired by Persistent Systems.  Herald’s software was recognized as the winner of the 2016 HHS ONC Provider User Experience Challenge. 

Brad completed an MD/MBA degree between the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and Harvard Business School.   He has been recognized as one of MedTech Boston’s 40 Under 40 Health Care Innovators and has co-authored 14 peer-reviewed papers on topics ranging from predictive cancer models to software design.

Duff Anderson is a visionary in Voice of the Customer research with over 20 years’ experience. As SVP and Co-founder at iperceptions, Duff is responsible for providing expert advice to organizations on how to gain a competitive advantage across the customer lifecycle and improve the customer experience.

At Pivot Labs (Partners HealthCare & Persistent Systems collaboration), Dr. Sunita Patolia manages innovation programs aimed at building a community of cross-functional healthcare professionals to re-imagine the healthcare experience. In her current role, Sunita is actively designing workshops and experiences that take her team, as well as clinical and non-clinical groups at Partners HealthCare, on an exploration of their own creative confidence while identifying and solving problems together. She has led projects focused on establishing strategic partnerships with healthcare industry partners for designing empathetic patient experience, new product development and user centered experience for care team. Sunita's work combines Design Thinking methodology for problem solving with the Theory U innovation model for mobilizing change within organizations. Dr. Patolia is a Pharmacist who earned her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her expertise in innovation models and Action Learning was developed under Dr. Karen Tilstra's tutelage at Florida Hospital Innovation Lab

Dr. Timothy M. Hale is the Associate Director of Product Development at Partners HealthCare Pivot Labs. Tim guides the work of the human-centered design team at Pivot Labs and coordinates this work with collaborators and technical teams at Persistent Systems. Tim has been involved in projects leveraging data from wireless devices to aid patients in managing chronic disease, improve communication between patients and their care team, and to identify people at risk for early functional decline. He received a Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from the University of Alabama Birmingham specializing in research examining the use of information and communication technologies in healthcare, emerging digital health lifestyles, and digital inequalities. His research has been published in the Journals of Gerontology, Journal of Health Communication, Journal of Medical Internet Research, and Information, Communication & Society. He recently completed an edited volume titled, eHealth: Current Evidence, Promises, Perils, and Future Directions.

Brian Wynne, VP and General Manager, has been with NRC Health since 2009. During his time at NRC Health, Brian has worked closely with many of the largest and most prominent health care systems in the United States to achieve an array of organizational objectives. His expertise includes customer experience design, consumer and brand intelligence, and customer-centric strategy execution. Prior to joining NRC Health, Brian was Publisher and Principal of a provider-focused magazine, highlighting emerging trends in health care.

Steve Jackson serves as President of NRC Health. He joined NRC Health in September 2014, bringing nearly 20 years of experience advising health systems in a variety of terrains including patient experience, physician engagement, and patient access. Steve oversees company strategy and NRC Health’s portfolio of solutions that bring Human Understanding™ to healthcare. Today, NRC Health enables more than 75% of the Top 200 U.S. health systems to better understand the people they care for and design experiences that inspire loyalty. Previously, he held roles of increasing responsibility at Vocera Communications, The Advisory Board Company, Neoforma, and Stockamp & Associates.

A central leader in expanding the patient experience movement, Jason is the Founding Editor of the Patient Experience Journal, the first open-access, peer-reviewed journal committed to research and practice in patient experience improvement. He also established and currently serves as President of Patient Experience Institute, an independent, non-profit, committed to the improvement of patient experience through evidence-based research, continuing education and professional certification. 

Prior to leading the Institute, Jason designed and led the organization change, service, and leadership development strategies with HCA, working with over 45 facilities on improvement and change efforts. He also conducted groundbreaking research to identify the characteristics of high performance healthcare organizations. 

Jason is a sought after speaker, provocative commentator, and respected author of numerous publications and academic articles on culture, organization change and performance in healthcare, including two books on Organization Development in Healthcare, and over 25 white papers on patient experience improvement. 

For 20 years Chris has applied his talents in strategy, technology and performance management to solve complex problems and build high performing organizations. With a background spanning start-up companies, global corporations, higher education and government as the CIO for the City of St. Louis – Chris has a unique vantage point on engagement, culture, technology and our changing work experience. Chris frequently contributes to industry publications and speaks around the country on employee engagement, people analytics and building entrepreneurial organizations.

Barry is a 15-year practitioner of the art of loyalty marketing. He is a Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional (CLMP) and currently serves as VP of Loyalty Strategy for Maritz Loyalty. A sought-after loyalty consultant, speaker and workshop leader, he is also the originator of The Multi-Loyalty Framework and an evangelizer of the notion that “Consumers are human beings first.”

Tara Mahoney is Avaya’s Global Healthcare Practice Leader and engages with health systems to support them in their digital transformation journey by leveraging communications innovations to improve patient, family and care team experience.  She has extensive experience in patient access, working with organizations on delivering a consistent and seamless patient and provider experience in coordinating patient care, and is quickly becoming a recognized industry expert in this area.  She has a passion for virtual care and clinical contact center solutions, and has worked on innovative solutions including telehealth, teleICU, opioid management, end of life solutions.  She gets her energy from working closely with the Healthcare Administrators, Frontline Practitioners and IT Leadership defining requirements, delivering design and working closely with users throughout implementation.

Julie Flygare, JD is a woman living with narcolepsy, the President & CEO of Project Sleep, a non-profit dedicated to sleep health and sleep disorders, and the award-winning author of Wide Awake and Dreaming: A Memoir of Narcolepsy. Julie received her B.A. from Brown University and her J.D. from Boston College Law School focusing on health law. Julie is also the creator of the NARCOLEPSY: NOT ALONE campaign and co-founder of the first-ever scholarship program for students with narcolepsy.