It takes a Village

Dr. Michael Kupferman is CEO of Penn State’s $4.2 billion health system. In this role he works closely with Penn State College of Medicine Dean Dr. Karen Kim and other leaders of the College of Medicine and University to foster increased collaboration across the clinical and academic enterprises. In addition to his administrative duties as CEO, Kupferman intends to continue caring for head and neck cancer patients, as well as teaching medical students, residents and fellows. He holds a College of Medicine faculty appointment as a professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery.

Kupferman is a fellowship trained head and neck cancer surgeon who completed his clinical and research fellowships at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he served as senior vice president of clinical and academic network development from 2006 to 2022. He led the development, management and growth of clinical oncology and research programs across the MD Anderson Cancer Network, inclusive of all domestic and international relationships. He joined Penn State Health after serving as president of the Banner University Medicine Division and senior vice president of the physician enterprise for Phoenix-based Banner Health, one of the largest health systems in the U.S. His responsibilities at Banner included academic medicine, system and service line strategy, hospital and medical group operations, patient access and health network performance.

He earned his bachelor’s in political science and biology from Yeshiva University, and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He completed his surgery internship and otolaryngology-head and neck surgery residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a master’s in business administration from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. He is board-certified in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery.

Diana Torgersen brings extensive knowledge and experience across the value chain of medical innovation, from academic research to biotech and pharma. Diana leverages her broad understanding of the key stakeholders in the ecosystem to deliver impactful outcomes and to build value along the innovation continuum. Her career spans venture capital, investment banking, as well as biotech and pharma, where she has worked through the lens of financings and strategic transactions to drive critical inflection points. With a comprehensive understanding of the key stakeholders within the ecosystem, Diana has a proven ability to drive collaboration and build value throughout the innovation process.

Currently, as the Head of Innovation Ecosystem Integration at Organon, Diana is focused on enabling a sustainable innovation ecosystem by fostering strategic partnerships and financial solutions to transform the health of women. She works closely with a wide range of stakeholders across the innovation ecosystem to drive innovation and enable development of assets to meet the unmet medical needs of women.

Diana holds a DPhil from University of Oxford and earned her bachelor and licentiate degree from Stockholm University. She has also conducted research at NIH and Karolinska Institute.

Lainie Dean is a seasoned strategy executive whose growth-minded vision positively impacts a vast array of industries including healthcare, manufacturing, and others. Known for her big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills, Lainie not only achieves desired revenue numbers through streamlining processes and procedures but also builds high-performing teams by enhancing engagement, empowering individuals, and leading with empathy.

Lainie has a unique know-how when envisioning a plan of action. She sees the possibilities and measurable impact as she’s “wired” with a creative thought process and a high level of curiosity. She’s a strong synthesizer of information — able to boil-down complex topics, quickly gain a sense of focus, and then prioritize tasks for the team. She’s made a career of building lasting relationships by connecting people and creating deep levels of understanding. As a leader, she has mentored executives at all career stages by being invested in their future.

Currently, Lainie serves on two Advisory Boards: Kilele Health, which provides wearable remote biochemical monitoring devices for cardiometabolic diseases, empowering doctors and patients with real-time data; and Ecton: the world’s most advanced patient-provider healthcare payment platform powered by AI.

Prior to this, Lainie was the Chief Strategy Officer at Premier Health, a health system comprised of five hospitals in southwest Ohio that contributes $2.4B a year in economic impact. There, she designed and implemented comprehensive strategic plans, led innovative initiatives, and developed joint ventures and partnerships that resulted in revenue growth and operational impact. Her leadership earned her the 2022 Dayton Business Journal Power 50 Award.

Lainie earned her Master’s of Hospital and Health Administration at Xavier University and her Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Cincinnati.  She has Certificates of Achievement from Yale and Villanova University, excelling in Women on Boards, Six Sigma Green Belt, and Lean Six Sigma.

Adding value and making a difference for individuals and organizations is at Lainie’s core.  She is a Board of Trustee Member at Chaminade Julienne High School, serving on the Governance Committee and Chairing the Marketing and Admissions Committee.

Julie A. Stone spent several years as a member of Willis Towers Watson Health & Benefits North America Senior Leadership team. She was responsible for Intellectual Capital and Specialty Practices including health management, wellbeing, pharmacy, absence & disability management, dental, vision and more. She designed and lead Learning & Development for the Health & Benefits practice following the integration of Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt. She also was responsible for the business partnership with WTWs Research & Innovation Center bringing thought leadership to both employer and employee-centric survey design. She led broad strategic initiatives across WTW’s H&B business and for large and complex employers.

Prior to joining Towers Perrin, Julie held a variety of roles in Prudential’s Health Care business including leading the integration team focused on networks, sales, and account management for the Northeast during the
sale of the business to Aetna. Prior to that, she oversaw the execution of
the sale of the New England Prudential health plan to Tufts Health Plan
in Massachusetts. Earlier in her career, she led the national accounts underwriting team, served as an Account Executive for key national accounts, managed the health care data analytics team, the treasury operations, and spent six years leading the user design team in IT for Prudential’s managed health care business.

Julie worked with clients directly to develop health and welfare benefits strategies aligned with organizational/business goals as well as to design, implement and measure their health and welfare programs’ effectiveness through a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Julie’s background and expertise covers the full range of health and welfare programs. She has worked with clients in a variety of industries, including financial services, utilities, and pharmaceuticals.

Julie has spoken at conferences sponsored by The Conference Board and the Business Group on Health, SHRM, and other women’s health events. She has frequently been interviewed about health care by various media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Kaiser Health News, Fox Business, Money magazine, and National Public Radio.

Tom consults to health systems, independent providers, payors, private equity firms and others on value-based care, pharmacy cost management, and patient engagement. Mr. Davis recently finished an assignment as Senior Vice President at Somatus, a managed kidney care company. He has also served as Market President for JenCare/ChenMed in Atlanta, a capitated medical practice serving low-income Medicare Advantage patients.

For 16 years Tom served as Senior Vice President at Coventry Health Care running health plans, pharmacy programs, product development, digital engagement, and product development. In 2013 the company was sold to Aetna.

Mr. Davis has also held leadership positions with United Healthcare, MetraHealth, and Prudential Health Care System. Earlier in his career he worked in management consulting and private equity investing at APM and E.M. Warburg Pincus. Mr. Davis holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA in Religion from Wesleyan University. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Barbara is a former Vice President at Pfizer responsible for identifying innovative research opportunities spanning multiple therapeutic areas that are both strategically aligned as well as complimentary to scientific efforts within World-Wide Research and Development. She built and lead a global team of 18 senior and executive scientists to identify First in Class or Only in class assets in innovative technology platforms. Barbara lead multiple cross functional teams within Pfizer to conduct due diligence and present findings at both the WRD Leadership and Executive Leadership levels. She is known for thinking creatively to solve challenges and for digging in-deep to get to the root of issues. She is a Pfizer Achievement Award recipient for recognition of visionary insights and innovation and holds board memberships on Mass Bio, UCLA Technology Development Group, Molecular Stethoscopes and Ab Initio.

Dr. Marcel van Duin is Chief Scientific Officer and responsible for External Innovation and Emerging Science at Organon, a company with the vision to advance the health of women.
Marcel was previously Vice President, Head of R&D Alliances for Reproductive Medicine and Maternal Health (RM&MH) and Therapeutic Area Head for Research in RM&MH at Ferring Pharmaceuticals and member of the global drug discovery leadership team. Key scientific focus was on projects for Endometriosis, Infertility and Obstetrical complications such as preterm labor and preeclampsia as well as a strong outreach to external opportunities.
Before that his career spanned leadership R&D responsibilities in multiple Women’s Health areas in Merck & Co, Schering Plough and Organon where he started his professional journey in the pharmaceutical industry in Oss, the Netherlands.
Marcel holds a B.S. in biology from Utrecht university and PhD at Erasmus university, Rotterdam, both in the Netherlands.
At present he holds an honorary professorship in Innovation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China. He has (co-)authored over 60 scientific publications.

Alla Onitskansky is a leader in the senior care and rehabilitation space.  A trained physical therapist, Ms. Onitskansky has distinguished herself by developing innovative programs that both improved patient health and supported growth of internal rehabilitation departments.

As a President of Rehabilitation Services for Rockport HealthCare Services, she moved rehabilitation services in-house and grew it into a key profit driver while simultaneously enhancing clinical programs. Prior to Rockport, Onitskansky was Senior Vice President Clinical Operations for Genesis Rehabilitation Services, where she built a nationwide clinical team that consistently delivered financial and clinical results.

Currently, Alla is President of People IQ Consulting working with a range of companies to deliver the clinical excellence and operational effectiveness that are her hallmark.

Alla earned her speech therapy degree at St. Petersburg University, physical therapy degree at Cleveland State University, MBA at Baldwin Wallace University.

Michael Skaff is the Chief Information Officer for Sequoia Living.

Skaff previously served as the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Information Officer for the Jewish Senior Living Group, which supports the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living, the largest private nonprofit Skilled Nursing Facility in California.

Skaff was recognized as a Corporate Finalist by the 2022 Bay Area CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards for his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, mobilizing a digital workforce and constructing an effective model of the future of work for SNFs. He has been named one of the Top 20 Most Innovative Midmarket CIOs by CRN and was nominated to the Business Transformation 150 by Constellation Research, for his work in healthcare-specific technology.

With a distinguished career in health care spanning more than thirty years, Jim is a Founder and Managing Partner of Tyree & D’Angelo Partners (TDP), a private equity firm focused on investments in promising, underperforming businesses in the lower-middle market.

Prior to founding TDP in 2012, Jim had an outstanding 15 year career at Abbott, holding executive positions in its pharmaceutical and nutrition businesses. Jim was involved in many of the company’s major acquisitions and was responsible for the restructuring of TAP, Abbott’s joint venture with Takeda Chemicals of Japan. Jim served as Executive Vice President, Pharmaceutical Products, Abbott’s largest business, and was also directly responsible for establishing and managing Abbott Global Nutrition, Abbott’s second largest operating division. Jim also served as President of Abbott Biotech Ventures. Prior to his career at Abbott, Jim was President of Sugen, Inc., a biotech company focused on oncology, and held management positions at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer.

Jim currently serves or has served as an independent director of a number of privately and publicly held companies. He is also a member of The Council of Advisors at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (Booth). He earned his MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, as well as two bachelor degrees in psychology and forensic studies from Indiana University.

George Keefe served as SVP of Market Access and SVP of External Affairs and Public Policy during his 20 year career with Teva Pharmaceuticals. His leadership roles included Market Access, Government Affairs, Public Policy, Payer Marketing, Pricing and Contracting, Reimbursement Strategies, Patient Assistance and Medical Affairs. George served on Teva’s US and North America leadership teams from 2015 through 2021.

George joined Teva in 2002 where he took on various positions of increasing responsibility, assuming leadership of U.S. Market Access in 2015. George was involved with launching and commercializing dozens of products covering numerous therapeutic areas and digital health. In his most recent role, George led the Government Affairs, Public Policy and Medical Affairs functions. He helped to guide Teva’s advocacy efforts and represented Teva’s interests on a range of key issues. George worked with Congressional leaders, Members of Congress, key Administration officials and other policymakers on issues of critical importance to the industry.

George holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics with a minor in Political Science from SUNY Geneseo and an MBA in Finance and Marketing from the University at Buffalo. He lives in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida with his wife Linda. George enjoys hiking, cycling, playing basketball and reading historical biographies of world leaders.

A medical device industry veteran with more than 25 years experience, Chip is currently founder and CEO of Regatta Medical, focusing on acquiring companies and assets in the products and services areas of the medical device industry.

Chip previously served as CEO of Creganna Medical, a leading Ireland-based supplier to the minimally invasive medical device industry. After a successful three year effort to focus the company on higher growth markets and improve operational performance, Creganna Medical was sold to TE Connectivity in 2016. Preceding Creganna, Chip was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence within the FDA at CDRH in 2012-13. He co-led the Innovation Pathway team focused on streamlining aspects of medical device clinical trials in the U.S.  Prior to his work at FDA, Chip had a long and distinguished career at Abbott, including President of Abbott Vascular, Abbott’s cardiovascular device division, where he led the organization from a small vessel closure business through acquisitions and organic growth to global leadership in the drug-eluting stent market with the launch of Xience in the U.S., Japan, and China. Abbott Vascular became a multi-billion dollar division of Abbott.

Chip earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Josh is a health care product, operations and strategy leader with a 20-year track record of successfully creating, bringing to market, and selling employer-, payer- and provider-facing products at industry-leading healthcare companies. Josh’s areas of expertise include Medicare, telehealth, post-acute care, employer group benefits, complex disease management, product development and management, and finance.

Josh holds a BS in Nutritional Science from Cornell University and an MBA in Finance and Investments from the Zicklin School of Business (Baruch College, City University of New York)

Pamela Gill is a healthcare and not-for-profit consultant who brings experience as a clinical provider who has served in multiple executive positions, most recently as the President and CEO of Recovery Resources, a comprehensive non-profit behavioral health care organization where she led the acquisition of the agency by a major academic medical Center. Pam has had an extensive career in hospital and healthcare administration including leadership positions at The Cleveland Clinic, a global healthcare organization. Pam is a registered nurse; her clinical background is in neurosciences and her areas of interest are strategic planning and population health management. Pam has keen interest in innovative solutions through both technology, business partnerships and systems organization. Pam’s career has included strategic experience in multiple health system mergers and acquisitions

A Cleveland, Ohio native, she holds a nursing degree, a bachelor’s degree in Health Care Administration and a master’s degree in biomedical ethics. She is passionate about the arts and community development serving on multiple boards.

Kirk Keaffaber leads Digital Health for the Biomedicines Division covering neurosciences and immunology. In this role, he has led the digital health strategy for the business unit, the first digital product to market from concept to commercialization, digital-first components of customer support, contributed to clinical digital health efforts, and established external collaborations for innovation. Prior to that he was Senior Director responsible for Commercial Strategy & Operations in Neurosciences, which included traditional activities, but also creating a digital health focus within the business unit. Prior to that, he led Integrated/Omni-Channel Marketing, building from a single brand to then become a large COE across all brands and business units for the US market. In his 21 years at Lilly, Kirk has held other leadership positions in global brand marketing, US customer marketing, and US Sales across many therapeutic areas, and also roles developing new commercial innovation.

Mr. Oldroyd has spent over 26 years in the healthcare industry.  His primary focus has been on startup organizations, building and executing business development and commercial strategies for new assets in therapeutics, diagnostics, real world data/AI engineering and software.  His expertise involves finding the best business use cases to generate revenue for new products in a large and challenging healthcare ecosystem.  He is currently the Chief Business Officer at C2i Genomics and sits on the Board of Directors at Base 10 Genetics.  Additionally, Mr. Oldroyd consults or advises a number of startup and larger organizations within the digital health, data security and diagnostic industries.  His education includes a Juris Doctor with a specialty in health law and policy.  Mr. Oldroyd spends much of his free time with his five adult children and two grandsons.  His other interests include aviation, as a private pilot, and adventure motorcycling.

Yael leads the Nutrino Health business as part of Medtronic Diabetes. As CEO of Nutrino, she led the company to early revenue and successful acquisition in 2018. Previously, Yael held multiple commercial roles: VP of Business Development at Sensible Medical, VP Marketing at American Well, and Director care management marketing at TriZetto (acquired by Cognizant). Yael holds a BA in psychology from Hebrew University and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Dr. Avi Tsur, M.D is the Founder and Director of the Sheba Women’s Health Innovation Center, a collaborative effort or ARC, the Sheba Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and the Gertner Institute for Health Policy and Epidemiology.

Serves as Head of the Sheba Beyond Women’s Health Telemedicine Services providing cutting edge remote healthcare services across Israel and Beyond.

Clinically trained in the Hadassah Medical School, Sheba Medical Center and Stanford University Medical Center, and clinically serves as attending physician at the Sheba Antepartum (high-risk pregnancy) Department, High-risk Pregnancy Clinics and the Obstetrics and Gynecology Ultrasound Unit.

Leading a National Ministry of Health Committee, promoting telemedicine in women’s healthcare.

Dr. Tsur holds patents for several predictive machine learning models in the field of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is the founder of BirthAI.org and was the lead medical inventor of the Lioness, a mechanical device for prevention of preterm birth currently commercialized by Pregnantech.

Serves as principal investigator of several cutting edge studies –  PTBiome, precision gestational diabetes, and remote postdate fetal monitoring.  Author of 35 peer reviewed manuscripts and three book chapters.

Mentor at Biodesign Israel and the and at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC) program in Healthcare Innovation.

Uzi is a serial entrepreneur, longtime business executive and sales leader in the worlds of medical devices and digital health. After serving at multiple companies as a sales and marketing executive, Uzi managed Medcon, a leader in cardiology informatics, and was in charge of its growth from inception to a category leader, IPO, and sale to McKesson. At McKesson, Uzi acted as the VP cardiology.  Today, Uzi is the chief commercial officer for Tyto Care, a leading digital health startup in the field of remote patient monitoring. Uzi holds a BSC in computer science and mathematics MA in conflict resolution and MBA from Tel Aviv University.