2016 Agenda Pre-conference Events

Dr. Lisa Simpson is the president and chief executive officer of AcademyHealth. A nationally recognized health policy researcher and pediatrician, her research focuses on improving the performance of the health care system and includes studies of the quality and safety of care, health and health care disparities and the health policy and system response to childhood obesity.

Dr. Simpson earned her undergraduate and medical degrees at Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), a master's in public health at the University of Hawaii, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in health services research and health policy at the University of California, San Francisco.

Susannah Fox is the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She is responsible for helping HHS leadership harness the power of data, technology, and innovation to improve the health and welfare of the nation. Together with the IDEA Lab team, she creates opportunities for entrepreneurship across the HHS workforce.

Susannah most recently served as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, helping to catalyze new ways to think about challenges and develop solutions that deliver impact.

From 2000-14, Susannah was an Associate Director of the Internet Project at the Pew Research Center where she helped quantify and explain the social impact of the internet. She pioneered participatory research methods at the Center in order to explore how information technology and social media affect the health care industry and the consumer health care experience, with a special focus on people living with chronic and rare conditions.

Susannah has a B.A. in Anthropology from Wesleyan University.

Kelly Cronin is Director of the Office of Care Transformation in the Office of the National Coordinator in the US Department of Health and Human Services. She facilitates health IT enabled payment and care delivery reform for providers in the health system through collaboration with federal, state and private sector stakeholders. She's also acted a senior advisor to the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and supported the establishment of their Center for Innovation. Prior to ONC, Ms. Cronin directed patient safety initiatives at the Food and Drug Administration and worked for the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee. Her work experience also includes health services research and clinical trial administration. Prior to HHS, she was a Director at the Lewin Group where she led health services research projects in the public and private sector. She holds a MPH and a MS in Health Policy from George Washington University.

Stephen Konya joined the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as Senior Innovation Strategist for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) in the fall of 2015. In addition to developing innovation strategy, he also serves as a key liaison for innovation related projects and challenges, specifically targeting engagement opportunities with the healthcare startup and investor communities. Furthermore, Mr. Konya is tasked with leading a new work stream on fostering Health IT Innovation ecosystems, under the current EU/US Transatlantic MOU on eHealth.

Prior to his position with the Federal Government, he held several senior positions in Illinois State Government at the Department of Public Health, Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and Human Rights Commission. He holds a BBA in Finance and International Business from Loyola University of Chicago, and was both a Fellow and Mentor of the Mid-America Regional Public Health Leadership Institute (MARPHLI) program, at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC), School of Public Health.

As Chief Innovation Officer, Dr. Shrestha is responsible for driving UPMC's innovation strategy. Dr. Shrestha also serves as Executive Vice President of UPMC Enterprises, pushing the needle in the pursuit of a unique blend of health care intelligence, technology expertise, and entrepreneurial drive to develop inventive and commercially successful solutions that address complex health care challenges. He was recently recognized as "26 of the Smartest People in Health IT" by Becker's Hospital Review, and was acknowledged as one of the "Top 20 Health IT Leaders Driving Change" and as a "Top Healthcare Innovator" by InformationWeek.

Lisa Suennen is Managing Partner at Venture Valkyrie Consulting, which provides investing and digital health strategy services to venture firms and for-profit and non-profit healthcare companies. She is also Managing Member of Cardeation Capital. Lisa is a board member and advisor to several healthcare IT startups, funds and large corporations. She writes the popular Venture Valkyrie blog and hosts the Tech Tonics podcast and is also on faculty at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Lisa spent 15 years as a partner of healthcare venture fund Psilos Group. Earlier, Lisa helped build Merit Behavioral Care, an $800mm behavioral healthcare company.

Mindy Hangsleben is an Entrepreneur Fellow for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). Currently she is working on accelerating the healthcare marketplace by applying Lean tools to federal processes enabling significant cost savings, increased productivity and higher quality. In addition she leads the lean cultural transformation for CMS. Mindy graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of North Dakota in 2005. After graduation, Mindy worked at Intel Semiconductor as a process engineer and also taught and led process improvement activities. Mindy has over 5 years applying Lean and other process improvement tools.