SPEAKERS AND MODERATORS

Emily Barey is the Chief Nurse Evangelist at Epic. In this role, she contributes to product management in the areas of nursing, community health and social care. She leads the Epic Nursing Advisory Council and Coordinated Care Management forum, consults with Epic customers globally on strategies for comprehensive care record adoption and collaborates closely with the Epic research and development teams on enhancements to support interdisciplinary practice across the continuum of care and service. She was on the original team that architected the first integrated health and social care record as part of the Epic-Apotti program in Helsinki, Finland. 

Nationally, Emily served two terms on the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) Inpatient Workgroup that sets the standards for all electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States and in 2015 worked on the US Office of the National Coordinator’s Health IT Safety Roadmap Task Force. Since 2020, Emily has also collaborated with the Scottsdale Institute on leading their annual Social Determinants of Health Summit with national leaders from population health, community health and investment, and health equity.   

She has published on EHR implementation in the textbook Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge, and on Computerized Physician Order Entry in The Essentials of Nursing Informatics, 5th Edition. Past speaking engagements include the American Nursing Informatics Association, the Health Information Management Systems Society, and the Nurses in Care of Health System Elders at New York University, among others. 

She is the recipient of the Edward Coakley Visiting Scholar Award from the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Edward B. Kovar Memorial Lecture Award from the New England Public Health Association, and the HIMSS Changemaker in Health Senior Executive Award. She is a graduate of the Yale School of Nursing. 

Joanne M. Conroy, MD, has led Dartmouth Health as president and chief executive officer since 2017. As the leader of New Hampshire’s largest private employer and only academic health system, including its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), Dr. Conroy has led significant positive change and growth. Highlights of this work include a dramatic turnaround in Dartmouth Health’s financial performance, the addition of Southwestern Vermont Health Care and Valley Regional Hospital as members of the Dartmouth Health system, the completion of two major expansion projects, and a strategic planning process that is guiding the organization into the future.

Under Conroy’s leadership in 2021, Dartmouth Health expanded its Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics Manchester, New Hampshire location with an Ambulatory Surgical Center, and with the April 2023 completion of a $150 million expansion of a new patient pavilion in Lebanon, New Hampshire, expanded the footprint of DHMC to 460 inpatient beds. Both projects increased access to key clinical services for patients, brought the use of advanced state-of-the-art technology to the bedside and enhanced delivery of the world-class care that patients and families have come to expect from Dartmouth Health.

Dr. Conroy has long been a formidable force and is a vocal advocate for increasing the role of women in leadership, including as a founding member of Women of Impact, a group of health care executives addressing complex problems in the industry. Her recent national and regional awards and honors include the 2021 Steven Schroeder Award for Outstanding Healthcare CEO given by the LeapFrog Group, being named the 2022 Citizen of the Year by the New Hampshire Union Leader, and Becker’s Hospital Review’s 2022 Top 113 Great Leaders in Healthcare list. She is often singled out as a role model for other women who aspire to become leaders and agents for positive change in health care. In 2018 and 2022, Conroy was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare and was included in the magazine’s inaugural list of Women Leaders Luminaries in 2019. She has been named to Boston Business Journal’s Women of Influence list, Becker’s Hospital Review’s 2023 and 2024 130 Women Hospital and Health System Leaders to Know, the 135 Nonprofit Hospital and Health System CEOs to Know, and the 36 Women Physician Leaders to Know lists. She was included in the Becker’s Top 40 CEO Influencers list for 2023. Under her leadership, DHMC continues to be annually ranked as the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek.

Prior to joining Dartmouth Health, Dr. Conroy served as CEO of Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, and as chief health care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, DC. She served as chief medical officer, vice president of academic affairs and executive vice president of the Atlantic Health system based in Florham Park, New Jersey. While serving as executive vice president, she was named president and chief operating officer of the Morristown Memorial Hospital (now called Morristown Medical Center) in Morristown, New Jersey. She held several academic and administrative leadership positions at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), including president of the MUSC medical staff, director of Residency Education for the Department of Anesthesiology, chair of the Department of Anesthesia & Perioperative Medicine, associate vice president for Medical Affairs, executive medical director and senior associate Dean of the MUSC College of Medicine.

Dr. Conroy received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Dartmouth as a member of only the second class to admit women. As an undergraduate, she was the recipient of a Robert Sloan Scholarship from Singer Corporation. She received her medical degree from MUSC, where she completed her residency in anesthesiology, serving as chief resident for one year. She is board-certified by the American Board of Anesthesiologists. On January 1, 2024, Dr. Conroy became chair of the American Hospital Association Board and will serve as the Immediate Past Chair through December 2025.

Bill Gassen is president and CEO of Sanford Health, a $11 billion integrated health system serving communities primarily across the upper Midwest.

Headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sanford Health is dedicated to transforming the health care experience and providing access to world-class health care in America’s heartland.

Since taking on the role of president and CEO in 2020, Bill has been dedicated to strengthening quality, sustainability and access to care for patients across the upper Midwest. In 2022, Bill announced that Sanford Health’s strategic position and aspirational goal is to be the premier rural health system in the United States, with a commitment to ensuring the quality of care a person receives is not limited by their zip code.

Sanford Health’s mission to provide world-class care close to home led to new partnerships with Black Hills Orthopedic and Spine Center and Black Hills Surgical Hospital in 2024 and Marshfield Clinic Health System and Security Health Plan in 2025. Through these strategic partnerships, Sanford Health is improving access to care for more patients than ever before and providing new opportunities for its providers to accelerate clinical innovation and research through nearly 1,500 active clinical trials and studies.

In 2024, Bill led Sanford Health through historic transformation with the opening of the new Sanford Health Virtual Care Center in Sioux Falls, SD. The Virtual Care Center is part of Sanford’s $350 million virtual care initiative designed to reimagine the future of care delivery and train the next generation of clinicians.

Sanford Health serves over 2 million patients and nearly 425,000 health plan members across the upper Midwest including South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Iowa, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The integrated nonprofit health system includes a network of 56 hospitals, 288 clinic locations, 147 senior care communities, 4,000 physicians and advanced practice providers and nearly 1,500 active clinical trials and studies. The organization’s transformational virtual care initiative brings patients closer to care with access to 78 specialties.

Tony Hernandez is an experienced health care executive serving as the interim president of Presbyterian Health Plan. He previously served as the vice president of Medicare Advantage Transformation.

Mr. Hernandez is mission-driven to align the integrated economics of provider-owned health plans to enhance access, engagement and quality outcomes for members and patients, improving provider satisfaction and alignment.

Over the past 20 years, Mr. Hernandez was an owner and operator of a successful provider start-up organization, serving as the founding CEO of the first post-acute hospital in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and part of a leadership team that built the health care enterprise into 25 hospitals in 11 states. Learning from that experience, he then became the founding health plan president and CEO for a Centene Corporation subsidiary in New Mexico. He has served on several community not-for-profit boards and in advisory capacities for private equity and start-up organizations.

Mr. Hernandez earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from Newman University and his Master of Healthcare Administration from the University of Southern California.

Tommy Ibrahim, MD, MBA, MHA, is president and CEO of Sanford Health Plan, which serves 200,000 members across South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota. In this role, Dr. Ibrahim is responsible for the overall strategy of the health plan including driving affordability and enhancing patient and member outcomes through broader population health initiatives, value-based care programs and new, innovative care delivery models. He also oversees the development of managed-care products, payment models and integrated service-delivery strategies.

Sanford Health and Marshfield Clinic Health System completed a merger on January 1, 2025, bringing together each system’s respective health plans, Sanford Health Plan and Security Health Plan, under one health system. The fully integrated system will serve more than 425,000 members. Sanford Health Plan and Security Health Plan will continue current operations under common management reporting and governance structures. The health plans are led by Dr. Ibrahim.

Prior to joining Sanford Health, Dr. Ibrahim served as president and CEO of Bassett Healthcare Network and has held numerous leadership positions within the health care industry for more than 15 years. Before joining Bassett in 2020, he served as executive vice president and chief physician executive for INTEGRIS Health in Oklahoma, as chief physician officer and vice president of medical affairs at MercyOne in Des Moines, Iowa and as senior vice president and chief physician executive at St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, Illinois.

A board-certified hospitalist, Dr. Ibrahim received his Doctor of Medicine degree from St. Christopher’s IMD College of Medicine and completed his internal medicine residency at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, an academic affiliate of Johns Hopkins, and is licensed in multiple states. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Columbia University, a Master of Healthcare Administration degree from Seton Hall University, and is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and a Fellow in Hospital Medicine.

Dr. Ibrahim currently holds several industry leadership positions including serving as an advisor to select portfolio companies for Abundant Venture Partners, Andreesen Horowitz, OptumVentures and Redesign Health. He also serves in advisory roles for Kangaroo Health, Cedar Cares, AKASA, ArcX, Vivid Health, MidStream Health and Ambience.

Dr. Ibrahim is an industry thought leader in health care, publishing and speaking regularly on topics focused on advancing rural health and transforming care delivery models through innovation and technology.

Dr. Ibrahim and his wife, Marian, have two children and reside in Sioux Falls, SD.

Alexis Kayser is Newsweek’s Health Care Editor based in Chicago, reporting on the operations and priorities of U.S. hospitals and health systems. She has extensively covered value-based care models, artificial intelligence, clinician burnout and Americans’ trust in the health care industry. Alexis joined Newsweek in 2024 from Becker’s Hospital Review, where she worked on the CEO, finance and workforce desks. In addition to her journalistic work, she serves as the founding chief creative officer of PediaBright, an organization that creates communications materials for patients with rare, complex pediatric conditions. She is a graduate of Saint Louis University.

Amy is passionate about the power of partnerships to co-create solutions that accelerate innovation and drive health impact at scale. The Strategic Health Solutions team brings industry insight and intelligence into our product roadmaps, ensuring that we are identifying the highest and best use of Google’s technology and tools to improve the health for billions around the world. SHS builds on the strong foundation created by the Fitbit Health Solutions team Amy built from the ground up, which partnered with the healthcare ecosystem to improve care and impact outcomes.

Prior to Fitbit, Amy held strategic roles at CNET Networks focused on Strategic Partnerships and Audience & Content Development. Amy has a bachelor’s degree from Merrimack College in N. Andover, MA and a Professional Certificate in Integrated Marketing Communications from UC Berkeley.

Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH, is the Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor and Chair of Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health. Dr. Mehrotra’s research focuses on delivery innovations and their impact on access, quality and spending. These innovations include telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, retail clinics and e-visits.

Bobby Mukkamala, MD, a board-certified otolaryngologist—head and neck surgeon, was voted president-elect of the American Medical Association in June 2024. A graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School, he is in solo, private practice in Flint, Mich.

Dr. Mukkamala, who has been active in the AMA since residency, is a past Michigan representative to the AMA Young Physicians Section, a past recipient of the AMA Foundation’s “Excellence in Medicine” Leadership Award and, for 13 years, served as a member of the Michigan delegation to the AMA House of Delegates. In 2009 he was elected to the AMA Council on Science and Public Health and served as its chair from 2016 to 2017.

In addition to his leadership roles at the AMA, Dr. Mukkamala has served as a member of the Michigan State Medical Society Board of Directors since 2011, as board chair for two years, and as its president. He is also a past president of the Genesee County Medical Society (GCMS) and continues to serve on the GCMS Board of Directors.

While a wide range of public health issues are important to Dr. Mukkamala, no issue strikes closer to home than his own city of Flint’s nationally publicized struggles with high levels of lead leaching into the drinking water. As the past chair of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, he and the foundation’s board became the clearinghouse for funding projects focused on mitigating the effects of lead in local children. He is a member of the board of the Foundation for Flint that is working to increase access to high-quality early education for children—a proven strategy for helping children who have been exposed to lead. He was also recently appointed as a trustee of the C.S. Mott Foundation, which is headquartered in Flint and promotes a just, equitable and sustainable society.

Deeply committed to the revitalization of his hometown, Dr. Mukkamala returned to Flint after completing his residency at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago in 2000. Today, he shares an office with his wife, Nita Kulkarni, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist. Together, they have been part of the city’s revitalization, including demonstrating their dedication to Flint by establishing the Endowed Health Professions Scholarships at the University of Michigan, Flint, in 2012.

Outside of medicine, Dr. Mukkamala enjoys tinkering with his car collection and spending time with family that includes twin sons, Deven, a PhD candidate in political philosophy at Duke University and Nikhil, a biomedical engineer.

Dave Newman, MD, is chief medical officer for virtual care at Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the country. A practicing endocrinologist and informaticist based in Fargo, ND, Dr. Newman is passionate about health care disparities, especially zip code-based disparities.

An influential voice in the industry, Dr. Newman is regularly invited to contribute his clinical expertise, unique perspective and forward-looking insights on innovation in rural health care delivery. He has presented at high-profile national industry events including the Reuters Digital Health Summit, HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum and the flagship ATA Nexus Conference among others. In 2023, Dr. Newman was featured in a STAT News documentary for his commitment to using technology to offset major obstacles to health care across the Dakotas, bringing care closer to home for his patients who live hundreds of miles away. In 2024, Newsweek published a feature story with Dr. Newman, which takes a closer look at how the new Sanford Virtual Care Center will transform care delivery in rural America.

He received a B.S. from Drake University, an M.D. from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences, completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Hennepin County Medical Center and completed an Endocrinology Fellowship with the University of Minnesota.

In his spare time, Dr. Newman volunteers as a soccer coach for a Club and Olympic Development Program and is an amateur DJ. He and his wife, Tracie Newman, MD, MPH, FAAP, have three children and reside in Fargo, ND.

Rick Pollack is the president and CEO of the American Hospital Association (AHA), the nation’s largest hospital and health care system membership organization with nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health care systems, networks and other providers of care.

Serving as the AHA’s leader since 2015, Rick is widely recognized for his strong, effective advocacy and leadership on behalf of our nation’s hospitals, the patients and communities they serve, and the health care professionals those organizations support. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he built a coalition including the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, state and regional hospital associations, and other leading health organizations to support efforts in following public health guidelines, promoting vaccination, and obtaining the financial resources and regulatory flexibility to keep our hospitals open during the most challenging public health crisis of our time.

An influential leader in securing health care’s financial stability, Rick developed ways to care for patients more efficiently and conveniently. Under his leadership, the association launched a comprehensive effort to address historic workforce challenges.

Rick has shaped and grown what is widely regarded as one of the nation’s most respected and effective advocacy organizations. This includes both a sophisticated political and grassroots network in every congressional district in the country, as well as a political action committee, AHAPAC – one of the largest in health care.

With Rick’s guidance, AHA has improved quality and patient safety and has eliminated disparities in care. As an early leader committed to addressing the growing and evolving threats that cybercrimes pose, he launched a partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other government agencies to help provide hospitals with greater support and resources in this area.

Rick is known for his advocacy for making health care available to more patients and is a leader in many broad-based national coalitions that have improved access to care. The AHA is a founding member of the Coalition to Strengthen America’s Healthcare, a media arm of the hospital field that leads an online community of more than two million activists dedicated to ensuring access to high-quality care for every American.

In addition to serving on the AHA Board of Trustees and the Coalition to Strengthen America’s Healthcare Board of Directors, Rick is a member of steering committees for the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience and the Action Collaborative on Decarbonizing the U.S. Health Sector. In addition, he serves on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100 and is a former member of the Special Medical Advisory Group to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs. He is the former chair and current member of the International Hospital Federation’s Association Leadership Council.

Rick began his career in Washington, D.C., as a legislative assistant to Representative David Obey of Wisconsin, followed by serving as a legislative representative for the American Nurses Association. He joined the AHA in 1982, a tenure which has included more than 20 years as its executive vice president for advocacy and public policy prior to becoming president and CEO. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and communications from the State University of New York at Cortland and a master’s degree in public administration from American University.

Mario Schlosser is the co-founder and chief technology officer at Oscar Health. In this role, Mario leads product and engineering, with a focus on building Oscar’s technology platform for the future and continuing to set the strategy for +Oscar. 

Previously, Mario served as CEO of Oscar, leading the company from its inception to serving over one million members. Before co-founding Oscar, Mario also co-founded the largest social gaming company in Latin America, where he led the company’s analytics and game design practices. Prior to that, Mario was a senior investment associate at Bridgewater Associates and worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company in Europe, the U.S. and Brazil. 

Mario also spent time as a visiting scholar at Stanford University, where he wrote and co-authored 10 computer science publications, including one of the most-cited computer science papers published in the past decade, in which he developed the EigenTrust Algorithm to securely compute trust in randomized networks. In May 2019, Mario and his co-authors, Sepandar D. Kamvar (Mosaic Building Group Inc.) and Héctor Garcia-Molina (Celo), received the prestigious Seoul Test of Time Award from the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) for this work. 

Mario holds a degree in computer science with the highest distinction from the University of Hannover in Germany and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

In her role at the American Hospital Association, Molly helps set the organization’s overall policy priorities to support patient access to quality hospital and health system services. While her work spans the full range of health care policy issues impacting hospitals, she focuses much of her efforts on public and private coverage, including ensuring patient access to care, improving how insurance functions, advancing meaningful transparency and improving patients’ financial experience of care.

Molly began her career at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, specializing in a range of Medicare, Medicaid and health information technology policies. 

Andrea Walsh is president and chief executive officer of Minnesota-based HealthPartners, a non-profit, integrated health system providing health plan coverage to 1.7 million members and health care to 1.3 million patients. She leads a team of more than 27,000 colleagues dedicated to a vision of health as it could be, affordability as it must be, through relationships built on trust.  

Walsh has served as president and CEO since 2017. During her tenure, HealthPartners has continued to deepen its reputation as a national leader in high-quality, affordable care and coverage. She’s led with a focus on building healthy and high-performing teams and forging partnerships to improve health equity, children’s health, mental health, and other important areas of community health and well-being. Prior to serving as CEO, Walsh was executive vice president and chief marketing officer at HealthPartners for nearly 15 years, and prior to that served as corporate counsel leading legal, compliance and public affairs.   

Walsh began her career as a lawyer in private practice. In the early 90s, she was appointed assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Health and led health reform efforts to increase access to affordable health care coverage, known today as MinnesotaCare.  She graduated cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School and has degrees in business and English from the University of Kansas. 

Walsh is active in the community and currently serves on the boards of directors of the YMCA of the North and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In 2020, she was named Executive of the Year by the Minnesota Business Journal, and for the past five years, she has been named among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Health Care by Modern Healthcare.  

As an integrated system, HealthPartners is a multi-specialty group practice of 1,800 physicians, 1,100 advanced practice clinicians, 60 dentists and a care team supporting care digitally and in-person across more than 75 medical and dental clinics, eight hospitals and six standalone surgery centers. HealthPartners offers a wide variety of award-winning medical and dental health plans including commercial, Medicare and Medicaid coverage. The HealthPartners Institute advances the mission and vision of the organization through health research, professional education and training programs.  

Erik Wexler, president and CEO of Providence, is responsible for a diverse, seven-state family of organizations focused on delivering health care for a better world by ensuring access to high-quality, compassionate care. He provides this care through 51 hospitals, 1,000 clinics, 129,000 caregivers, a global operations center in Hyderabad, India, and innovative programs in the communities Providence serves. 

Since joining the organization in 2016, Erik has held several executive leadership positions, including Providence’s chief operating officer, president of operations and strategy for Providence’s South Division, and regional chief executive for Providence Southern California. Earlier in his career, he served as chief executive for Tenet Healthcare’s Northeast Region, overseeing operations in three states. He also worked for Vanguard Health Systems, and before that, was the senior vice president of LifeBridge Health. 

He is a member of the UCLA Fielding School Public Health Board of Directors and the R1 (NASDAQ: RCM) Board of Directors and serves on the FBI Healthcare Advisory Council.  

Erik holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and an MBA from the University of Hartford in Connecticut. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Sciences from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.