Nworah Ayogu, MD
Head of Healthcare Impact, Thrive Capital

Dr. Nworah Ayogu is the head of healthcare impact at Thrive Capital. Prior to Thrive he served as the general manager of Amazon Clinic and before that as the chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy. Prior to joining Amazon, Dr. Ayogu was the founding medical director for CityBlock Health. He has worked with governments, payers, and health systems to improve access and quality of care, and he has published research in multiple journals including the New England Journal of Medicine. In addition, he served as a member of the White House Health Equity roundtable and has held faculty appointments at Harvard and NYU. Dr. Ayogu has received numerous awards including being named one of Business Insider’s 30 under 40 and Modern Healthcare’s 50 most influential clinical executives. Dr. Ayogu obtained his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He trained in internal medicine at Columbia University and is a board-certified internist.

Erika Batcheller
Executive Vice President, Chief External Affairs Officer, Sanford Health

Erika Batcheller serves as chief external affairs officer for Sanford Health, where she oversees system marketing, communications, community relations and the Sanford Health Foundation. She previously served as vice president of media relations and corporate communications for Sanford Health, overseeing the organization’s earned media, internal communications, Sanford Health News, events and community relations teams.

Prior to joining Sanford Health in 2020, Batcheller led broad-ranging strategic communications initiatives for more than two decades in the non-profit, private and public sectors. She spent ten years as a consultant and senior counselor to national health care and advocacy organizations focused on reputation management, stakeholder engagement and thought leadership and served as chief communications officer for a behavioral health care provider.

Batcheller spent the first part of her career in Washington, D.C., where she managed communications and served as deputy press secretary for both First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.S. Senator Kent Conrad.

In addition, she led initiatives focused on health and behavior change as a vice president in the social impact practice at Fleishman-Hillard, a global strategic communications firm.
Batcheller holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations from the University of Minnesota.

She lives in Sioux Falls with her husband, Paul, and their three children.

Adam Berger, PhD
Operating Partner, WindRose Health Investors

Adam Berger is an operating partner at WindRose Health Investors, focused on AI, analytics, cloud computing, and information security.

Previously, Berger was tech director at Amazon, where he led the team responsible for building and operating the software behind a consumer-facing health care initiative. Prior to Amazon, Berger was EVP at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and CTO of UPMC Enterprises, where he focused on speculative technology development and provided technical guidance for UPMC’s venture portfolio.

Earlier, Berger founded two venture-backed companies in the mobile software space, Eizel and Penthera, raising over $50 million in financing from brand-name private equity and venture capital firms. After Nokia acquired Eizel, Berger served as R&D leader at Nokia.

Berger holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, focusing on statistical machine learning and information theory. He has received 25-year “test of time” research paper awards from both the Association for Computational Linguistics and the Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval. Berger holds over 25 issued U.S. patents and he has authored over 30 scientific publications in forums such as the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence; Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery in Data; International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing; and International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Berger teaches a graduate-level class, Machine Learning in Healthcare, at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science.

Corey Brown
Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, Sanford Health

Corey Brown, senior vice president of government affairs for Sanford Health, oversees the organization’s public policy activities at the state and federal levels.

A former South Dakota state senator and native of Gettysburg, Brown represented District 23 from 2009 to 2016, serving as majority leader, president pro tempore, assistant majority leader and chairman of the appropriations committee. He was actively involved in shaping policy related to Native American health, primary care, emergency medical services and medical licensing.

Brown joined Sanford Health in 2018 after working with his family owned insurance agency and serving as executive director of the Gettysburg/Whitlock Bay Development Corporation. He also spent a decade in the United States Navy, where he was an aviator and flight instructor and rose to the rank of lieutenant commander.

Brown holds a bachelor’s degree in government and international relations from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s in international business from the University of San Diego.
He lives in Sioux Falls with his wife, Karen, and their four children.

Ceci Connolly
President and CEO, Alliance of Community Health Plans

Ceci Connolly, a nationally recognized health care leader, is president and CEO of the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP). She spent 25 years in the journalism field and is a well-respected author and TV commentator. As the Washington Post’s former chief health correspondent, she chronicled President Obama’s drive for sweeping health care reform. Connolly is co-author of “LANDMARK: The Inside Story of America’s New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All” and has been published in numerous publications, including The New England Journal of Medicine.

In her current role, she works with some of the most innovative executives in the health sector to provide high-quality, affordable care to all. She is a leading thinker in the disruptive forces reshaping our health system and has been a trusted adviser to C-suite executives. Connolly has worked at two international health care consulting firms and is well-versed in a variety of areas pertinent to business today. She is an expert on communications, leadership coaching, crisis management and the Washington regulatory process.

A highly sought-after speaker, Connolly has the unique ability to translate complex subjects for audiences at all levels. Her breadth of experience as a health care adviser and as a political reporter both here and abroad enables her to speak authoritatively on a range of subjects including politics, health care, journalism, and what it takes to be a successful woman in the male-dominated worlds of Washington and Latin America.

Connolly was included on Business Insider’s inaugural list of “DC Health Care Power Players” and was also the first non-physician to receive the prestigious Mayo Clinic Plummer Society award for promoting deeper understanding of science and medicine. She is a founding member of Women of Impact (WOI) for Healthcare, serves on the advisory board of Fannie Mae’s Sustainable Cities initiative and is a former board member of Whitman-Walker Health.

Eve Cunningham, MD, MBA
GVP, Chief of Virtual Care and Digital Health, Providence; Founder and CEO, MedPearl

As Providence’s group VP and chief of virtual care and digital health, Dr. Eve Cunningham leads a care transformation portfolio of products and services that includes nine enterprise virtual care service lines, Hospital at Home, remote patient monitoring, remote therapeutic monitoring, a virtual nursing team and clinically focused digital products. Her team provides products and services to over 100+ hospitals across eight states. She is also the co-chair of the clinical AI governance team at Providence which is charged with identifying, vetting and prioritizing AI use cases for clinical care.

Dr. Cunningham is the founder of MedPearl, a patented clinical intelligence engine designed to support the next best actions and surface relevant patient data at the point of care. The platform is currently scaled at Providence and is used regularly by thousands of clinicians.

As a national speaker, Dr. Cunningham is a thought leader and advocate for improvements in telehealth, clinician shortages and workforce burnout, clinical innovation, and the application of AI in clinical care. She serves on the HIMSS Physician Executive Committee and was a recent recipient of the HIMSS-AMDIS Changemaker in Health Award (2024) and Becker’s Health IT Up-and-Comers (2023).

Dr. Cunningham joined Providence St. Joseph Health in 2017, initially serving as the chief medical officer of Providence Medical Group Southwest. She is board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology and has practiced since 2008 in the South Puget Sound community. Prior to joining Providence, Dr. Cunningham served as women’s and children’s service line medical director, medical director of the Center of Excellence in minimally invasive gynecology and division chief of women’s, children’s, urgent care and virtual care services at CHI-Franciscan Health (currently, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health).

With over 20 years of clinical practice and 12 years of leading and managing clinical operations, Dr. Cunningham has the advantage of understanding the practical technologies, change management, workflow and care transformation strategies that are needed in clinical settings.

Dr. Cunningham received her medical degree at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and postgraduate residency training at Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center. She received her master’s in business administration from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is passionate about restoring joy to the practice of medicine and addressing some of our greatest challenges in the industry related to workforce shortages, hospital capacity and care fragmentation.

Shereef Elnahal, MD, MBA
Undersecretary for Health, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs 

Dr. Shereef Elnahal was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden to serve as undersecretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs and confirmed by the Senate on July 21, 2022. In this role, he leads the largest integrated health system in the nation alongside a team of more than 420,000 professionals, delivering world-class care to more than 9 million enrolled veterans.

In the first two years of his tenure, Dr. Elnahal has overseen the Veterans Health Administration’s implementation of the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, the largest expansion of veteran benefits in a generation. To prepare the enterprise to provide more care and more benefits to more veterans, caregivers and survivors than ever before, he has spearheaded initiatives to improve access, expand infrastructure and train employees to serve veterans impacted by toxic exposures. Under his direction, VHA also embarked on an aggressive hiring effort, growing its workforce at historic rates despite recruitment and retention challenges in the broader health care market.

Prior to his appointment, Dr. Elnahal served as president and chief executive officer of University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, from 2019 through 2022, leading the hospital through the COVID-19 public health emergency and providing a model for urban hospital and regional response efforts. Under his leadership, the hospital also realized substantial improvements in care quality and patient safety against national benchmarks.

Previously, Dr. Elnahal served as New Jersey’s 21st health commissioner, having been appointed to the cabinet post by Governor Phil Murphy and confirmed unanimously by the New Jersey Senate. During his nearly two years as commissioner, he expanded the New Jersey Health Information Network, worked to improve infant and maternal health outcomes and reduce health disparities, and made strides in curbing the opioid epidemic.

This is Dr. Elnahal’s second tour of duty at the VA, having served as its assistant deputy undersecretary for health for quality, safety and value from 2016 through 2018, overseeing national policies around quality of care for the VHA, and as a White House fellow in the VA from 2015 to 2016. During that time, he cofounded the VHA Innovation Ecosystem, a program that continues to foster the spread of innovation and best practices that improve veteran care across the nation.

Dr. Elnahal holds an MD from Harvard Medical School and an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School.

Bill Gassen
President and CEO, Sanford Health

Bill Gassen is president and CEO of Sanford Health, a $7.5 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.

Gassen marked his appointment to president and CEO of Sanford Health in November 2020, by committing the organization to three pillars: patients, people and communities. This focus has positioned the system to shape the future of health care for generations to come.

In 2022, Gassen 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.

The organization serves more than 1.5 million patients and more than 200,000 health plan members across 250,000 square miles. The integrated health system has 46 medical centers, 45,000 employees, 2,800 Sanford physicians and advanced practice providers, 170 clinical investigators and research scientists, more than 200 senior care locations and world clinics in 8 countries around the globe.

Sanford Health is the largest employer in the Dakotas. In 2020, the organization contributed nearly $12 billion to the region’s economy.

Gassen is presiding over transformational growth: In 2021, the health system unveiled a $350 million virtual care initiative to improve access to convenient, high-quality care for rural, underserved communities. That same year, Sanford Health announced plans to add eight new graduate medical residencies and fellowships in specialty areas, for a total of 15 programs, to build the next generation of rural health care providers.

In 2022 and 2023, Gassen was recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare. This prestigious recognition honors individuals who are deemed by their peers and the senior editors of Modern Healthcare to be the most influential figures in the industry in terms of leadership and impact.

Gassen is a former litigator and current member of the State Bar of South Dakota. He holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a law degree, both from the University of South Dakota. He previously served in a number of leadership roles for Sanford Health over a twelve-year period including chief administrative officer, corporate counsel and chief human resources officer.

He serves on the Board of Trustees of the American Hospital Association and on the Board of Directors for Oscar Health, Inc. (NYSE: OSCR).

Gassen comes from a family dedicated to public service. His mother spent four decades as a hospital nurse. His father served in the Air Force, and Gassen was born on a military base in Little Rock, Arkansas, but spent most of his childhood growing up in Rapid City, South Dakota. Gassen’s father played a key role in the development of Feeding South Dakota, the state’s largest charitable hunger-relief organization, and served as CEO for more than 20 years.

Gassen and his wife, Jill, a physician assistant for the Veterans Administration, have five children ranging in ages from 5 to 14 years old and live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Scott Gottlieb, MD
23rd Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Scott Gottlieb is a physician and served as the 23rd Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Gottlieb’s work focuses on advancing public health through developing and implementing innovative approaches to improving medical outcomes, reshaping healthcare delivery, and expanding consumer choice and safety. He serves on the boards of Pfizer Inc. and Illumina, Inc., is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates.

Dr. Gottlieb is an aggressive advocate for advancing the health of patients, promoting healthcare access, and driving innovation. The agency’s historic and prolific advances in new policy distinguished his tenure as the FDA’s commissioner, in addition to a record-setting number of approvals of novel drugs, medical devices, and generic medicines.

Under his leadership, the FDA advanced new frameworks for the modern and safe and effective oversight of gene therapies, cell based regenerative medicines, targeted drugs, and digital health devices. The FDA implemented new reforms to standardize drug reviews and make historic improvements of post market data collection and the use of real-world evidence. They promoted policies to reduce death and disease from tobacco, improve food safety, and aggressively confront addiction crises.

Previously, Dr. Gottlieb served as the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs and before that, as a Senior Adviser to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he helped advance policies to improve healthcare quality and promote the effective use of new medical technologies.

Dr. Gottlieb is widely published in leading medical journals and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He has held editorial positions on the British Medical Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association and is a regular contributor to CNBC. Fortune Magazine recognized him as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” in 2018 and again in 2019. In 2018, 2019 and then again in 2020 Modern Healthcare named Dr. Gottlieb the “Most Influential Physician Executive and Leaders” in its annual survey of 50 physician executives, and Time magazine named him one of its “50 People Transforming Healthcare in 2018.

Dr. Gottlieb is also the author of New York Times Bestseller Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic. Dr. Gottlieb was a practicing hospitalist, and he is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

He lives in Westport, Connecticut with his wife and three daughters.

Tommy Ibrahim, MD, MBA
Executive Vice President, Sanford Health, President & CEO, Sanford Health Plan

Tommy Ibrahim, MD, MBA is the Executive Vice President, Sanford Health, President & CEO, Sanford Health Plan which serves members across South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota. In this role, he oversees the development of managed-care products, payment models and integrated service-delivery strategies to ensure members have access to affordable, high-quality health care services.

Prior to joining Sanford, 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 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.

David Newman, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Virtual Care, Sanford Health

David 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.

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.

Christopher M. O’Connor, FACHE
CEO, Yale New Haven Health System

Christopher M. O’Connor is chief executive officer of Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS), the largest and most comprehensive healthcare system in Connecticut and one that is recognized nationally for advanced clinical care. With more than 7,500 medical staff, 30,200 employees, and 2,600 hospital beds – and in partnership with the Yale School of Medicine – the academic health system provides comprehensive, integrated and family-focused care in 100+ medical specialties.

Mr. O’Connor joined the health system in 2012 as executive vice president and chief operating officer and was appointed president in 2020 and chief executive officer in 2022. Previously, Mr. O’Connor was president and CEO of the Saint Raphael Healthcare System and the Hospital of Saint Raphael, serving in that position until Saint Raphael’s successful integration into Yale New Haven Hospital in September 2012.

Since joining YNHHS, Mr. O’Connor has led a number of critical initiatives to advance strategic growth for the system, including the successful affiliation of L+M Hospital and Westerly Hospital into YNHHS and Milford Hospital into Bridgeport Hospital and the expansion of the physician network through the integration of PriMed – the largest physician group to join the system. To improve service to patients and staff and increase efficiency, he led the effort to systematize various functions across YNHHS, from pharmacy to employee health, and oversaw the opening of the regional operations center (ROC) for supplies and services.

Mr. O’Connor received his master’s degree in Health Services Administration from George Washington University in 1996 and his Bachelor of Arts, Economics from George Washington University in 1993.

Alex Oshmyansky, MD, PhD
Founder and CEO, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company

Alex Oshmyansky is the founder and CEO of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. Dr. Oshmyansky founded the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company after being incensed by the skyrocketing costs of generic drugs for his patients.

Dr. Oshmyansky graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder at the age of 18 with a B.A. in biochemistry. He went on to earn an M.D. at the Duke University School of Medicine and a Ph.D. (DPhil Oxon) at Oxford University in mathematics as a Marshall Scholar. Dr. Oshmyansky completed a surgical internship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He went on to a residency in diagnostic radiology and a fellowship in pediatric radiology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Oshmyansky then served as an adjunct faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine and continues to practice as an emergency radiologist.

While in grad school, Dr. Oshmyansky founded a startup dedicated to reducing the rates of nosocomial diseases in hospitals, Altitude Medical. That company has been continuously operating for over 14 years.

Tina Reed
Health care editor, Axios

Tina Reed is author of Axios’ Vitals newsletter which features the latest health care politics, policy, and business news. She covers how the U.S. patient experience is changing and the drivers behind it.

Bruce Scott, MD
President, American Medical Association

Bruce A. Scott, MD, was inaugurated as the 179th president of the American Medical Association (AMA) in June 2024. In this role, he serves as the primary spokesperson for the AMA. Concurrently he continues as a member of the AMA Board of Trustees and has served for 10 consecutive years.

Dr. Scott has been a leader in medicine throughout his career – prior to being voted president-elect in 2023, he served four years as speaker and four years as vice speaker of the AMA House of Delegates. He presided at the meetings of delegates from every state and specialty as they crafted policies for the medical profession. Before this, he was a member of the House of Delegates for over 20 years.

He previously served on the AMA Foundation’s board of directors and as president of the foundation. Dr. Scott has been president of his county and state medical associations and served on the boards of the Greater Louisville Medical Society and the Kentucky Medical Association (KMA) for over 20 years. As a leader in these associations, he fought for access to care for vulnerable populations, improvement in public health and reduction of administrative burdens in health care. He was awarded the KMA Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his work on behalf of Kentucky’s physicians and patients.

In addition to his work within organized medicine, Dr. Scott is a member of the board of directors for Health2047, the AMA’s Silicon Valley-based innovation subsidiary that identifies and funds tech-enabled commercial health care enterprises. In this capacity, he is helping shape the future of medicine from yet another fundamentally important perspective and platform. Dr. Scott is passionate about practicing medicine. He is the president of his six-physician independent private practice group, medical director of a multispecialty ambulatory surgery center and holds a clinical appointment at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. His commitment to change in medicine is grounded in the barriers to care he strives to overcome in his daily practice.

A graduate of Vanderbilt University, Dr. Scott completed his medical education and residency at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, and a fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Subsequently, he returned to his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, to practice. He is board-certified in both otolaryngology and facial plastic surgery.

An author of myriad articles for peer-reviewed publications, as well as chapters in otolaryngology textbooks, Dr. Scott also speaks to physician audiences around the country on topics ranging from leadership and advocacy to sinusitis and clinical documentation.

Dr. Scott has been happily married for over 30 years and is the proud father of three young adults.

Zach Shamberg
President and CEO, Pennsylvania Health Care Association

Zach Shamberg is the president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association, an advocacy organization representing long-term care providers, workers and residents throughout Pennsylvania. Shamberg is the former director of government affairs at PHCA, and also served as a campaign manager and chief of staff to a Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, state representative. Shamberg is a passionate advocate for older adults in Pennsylvania, including his own grandparents, who resided in long-term care communities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ashley Thompson
SVP, Public Policy Analysis and Development, American Hospital Association

Ashley Thompson is the senior vice president of public policy analysis and development for the American Hospital Association (AHA), a position she has held since 2015. In this role, Thompson provides leadership, strategic direction and management in the development, articulation and advocacy of the association’s policy positions. Additionally, she leads AHA’s formal policy development process, which solicits input from key hospital leaders on issues related to advocacy, public policy and field leadership. Thompson has held various policy roles in the association over her 20-year tenure.

Thompson also served as health policy advisor to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, where she was policy lead for Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) on Medicare Part A issues, including those related to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health care and hospice. During her time with the committee, she developed and drafted the Medicare provisions adopted in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, including provisions related to value-based purchasing and post-acute care payment reforms.

Additionally, Thompson spent seven years at hospitals and health systems, working in the areas of strategic planning, finance and policy at UChicago Medicine, NorthShore University HealthSystem, and Sinai Chicago. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Bucknell University and her Master of Health Services Administration from the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan.