Bob Blancato
President, Matz Blancato & Associates
A public policy and strategic consultant (and guest contributor to Next Avenue), Blancato is one of the nation’s leading experts on aging issues. He’s currently board chair of the American Society on Aging; national coordinator of the Elder Justice Coalition, which helped pass the 2010 Elder Justice Act; executive director of the National Association of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs; and AARP volunteer board member.
Previously, Blancato was appointed by President Bill Clinton to direct the 1995 White House Conference on Aging, and he served as president of the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse and staff director of the House Select Committee on Aging’s Subcommittee on Human Services.
Bastiaan “Bas” Bloem MD, PhD
Medical Director, Parkinson Center Nijmegen (ParC); Department of Neurology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Dr. Bloem is an internationally-recognized expert on movement disorders. Under his guidance as medical director, the Parkinson Centre Nijmegen has been recognized as a National Parkinson Foundation Center of Excellence. Dr. Bloem serves on the editorial board for several national and international journals and has published over 500 scientific papers and book chapters. Together with Dr. Marten Munneke, he developed the ParkinsonNet model which offers training and education to both patients and providers in the care of Parkinson disease.
David Blumenthal MD, MPP
President & CEO, The Commonwealth Fund
Dr. Blumenthal leads The Commonwealth Fund, a national health care philanthropy dedicated to promoting a high-performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society’s most vulnerable. From 2009 to 2011, Dr. Blumenthal was the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Barack Obama. As a renowned health services researcher and national authority on health IT adoption, Dr. Blumenthal has authored over 250 scholarly publications.
Rima Cohen MPA
Managing Director, Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship
Prior to her current role, Rima advised the Secretary of Health and Human Services on Obama Administration initiatives related to the Affordable Care Act, health care quality, and health IT. She also oversaw New York City’s health care agencies and programs under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and developed the original blueprint for Family Health Plus, an insurance program covering 500,000 low-income New Yorkers. Rima spent a decade on Capitol Hill as former-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle’s senior health policy advisor.
Gaspard de Dreuzy
President & Co-founder, Pager
Gaspard’s passion for using technology and design to disrupt old business models and empower consumers has led him to start business ventures in the gaming and finance industries – and now in healthcare. After producing games for the Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, Gaspard co-founded NYC-based fintech startup Kapitall, the first online broker for Millennials, and TradeIt, the leader in retail brokerage APIs. With Pager, Gaspard wants to make healthcare more convenient and affordable for all, pioneering the on-demand care delivery model.
Sara Eshelman MSc
Principal, Investments, Omidyar Network
Sara is a VC investor, leading digital health investments for the Emerging Tech team at Omidyar. Her mission is to seek out, invest in, and fuel the success of tech entrepreneurs building disruptive solutions to big problems in a profitable and highly scalable way. Sara is particularly focused on platforms that foster health, wellbeing and connection among people. Prior to Omidyar, Sara led engagements across public and private sectors at Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte).
June M. Fisher MD
Clinical Faculty, COEH, UC Berkeley; Chief Elder Officer, Aging 2.0
Dr. Fisher is an internal medicine physician specializing in occupational health. For the past 3 years, she has been actively involved in design for aging. Her current activities in aging include mentoring design students at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley (UCB); consulting with startup companies on design and mobility. Dr. Fisher was recognized in 2015 by the Stanford Center on Longevity and Aging 2.0 for her contributions to ageless design.
Linda P. Fried MD, MPH
Dean, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Linda Fried is the dean and DeLamar professor of public health at Columbia
University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She is also senior vice president of Columbia University Medical Center and professor of medicine at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Earlier, she was director of the division of geriatric medicine and gerontology and director of the Center on Aging and Health at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. A geriatrician and an expert on healthy aging, Fried has led research on frailty as a medical syndrome and is the co-designer of Experience Corps. She is the originator of the concept of a Third Demographic Dividend.
The U.S. Congress named her a Living Legend in Medicine, and Thompson-Reuters listed her among the 1 percent of the most influential scientific minds of the past decade. Fried has received the National Institute of Aging MERIT Award, U.S. National Bridge Builders Award and Alliance for Aging Research’s 2011 Silver Innovator and 2012 Silver Scholar awards. She is president of the Association of American Physicians and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Terry Fulmer PhD, RN, FAAN
President, John A. Hartford Foundation
Dr. Fulmer is nationally and internationally recognized as a leading expert in geriatrics and her research has been funded by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute for Nursing Research. She was the first nurse to serve as president of the Gerontological Society of America and on the board of the American Geriatrics Society. Dr. Fulmer was recently recognized as one of the top 50 Influencers in Aging by PBS’s Next Avenue.
MICHAEL W. HODIN PHD
CEO, Global Coalition on Aging
Managing Partner, High Lantern Group
In addition to his leadership roles at GCOA and High Lantern, Mike is a fellow at Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College and a featured blogger for The Huffington Post and at The Fiscal Times, under the Age and Reason Blog. Mike also sits on the advisory board for the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, and serves as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Ageing.
Carolyn Jasik MD
Medical Director, Omada Health
Dr. Jasik is a board-certified Clinical Informatics physician with experience in both the clinical management of diabetes along with creating digital health solutions for health behavior change. At Omada Health she supports the clinical and research teams to create and test the next generation of diabetes and obesity programming via digital therapeutics. She continues to practice primary care at UCSF where she is an Associate Professor of Medicine.
Joanne Kenen
Executive Editor, Health, POLITICO
Joanne has covered health policy in Washington for 20 years including more than a decade on Capitol Hill covering health for Reuters. She joined POLITICO in 2011 and has led a significant national expansion of its health and digital health coverage. Joanne wrote extensively about aging, end of life, hospice and palliative care during a Kaiser Family Foundation fellowship in 2007. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Slate, Kaiser Health News, PBS, BBC and NPR.
Surya P. Kolluri
Managing Director of Policy & Market Planning, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Surya manages policy and market planning for the BAC ML Global Wealth and Retirement Solutions Business. He oversees incubation and commercialization of programs related to Social Impact Investing and Longevity, working closely with the Stanford Center on Longevity, the MIT AgeLab, and the Harvard Kennedy School Social Impact Bond Lab. Throughout his career, Surya has worked on pro-bono projects for non-profit organizations. He currently serves on the board of the CEO Initiative for Alzheimer’s and the Global Coalition on Aging.
Joseph C. Kvedar MD
Vice President, Connected Health, Partners HealthCare
Dr. Kvedar is creating a new model of healthcare delivery, developing innovative strategies to move care from the hospital or doctor’s office into the day-to-day lives of patients. He is the author of The Internet of Healthy Things, describing how real-time biometric data can change behavior and improve health. Under Dr. Kvedar’s two decades of leadership, Partners Connected Health has launched a number of innovative mobile health programs, virtual care initiatives and clinical research programs.
Timothy A. Lash MBA
Chief Strategy Officer & EVP, Successful Aging, West Health; President, West Health Policy Center
Tim Lash oversees the development and execution of West Health’s successful aging portfolio across its nonprofit outcomes-based philanthropy, applied medical research, and policy and advocacy initiatives. Lash has extensive experience in shaping and advancing innovative and disruptive healthcare models, establishing collaborations across a diverse group of stakeholders and organizations, creating new growth platform strategies, and executing acquisitions/equity investments. Prior to joining West Health, he held leadership roles at Johnson & Johnson and several other healthcare companies.
Mark E. Miller PhD
Executive Director, Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC)
Dr. Miller leads MedPAC, a nonpartisan federal agency that advises the U.S. Congress on Medicare payment, quality, and access issues. With more than 20 years of health policy experience, he has held several policy, research, and management positions in health care. His roles have included Assistant Director of Health and Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office and Deputy Director of Health Plans at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Lymari Morales MPP
Managing Director of Editorial & Insights, Atlantic Media Strategies
Lymari leads editorial strategy and insights development for the digital consultancy of The Atlantic. Previously, she oversaw global communications at Gallup and architected the daily news strategy for Gallup.com. Lymari has held editorial roles at NBC News, MSNBC, MSNBC.com and Fox News. She holds a degree in journalism from Northwestern and in public policy from Harvard. In 2015, she was named to the Folio: top 100 leaders in media.
Lindsey Conner Mosby
Vice President, Strategy + frogHealth, frog
Dedicated to the mission and vision of better, more effective, efficient and accessible health and wellness, Lindsey brings deep experience in strategic planning, brand and experience strategy, and product and service design to the business of care innovation. Key client relationships include Pfizer Consumer Health, Merck, Roche, Medtronic, Kaiser Permanente, Philips Healthcare, Cigna and AARP.
Kavita Patel MD, MS
Nonresident Fellow, Brookings Institution
Dr. Patel is a practicing physician at Johns Hopkins Medicine and served in the Obama Administration as director of policy for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement; she played a critical role in policy development and evaluation of initiatives connected to health reform, financial regulatory reform, and economic recovery issues. A former Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, she previously served as managing director of clinical transformation at the Center for Health Policy at Brookings.
Gary A. Puckrein PhD
President & CEO, National Minority Quality Forum
Dr. Puckrein leads the National Minority Quality Forum, a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization that he founded in 1998. The Forum addresses the critical need for strengthening public and private efforts to use evidence-based, data-driven initiatives to support health care research, delivery and financing reforms that sustain the health of all communities. The Forum has received support from a wide variety of organizations including federal agencies, pharmaceutical companies, payers, and trade associations.
William J. Scanlon PhD
Senior Consultant, Healthcare Policy
William Scanlon has been engaged in health services research since 1975. He has served on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York Board of Trustees, the National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care, and the 2005 White House Conference on Aging Advisory Committee. Until April 2004, he was the Managing Director of Health Care Issues at the U.S. General Accounting Office.
Unity Stoakes
Co-founder & President, StartUp Health
Unity Stoakes is the Co-founder and President of StartUp Health, which is organizing and supporting a global army of Health Transformers. Unity has been a technology entrepreneur since the mid-nineties, previously co-founding OrganizedWisdom with his current business partner of 20 years, Steven Krein. Unity is a contributing writer for Forbes, been a guest on Bloomberg TV, CNBC and USA Today and spoken at global health tech events in the US, Brazil, Canada, England, Holland, Italy and Spain.
Sarah L. Szanton PhD, ANP, FAAN
Associate Professor & Director of PhD Program, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing
While making house calls as a nurse practitioner to homebound, low-income older adults in West Baltimore, Sarah noticed that their environmental challenges were often as pressing as their health challenges. This inspired her program of research, The Community Aging in Place—Advancing Better Living for Elders (CAPABLE), which combines handyman services with nursing and occupational therapy to improve mobility, manage chronic symptoms, and decrease health care costs. Sarah mentors and teaches future nurse researchers.
Halle Tecco
Founder, Rock Health
Halle founded Rock Health in 2010, serving as the CEO, Managing Director, and now as an Advisor. She is an active angel investor in over 70 technology and healthcare companies and has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. Halle was named one of Goldman Sachs’s Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs and listed on the Forbes 30 under 30. She has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival and SXSW, guest lectured at Harvard and Stanford, and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School.
Louis Tenenbaum
Contractor, Advocate, Founder, HomesRenewed™
A leading authority on aging in place, Louis is the founder of HomesRenewed, a coalition of business, government, not for profits and consumer stakeholders. Uniquely straddling the building, aging, healthcare and policy worlds, Louis was named a 2016 “Influencer in Aging” by Next Avenue and won a prestigious HIVE (Housing, Innovation, Vision and Economics) award. His recent article “Aging in Place Needs Out of the Box Thinking” appeared in Forbes and received more than 4000 shares.
David Thompson, JD
General Counsel, VP Strategy & Chief Privacy Officer, Grand Rounds
David is the General Counsel and VP of Strategy at Grand Rounds. Previously, he was the General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer of Reputation.com. David has spoken nationally on Internet and consumer privacy topics and is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Reputation Economy.” He graduated cum laude from Yale University, was salutatorian of his class at Stanford Law School, and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia.
Lina Walker PhD
Vice President, Health Security, AARP Public Policy Institute
Vice President, Health Security, AARP Public Policy InstituteLina has spent nearly 20 years conducting research and publishing on health care and retirement issues. In her current role at AARP, she leads a team of senior health policy and health services researchers. Lina’s recent work includes analyzing Medicare reform proposals and their effect on beneficiaries and Medicare’s long-term financial status. In addition, she has worked on issues related to the financing of Social Security and Medicaid, long-term care financing, and health and long-term care insurance.
Bruce Wolfe
Executive Director, BlackRock Retirement Institute
Mr. Wolfe directs BRI, the firm’s global thought leadership platform on retirement and longevity. Prior to BlackRock, he was a Managing Director for Allianz Global Investors and co-founded the AGI Center for Behavioral Finance. He previously held executive positions at Webster Financial Corporation, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley. Before working in Finance, Mr. Wolfe was an Engineering Advisor to the Air Force’s Ballistic Missile Office. He holds a Materials Science Engineering degree from Johns Hopkins and an MBA from Columbia.
