Appendix C
Speaker Biographical Sketches
Vineet Arora, M.D., MAPP, is an academic hospitalist who specializes in improving the learning environment for medical trainees and the quality, safety, and experience of care delivered to hospitalized adults. She is an internationally recognized expert on patient handoffs in health care and also has extensive expertise using technology such as social media to improve workplace learning in teaching hospitals on a variety of topics. Her educational videos on handoffs, supervision, professionalism, and costs of care have been used by numerous educators around the country and have been featured on NPR and in The New York Times. Through her leadership roles, Dr. Arora enables incoming medical students to participate in longitudinal mentored scholarly projects. She is also working to ensure residents from all specialties are integrated into hospital quality initiatives.
An accomplished researcher, Dr. Arora has served as the principal investigator of numerous federal and foundation research grants. Most notably, Dr. Arora has developed tools to evaluate handoff quality among hospitalists and residents. She is also investigating the effect of sleep loss on hospitalized patients and working to create novel interventions to optimize patient experience in hospitals through workplace learning and systems change. Through R-01 funding, Dr. Arora is studying the effect of a novel social media intervention to boost the interest of minority youth in medical research careers. Dr. Arora’s work has been funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institute on Aging, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Foundation.
Dr. Arora’s academic work has resulted in dozens of peer-reviewed publications and has been recognized with awards from the Society of Hospital
Medicine, the Society of General Internal Medicine, the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine, and the Association of American Medical Colleges. She has also testified to Congress on the primary care crisis as well as to the Institute of Medicine on residency duty hours and handoffs. For her work, she was been recognized as ACP Hospitalist Magazine’s Top Hospitalist in 2009, one of “20 People Who Make Healthcare Better” by HealthLeaders Magazine in 2011, and as a master to the Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators at The University of Chicago.
Mary Jo Bondy, D.H.Ed., M.H.S., PA-C (Workshop Co-Chair), is the chief executive officer (CEO) at the Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA). A distinguished clinician, educational leader, and innovator, in February 2020 she became the first physician assistant (PA) to serve as CEO of PAEA, where she leads a staff of 40 in serving more than 250 member programs and meeting the needs of more than 3,000 individual faculty. Following her graduation from the Duke University PA Program in 1993, she worked in many clinical settings and specialties, including in family medicine, emergency medicine, internal medicine, and orthopedics. She also served as a clinical preceptor for PA students for many years and was awarded the Duke University PA Program Preceptor Award in 2001. She began her career as an educator as a regional clinical coordinator for the Duke University PA Program. In this role she helped recruit and develop potential students and preceptors for the South East Area Health Education Center in Wilmington, North Carolina. In 2003 she moved to Maryland to become the academic coordinator of the Anne Arundel Community College PA Program and in 2007 she became the program director. Dr. Bondy earned a D.H.Ed. from AT Still University in May 2011.
James W. Buehler, M.D., is a clinical professor and the interim chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy and an affiliate of the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative at Drexel University. Prior to joining the Drexel faculty in 2013, Dr. Buehler had more than two decades of government public health service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and the Georgia Department of Public Health, where his work spanned general field epidemiology, maternal and child health, infectious diseases (particularly HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, and tuberculosis), population health surveillance, public health ethics, informatics, and emergency preparedness and response. During the final 18 months of Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration, Drexel granted Dr. Buehler a leave of absence to serve as Philadelphia’s health commissioner, where he directed the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. In that capacity, he was responsible for a broad spectrum of public health and safety-net clinical services and for leading the health department’s
response to the threat of Ebola virus in 2014–2015 and its preparations for the Pope’s visit to Philadelphia in 2015. In addition to his position at Drexel, Dr. Buehler was formerly a research professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. His research interests focus on advancing public health systems, including the interface between public health and health care services. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine; and CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service program, and is board certified in pediatrics and general preventive medicine.
Robert A. Cain, D.O., FACOI, FAODME, joined the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) as the president and the chief executive officer in July 2019. Prior to assuming this position, he served as the associate dean for clinical education at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-HCOM), where he oversaw business development and relationship management for clinical experiences associated with undergraduate and graduate medical education (GME). As part of his GME-related duties, Dr. Cain functioned as the chief academic officer for the Ohio Centers for Osteopathic Research and Education, a statewide medical education consortium. Prior to this university appointment he served as the director of medical education at Grandview Hospital in Dayton, Ohio (2006–2014), and as the director of the internal medicine residency program at the same facility (1999–2007).
Over the past two decades, Dr. Cain has served on a number of local, state, and national committees, task forces, and boards in a variety of roles, including the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) Council on Postdoctoral Training Institutions, the AOA Council on Postdoctoral Training, the American College of Osteopathic Internists (ACOI) Board of Directors, the ACOI Board of Trustees and Executive Committee, the AOA and AACOM Blue Ribbon Commission on Osteopathic Medical Education, and the first chair of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Osteopathic Principles Committee. He also served as the president of the Association of Osteopathic Directors and Medical Educators (AODME, now known as AOGME).
Dr. Cain was inducted into the AOGME Collegium of Fellows in 2018 and has received many other awards for his contributions to osteopathic medical education, including the Association of Osteopathic Directors and Medical Educators Leadership Award in 2014, OU-HCOM Master Clinical Faculty in 2011, OU-HCOM Standard of Excellence Award in 2009, and the ACOI Teacher of the Year in 2004.
As a specialist in pulmonary medicine, Dr. Cain graduated from OU-HCOM in 1988 and operated a private practice in Ohio from 1994 to
2008. Originally board certified in both internal medicine and pulmonary medicine, he was recertified by the American Osteopathic Board of Internal Medicine in pulmonary medicine in 2018.
Susan Choi, Ph.D., is the senior director of population health at the Health Care Improvement Foundation (HCIF). Since joining HCIF in 2012, Dr. Choi has directed learning collaboratives addressing a variety of topics, including health literacy, palliative care, and early identification management of hypertension and diabetes. She is currently responsible for the facilitation of two community health improvement collaboratives—Montgomery County Hospital Partnership and Collaborative Opportunities to Advance Community Health—that engage health systems in southeastern Pennsylvania to address pressing community health needs. Dr. Choi previously worked as a consultant and a research associate for the Institute for Community Health and the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In these roles, she conducted evaluations of a variety of health promotion programs and led several quality initiatives focused on improving health equity, language services, and HIV care. She earned her B.A. in psychology and Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University.
Darrin D’Agostino, D.O., M.P.H., M.B.A. (Workshop Co-Chair), is currently the executive dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine and the vice president of health affairs at the Kansas City University (KCU) of Medicine and Biosciences. Dr. D’Agostino does research related to health care issues and population health as well as the influence of it on disease progression. Dr. D’Agostino comes to KCU from the University of North Texas (UNT) Health Science Center in Fort Worth, where he served as the associate dean of community health and innovation and a professor of medicine. He was also the chair of the Department of Medicine at UNT for 8 years. Prior to that, Dr. D’Agostino held positions as the program director for the Osteopathic Internal Medicine Residency and the director of osteopathic medical education for both the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut, and Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut.
David B. Daniel, Ph.D., is currently a professor of psychology at James Madison University and an award-winning teacher with more than 25 years of classroom experience. A fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, Dr. Daniel has been honored numerous times for his teaching and translational efforts. In additional to earning many university- and college-level teaching awards, his national honors include the Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s Teaching Excellence Award, the Transforming Education through Neuroscience Award, and being recognized as one of the top 1 percent of educational researchers influencing public debate
in the United States. He was recently appointed to a select panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to update and extend the influential National Research Council report How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, and he was featured in the Princeton Review’s 300 Best Professors.
Dr. Daniel’s dedication to facilitating student learning extends from higher education contexts to the K–12 classroom and across a wide variety of disciplines. He regularly consults with schools, districts, teaching and learning centers, publishers, education-oriented companies, policy makers, and nonprofit foundations on the development of high-impact pedagogy, including the targeted use of appropriate technologies.
Dr. Daniel’s scholarship and related activities focus on translating findings from the science of learning and the scholarship of teaching and learning to useable knowledge, particularly for educational practice, policy, and student learning. He works to infuse the design of pedagogy and systems, including digital tools, with learning science and stakeholder usability to maximize learning and engagement.
Gusna Hoque, Nursing Student, Rutgers School of Nursing
Emilia Iwu, Ph.D., R.N., APNC, FWACN, completed her basic nursing and midwifery education in Nigeria. She obtained a B.A. in school health services from Rowan University of New Jersey, and she earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in nursing from Rutgers University. Before joining the University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology and School of Nursing in 2006 as a technical advisor for the Presidential Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) grant in Nigeria, she worked as a family nurse practitioner in the Infectious Diseases Clinic at the Cooper Hospital University Medical Center and the Healthcare for the Homeless Program, both in Camden, New Jersey. Her key interests have been capacity development of nurses and community health workers through education and practice. As an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing, Dr. Iwu helped design a postmaster’s global health certificate program that involves clinical and research rotations for U.S.-based nursing students in Nigeria and other resource-constrained countries. She is an alumna of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Jonas Foundation Faculty/Leadership programs. As clinical faculty at the Rutgers University School of Nursing Newark since 2014, she continued her global HIV work in Nigeria. Her research interests include HIV nursing, patient access and retention, and nursing roles in changing health care delivery systems especially in resource limited settings.
Pinar Keskinocak, Ph.D., is the William W. George Chair and a professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the co-founder
and the director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). She is the lead faculty advisor for the MS Health Systems at Georgia Tech and also leads the Health and Humanitarian Supply Chain Management Professional Education certificate program. Previously, she has served as the College of Engineering ADVANCE Professor and the interim associate dean for faculty development and scholarship.
Dr. Keskinocak’s research focuses on the applications of quantitative methods and analytics to have a positive impact in society, particularly in health care and humanitarian systems. Her recent work has addressed a broad range of topics such as infectious disease modeling (including pandemic flu, COVID-19, malaria, Guinea worm, polio), evaluating intervention strategies and resource allocation, catch-up scheduling for vaccinations, decision support for organ transplants, hospital operations management, and disaster preparedness and response. She has worked on projects with a variety of governmental and nongovernmental organizations and health care providers, including the American Red Cross, CARE, the Carter Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory Healthcare, the Georgia Department of Public Health, Grady Hospital, and the Task Force for Global Health.
Dr. Keskinocak is the president-elect of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences) and has served in various other roles within the society over the years, including INFORMS secretary, INFORMS vice president for membership and professional recognition, president of the Women in OR/MS Forum, president of the public sector OR Section, and the department editor for Operations Research. She is an INFORMS fellow.
Jennifer Kolker, M.P.H., holds an M.P.H. in public health policy and administration from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Professor Kolker is a clinical professor of health management and policy, the director of the Center for Public Health Practice, and the co-director of the Pennsylvania Public Health Training Center, a federally funded training center for the public health workforce, operated in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining Drexel University in 2004, she held various positions in the nonprofit world and then in the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, working first in HIV/AIDS policy and planning and later in the Office of the Health Commissioner, also in a health planning and policy role. Professor Kolker was also a senior policy associate with Public Works, a consulting firm that provides public policy research and analysis to government agencies and officials, nonprofits, and think tanks across the country. Professor Kolker teaches several courses on public policy and public health practice and advises and mentors graduate
students. Her work is focused on building bridges between academic public health and public health practice within the school’s mission of pursuing public health, human rights, and social justice.
Kimberly D. Lomis, M.D., is the vice president for undergraduate medical education innovations at the American Medical Association. In that capacity, she guides the Accelerating Change in Medical Education consortium of 37 medical schools, affecting approximately 25,000 medical students across the United States. Dr. Lomis is invested in competency-based medical education. She previously served as the associate dean for undergraduate medical education at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where she guided a major revision of the medical school curriculum that included implementation of a comprehensive competency-based assessment program. Dr. Lomis also served as the director of the national pilot of the Association of American Medical Colleges Core Entrustable Professional Activities for Entering Residency. Dr. Lomis trained in general surgery at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center from 1992 to 1997 and practiced until 2012. She retains appointment at Vanderbilt as an adjunct professor of surgery and of medical education and administration.
Neil Manair, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a professor of practice and the director of the M.P.H. in urban health program in the Department of Health Sciences in the Bouve College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University. Prior to this, he was the vice president of health systems at the American Cancer Society’s (ACS’s) New England Division, overseeing cancer control efforts in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. As the Division’s health systems leader, he led a team of 40 staff working within health care systems to increase use of cancer prevention strategies and cancer screening tests, reduce barriers to care for cancer patients, help patients navigate the cancer journey, and engage health care organizations in fighting cancer through the society’s advocacy and community initiatives. He also served on the Division’s Senior Leadership Team.
Prior to joining ACS, he was the director of health equity programs in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Community Health and Health Equity. Dr. Maniar was also the founding director of the Massachusetts Youth Violence Prevention Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. He created this program through a $200,000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant in 2004 and directed its growth into a program with $3.5 million in state funding by 2008. He also founded and co-chaired the Massachusetts Coalition for Youth Violence Prevention and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Public Health Association.
He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2005 and his M.P.H. with distinction from the Yale University School of Public Health in 1998. He also has a bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College with a double major in English and zoology.
Londyn Robinson is a medical student at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She obtained a B.S. in genetics and human development at the University of Minnesota and started medical school in fall 2016. Currently, she is pursuing a passion for medicine and scientific research while working at the Division of Rheumatic and Autoimmune Diseases at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Nancy Spector, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN, is the director of regulatory innovations at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN). Before coming to NCSBN, Dr. Spector was a faculty member at the Loyola University School of Nursing in Chicago, where she taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has worked on a number of initiatives while at NCSBN, including the regulatory implications of social media, innovations and trends in nursing education, the future of nursing program approval, regulatory issues in distance learning programs, outcomes and metrics of nursing education programs, and she was instrumental in developing the innovative Regulatory Scholars Program and the Safe Student Reports study of nursing student errors and near misses. Dr. Spector was the principal investigator on an NCSBN multisite transition to practice study, and she was a consultant on the National Simulation Study. Dr. Spector presents and publishes nationally and internationally on regulatory issues in nursing education.
Skylar Stewart-Clark, Ph.D., PA-C, joined the faculty at the Charleston Southern University (CSU) physician assistant (PA) program after 3 years of practice in adult urology and urologic oncology at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and serving as adjunct faculty in the MUSC PA program. Dr. Stewart-Clark holds a B.S. and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Louisiana Tech University and an M.S. in physician assistant studies from MUSC. As part of her doctoral training, she completed a 4-year teaching fellowship sponsored by the National Science Foundation. After completion of her Ph.D., she spent several years as a postdoctoral research fellow in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine at MUSC, where she worked on various projects with clinician scientists to find solutions for orthopedic, dental, and cardiac clinical applications. In 2009 she served at the Dream Center Clinic of Seacoast Church as a volunteer translator and assistant, and eventually this led her on the path to participating in international medical and surgical missions in Central America. Those
experiences and following the prompting of a never-ending call to practice medicine led her to pursue training as a physician assistant in 2013.
Dr. Stewart-Clark is an active member of the South Carolina Academy of Physician Assistants, where she served as the chair of the ASPIRE (pre-PA) committee for 2 years. She is passionate about unconscious bias and diversity in medicine and has guest lectured on these topics. She continues to volunteer with the Seacoast Dream Center Clinic and organizes and chairs the annual community health fair every October. She is thrilled to be part of the CSU PA program, where she can not only share her knowledge but also her faith with fellow faculty and PA students.
Angela Wilbon, M.S.W., is a licensed clinical social worker. She received her B.S.W. and M.S.W. from The University of Iowa. She currently is a doctoral student at the Howard University School of Social Work. Her research areas of interests are HIV, health equity, and integrative health. Ms. Wilbon has provided clinical services for children, adolescents, and families for more than 20 years. Ms. Wilbon is a psychotherapist in a private practice serving the DC metropolitan area. Since 2007, she has served as a medical social worker at Children’s National Hospital (CNH) providing mental health and supportive services to pediatric patients and their families. Prior to CNH, she was an in-school psychotherapist for middle school students in Alexandria, Virginia, for nearly 5 years. At the Center for Child Protection and Family Support, Ms. Wilbon designed and implemented a successful Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at-risk youth mentoring program in Southeast Washington, DC, for approximately 3 years. She has worked for various nonprofit organizations over her career including Second Story (formerly Alternative House), the Women’s Research and Education Institute, Community Horizons, and Foundations for Families.
Ms. Wilbon has served as a volunteer with several local and national agencies. She volunteered as a parent education facilitator for SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now) in Alexandria, Virginia. She volunteered as a mentor to City of Alexandria youth. Lastly, she was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia as a regional youth development officer.
Ms. Wilbon has facilitated workshops and trainings for a plethora of agencies including child care facilities in Virginia; Washington, DC; and Maryland. She has conducted parenting classes with the Arlington County Department of Social Services for several years. She has trained social workers, educators, health professionals, and numerous other professionals in a range of topic areas.
Valerie N. Williams, Ph.D., M.P.A., is the vice provost for academic affairs and faculty development at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC). In this role she has responsibility for campus-wide
academic affairs, academic integrity, and faculty development issues. The Office of Vice Provost Academic Affairs and Faculty Development includes academic affairs, admissions and records, academic technology, faculty development and interdisciplinary programs, and the Robert M. Bird Health Sciences Library.
One year after joining the OUHSC College of Medicine faculty in 1989, Dr. Williams created the Health Sciences Center Faculty Leadership Program, an interprofessional faculty development and mentoring program. Following nomination, faculty participants representing the six health professions colleges and interdisciplinary graduate college participate in an 11-month program focused on the teaching and research mission and leadership knowledge and skill development. The program is sponsored by the OUHSC deans and provost. As the program director, Dr. Williams has served as a mentor or coach for more than 350 OUHSC faculty and more than 500 faculty participating in summer institutes or nationally sponsored faculty development programs.
The Office of Academic Affairs at the OUHSC includes academic program and academic policy oversight. The office hosts the faculty-led Academic Program Council, provides admissions data, and manages an on campus online application. Student data and reporting is handled through the Office of Institutional Research, and student records are overseen by the HSC Registrar. In addition, Dr. Williams serves as an adviser to the Student Government Association Academic Integrity Council.
