The Honorable Louis W. Sullivan, M.D.

Chairman

 

Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., is chairman of the board of the National Health Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, whose goal is to improve the health of Americans by enhancing health literacy and advancing healthy behaviors.  He also is chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Sullivan Alliance to Transform the Health Professions -- a national non-profit organization with a community-focused agenda to diversify and transform health professions’ education and health delivery systems.  He served as chair of the President’s Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from 2002-2009, and was co-chair of the President’s Commission on HIV and AIDS from 2001-2006.  With the exception of his tenure as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 1989 to 1993, Dr. Sullivan was president of Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) -- the first predominantly black medical school established in the 20th Century -- for more than two decades.  On July 1, 2002, he retired and was appointed president emeritus. Keep Reading Bio.

Russell M. Medford, M.D., Ph.D., The Salutramed Group, LLC

Vice Chair/Executive Committee Chairman

 

Russell M. Medford, M.D., Ph.D., Managing Partner of the Salutramed Group, LLC, is a senior biotechnology executive with extensive private and public company experience as Chief Executive Officer and Board member of multiple biotechnology and other health related companies, organizations and research institutes.  From 1995 to 2009,  Dr. Medford served as co-founder, President, CEO and Director of publicly-held AtheroGenics, Inc (Nasdaq: AGIX) and from 2009 to 2012 CEO and Chairman of Salutria Pharmaceuticals, LLC. He was a founding Board Director of publicly-held Inhibitex, Inc. (Nasdaq: INHX) until it was acquired by Bristol-Myers-Squibb in 2012 for $2.5 billion. He has had extensive experience leading companies and organizations engaged in comprehensive therapeutic drug research and development, developing multiple, novel, first-in-man clinical candidates for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and arthritis, conducted multiple phase I, II and III clinical studies involving over 400 clinical trial sites in 12 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, South Africa, India, Russia, Eastern Europe and India involving more than 7000 patients, executed multiple strategic partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies including Schering-Plough, Fujisawa and AstraZeneca, as well as building a commercial-scale, manufacturing plant for lead, small-molecule pharmaceutical agents. He has extensive experience in both the private and public financial markets including initial public offerings (IPO) raising over $500 million for corporate, clinical development and research programs. He has served on multiple private company Boards including Transcardiac Therapeutics, Inc., Somatocor, Inc. and EmTech Bio. He is a board-certified physician, an inaugural Fellow of the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences of the American Heart Association, a member of the executive committee and former Chairman of Georgia Bio, a member of Biotechnology Industry Organization’s (BIO) Board of Directors, Emerging Companies Section Governing Board and Health Science Governing Board, Co-Chairman of BIO’s Bioethics Committee and served as Chairman of the BIO's 2009 International Convention Steering Committee. Keep Reading Bio.

Russell Allen, Georgia Research Alliance

Trustee

 

Appointed GRA’s third president in September 2018, Russell Allen is an established leader in Georgia’s life sciences industry who built a career on starting new enterprises, unifying different sectors and championing economic growth.

For nearly six years, Allen served as president and CEO of Georgia Bio, the voice for Georgia’s life sciences industry. He engineered and led the strategy that grew membership and deepened member engagement to make the organization a more effective advocate for the industry. During his tenure, Georgia Bio expanded its education and workforce development program, strengthened partnerships between companies and universities and launched the Bio/Med Investor Network to help early-stage companies bridge funding gaps.

Allen was recruited in 2006 to lead BioFlorida, the state’s bioscience industry association, and for much of his time there Florida was the nation’s fastest-growing bioscience state. He left Florida in 2013 to head Georgia Bio.

Allen serves on a dozen boards and industry councils and recently chaired the U.S. Council of State Bioscience Associations. In addition to his undergraduate degree, he holds a certificate in biotech enterprise management from Vanderbilt University. Keep Reading Bio.

Sherri Berger, M.S.P.H., Centers for Disease Control & Prevention

Trustee

 

Sherri Berger, MSPH, became Chief Operating Officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of 10 major operating divisions of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in August 2011. As COO, she oversees management, facilities, and operations at the Atlanta-based public health agency. She provides substantial strategic direction for CDC’s budget and workforce, while ensuring CDC has proper resources to fulfill its critical work to save lives and protect people from health threats.

Specifically, Berger manages CDC’s budget; oversees facilities design, maintenance, security, management analysis, and safety and personnel security; leads acquisitions, contractual assistance and grants; manages information technology and security; and directs human resources strategy, training, and workplace development. Keep reading Bio.

Robert Breiman, M.D., Emory Global Health Institute

Trustee

 

Dr. Breiman is Director of the Emory Global Health Institute where he oversees the
strategy of engaging a wide array of disciplines and interests from undergraduate and graduate departments at Emory with the goal of integrated, innovative and impactful contributions from Emory towards addressing some of the planet’s most challenging problems affecting health in the 21st Century.  EGHI has a highly interactive program with students and faculty with the aim of yielding leaders in global health science and programs. Dr. Breiman is the PI for a recently-awarded Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded program called the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network. The CHAMPS program is a new global health surveillance network aimed at characterizing and preventing childhood mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. He is also the PI for the Rotavirus Immunization Program Evaluation in Kenya (RIPEK) project, a grant funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Scientific Advisory Process for Optimal Research on Typhoid (SAPORT) Burden of Disease Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), overseeing two large multicenter typhoid fever disease burden projects in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.  Dr Breiman is the PI for a large multi-center study to evaluate the pneumococcal genome over time to assess whether and how pneumococcal immunization programs have led to changes in pneumococci potentially resulting in changes in vaccine effectiveness.

Before joining Emory, Dr. Breiman was at CDC for 26 years, most recently, based in Nairobi, Kenya from 2004-2013 as the Director of its Global Disease Detection Division and for the final three years as overall Director of the US CDC-Kenya, CDC’s largest overseas field operation.  Before moving to Kenya, Dr. Breiman was Director of the Health Systems and Infectious Diseases Division and Head, Programme on Infectious Diseases and Vaccine Sciences at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) from 2000-2004. He was previously the Director of the National Vaccine Program Office, reporting to the DHHS Assistant Secretary for Health from 1995-2000 and was the Chief of the Epidemiology Section of the Respiratory Diseases Branch from 1989-1995. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and in Infectious Diseases, a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and a member of the American Society of Epidemiology, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (for which he serves as Chair of the Pneumonia and TB scientific committee), and the American Society of Microbiology. Dr. Breiman is author or co-author of >350 peer reviewed original scientific articles, perspectives, and chapters.

Daniel Gagnon, UPS

Trustee

 

Daniel Gagnon is Vice President of Global Healthcare Logistics.  He is a 30 year veteran of UPS based in the corporate office in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Daniel has responsibility for the execution of UPS’s Global Healthcare Strategy across all business units; Small Package, Freight Forwarding, Ground Freight, Brokerage, and Contract Logistics. 

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Daniel started in 1989 as a Package car driver while attending university.  After being promoted in 1990 to an Industrial Engineering Supervisor, Daniel’s career progress through multiple promotions as he worked in various roles across I.E. and Corporate Marketing.  

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In 2006, Daniel was asked to support the launch of our first Global Healthcare Marketing and Strategy team focused on the developing growth initiatives specifically for our Healthcare segment.

 

In 2010 Daniel moved to Brussels, Belgium where he accepted the role as the first Europe Region Marketing and Strategy Director for the Healthcare sector and tasked to implement our first Healthcare Strategy.  

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In 2015, Daniel was promoted to Vice President of Marketing & Strategy for UPS Global Logistics & Distribution.  In 2018, Daniel returned to Healthcare segment in his current role.

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Daniel is a member of Council of Supply Chain Management Professions (CSCMP) and the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA) and has received a Bachelors of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School of Business.

Clark Dean, Transwestern

Trustee

 

As one of two partners in the Southeast, Clark Dean directs Transwestern’s Tenant Advisory Services (TAS) and is the founder of the firm’s Transaction Sciences platform. In addition, Clark is a member of Transwestern’s Board of Directors and the firm’s National Tenant Advisory Steering Committee.

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With a background in biomedical engineering, management consulting, and financial structuring, Clark is known for being a disruptive innovator in the brokerage industry – bringing a unique Transaction Sciences approach to the field. Prior to joining Transwestern, Clark was a founding principal of Studley’s Corporate Services Group where he spent over a decade working on some of the firm’s largest and most complex assignments. Before that, Clark was a management consultant and later chief operating officer for a management consulting firm specializing in strategic and operational consulting for insurance and financial service companies. He began his real estate career with Studley as a financial analyst in Washington, DC. In addition to his work with corporate and professional service clients, Clark has extensive experience working with non-profit and government entities, including managing all General Services Administration transactions for his former firm within the southeast.

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Clark is an active member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta and the Harvard Clubs of Georgia and New York City. Keep Reading Bio.

David Hartnett, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce

Trustee

 

As Chief Economic Development Officer at the Metro Atlanta Chamber, David Hartnett leads the team focused on the retention, recruitment and expansion of companies within key clusters e.g. bioscience, health IT, Mobility, IoT, Cyber, Fin Tech, Digital Media and Supply chain. Hartnett has more than 20 years of senior management experience in medical device, pharmaceutical, Health, IT, Technology and Venture Capital. Prior to joining MAC, he served as the managing partner of Medical Device Marketing, a privately held professional service consulting and strategic execution company. In that post, he specialized in developing commercialization strategies for small-to mid-cap medical-device companies. His diverse experience has contributed to the success of six premier medical device companies receiving international recognition. He has served as a lead in the management, development and commercialization of more than 14 medical devices.

Bob Hope, Hope-Beckham Inc.

Trustee

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With more than 40 years experience, Bob is one of the most respected PR counselors in the country.

His extensive background includes public relations director for the Atlanta Braves when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record; vice president of both the Braves and the Atlanta Hawks teams, while also handling Ted Turner’s personal publicity; executive vice president with the global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller working with high profile products, companies and individuals, including Wayne Huizenga, Fred Smith, Roberto Goizueta and Charlie Loudermilk, as well as top companies like The Coca-Cola Company, Turner Broadcasting, Federal Express and General Electric.

 

Active in the Atlanta community, Bob is a director of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, Covenant House of Georgia, the National Monument Foundation, the Atlanta Sports Council and the Ovarian Cancer Institute. He is on the advisory board of the Georgia Special Olympics; and is a member of the Committee of 100 at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology; a member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta and was selected District Rotarian of the Year for 2012. He is a founder and vice chairman of HAVE Foundation, which builds and maintains schools in rural Honduras. He is on the board of councilors for the Carter Center and has represented the Carter Center twice as an international election observer in Nepal. Keep Reading Bio.

Judith Monroe, M.D., FAAFP, CDC Foundation

Trustee

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Judith Monroe joined the CDC Foundation as president and CEO in February 2016. Over her career, Monroe’s professional focus has centered on the intersection of primary care and public health. Prior to joining the CDC Foundation, Monroe worked for six years with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), serving as director of the Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support (OSTLTS). In that role, Monroe oversaw key activities and technical assistance that support the nation’s health departments and the public health system. Before joining CDC, Monroe served as the state health commissioner for Indiana from 2005 to 2010. She was president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) from 2008 to 2009. Monroe has served on many national advisory committees and boards, such as the CDC Surveillance Leadership Board, Global Health Leadership Council, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Public Health Leadership Forum, deBeaumont Foundation-sponsored National Advisory Committee for the Practical Playbook, Medicaid-Public Health Expert Committee, and the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health.

Charles Redding, MedShare

Trustee

 

Charles Redding served as MedShare International’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) for two years before being named President and CEO by the MedShare Board of Trustees, effective May 5, 2014.   In that role, he was responsible for all three of MedShare’s locations, Operations, Distribution, Biomed Training & Services, Programs and Procurement. He led the company's efforts to expand into the Northeastern United States by opening a Sorting and Collection Center in Secaucus, New Jersey.

 

Prior to this role, Charles held a number of senior management positions with Johnson & Johnson (J&J), including the first Plant Manager for Ethicon in Juarez, Mexico and Director of Asia Pacific Operations, where he was based in Shanghai, China, managing facilities in China and India. His latest role at J&J was that of Vice President of Global Operations for its Aesthetic Medicine Business. He was responsible for 1,200 employees in the U.S., France, The Netherlands, and Mauritius, managing a $200 million dollar budget. 

Dave Ross, SC.D., Task Force for Global Health

Trustee

 

Dave Ross, ScD, is president and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Task Force for Global Health. In this role, Dr. Ross provides strategic direction to The Task Force and oversees seven programs focused on neglected tropical diseases, vaccines, field epidemiology, and public health informatics. He assumed leadership of The Task Force on May 1, 2016, after 16 years as director of The Task Force’s Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII) and its predecessor All Kids Count.

For more than 35 years, Dr. Ross has led collaborative programs to strengthen information capacity of public health systems in the United States and other countries. In addition to his non-profit experience, he has worked in the public and private sectors on both healthcare delivery and medical informatics. Keep Reading Bio.

Dean Sienko, M.D., M.S. The Carter Center

Trustee

 

Dean G. Sienko became vice president for health programs at The Carter Center in June 2016.

Previously, Sienko was associate dean for prevention and public health at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, where he also was acting director of the Institute for Health Policy and senior adviser to the provost.

Sienko earned his medical degree at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and holds master’s degrees in clinical research design and statistical analysis from the University of Michigan and in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. He is board certified in public health and general preventive medicine, and his research has been published in numerous journals. He was recognized in 2012 by Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society, received the Capital Area Health Alliance’s Community Service Award in 2008, and was named Distinguished Health Practitioner of 2008 by the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He was a Kellogg Foundation National Fellow from 1993 through 1996.

Sienko retired as a major general after a 33-year career with the U.S. Army and for two years was commanding general of the U.S. Army Public Health Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. He has been an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, medical director/medical examiner with the Ingham County (Michigan) Health Department, and interim chief medical executive for the state of Michigan.

At The Carter Center, Sienko provides leadership for programs working to prevent or eliminate six tropical diseases in 18 nations, as well as efforts to improve mental health care in the United States and abroad. He succeeds Dr. Donald Hopkins, who joined The Carter Center in 1987 and remains as special adviser for Guinea worm eradication.

Jonathan K. Stiles Ph.D., Morehouse School of Medicine

Trustee

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Dr. Stiles is a Professor of Microbiology and Director of the office of Career Connections and MSM Co-director of the Fogarty Global Health Fellows Program at Morehouse School of Medicine (UJMT).  He brings a combination of dedication and experience in global health research capacity building, program administration and research training and mentoring to represent Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) and our President Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, on the GGHA board.

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As a member of the mentoring team on the MSM’s Mentoring Academy and an Investigator on the MSM National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) at MSM, he utilizes his experience to actively mentor junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. Dr. Stiles has over 25 years of biomedical research capacity building and mentoring experience in Africa, India and USA. I direct the MTGHP program which provides 2-3 years of postdoctoral training and mentoring for under-represented minorities to pursue genomic research in hemoglobinopathies and malaria. Fellows receive didactic and laboratory training as well as grant writing training to ensure success in their chosen research careers. The UJMT provides 11 months of field research training in a developing country for doctoral and postdoctoral fellows. 

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Dr. Stiles has directly trained 5 junior faculty, 8 postdoctoral fellows, 13 PhD’s, 4 MPH, and 10 undergraduate interns in infectious diseases research. All of the international postdoctoral fellows are gainfully employed as faculty or research scientists in federal and state institutions in the US. 8 of the PhD graduates have moved on to highly esteemed postdoctoral positions at Yale University, US Navy, Stanford University, CDC, and the FBI.

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He has established many fruitful collaborative research and research training programs with foreign and local institutions including the Indian Council for Medical research (ICMR) in India, Noguchi Memorial Medical Research Institute (NMIMR) at the University of Ghana Medical School, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of North Carolina and Howard University that will greatly enrich this training effort.

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Over the last eight years Dr. Stiles has participated as a faculty mentor in ASM international fellowship program, the Minority International Health Disparities Research Training Program (MHIRT) which sends minority medical and graduate students to Africa to conduct field research in SCD and malaria. He currently serves as the Co-director of the Fogarty Global Health Fellows Program at MSM which is part of a consortium involving Tulane University, Johns Hopkins, Univ. North Carolina and MSM.

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Dr. Stiles earned his undergraduate degree from University of Ghana (1984), and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Molecular Biology from University of Salford UK (1990). Dr. Stiles completed 2 postdoctoral research fellowships in Molecular Parasitology at the University of Laval, Quebec, Canada and the University of Mississippi Medical Center Jackson, MS, USA.

Steve Stirling, Map International

Trustee

 

Steve assumed the position in mid-2014 after holding leadership positions in major corporations and nonprofit organizations including, most recently, Executive Vice-President of ChildFund International, a leading international child-focused development NGO.  Stirling held senior level positions with:  Heifer International (EVP of Marketing & Resource Development), Univera Life Sciences (VP of Marketing and Communications), ChildHelp (SVP of Marketing and Resource

 

Development) and for five years, Stirling served as the Vice President of Marketing Operations and Executive Director, Major Donor Fundraising for World Vision U.S.

Stirling earned his bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics at Cornell University and his MBA in Marketing and Finance at Northwestern University (Kellogg Graduate School of Management), during which time he also studied international business in Paris, France. Keep Reading Bio.

Christopher Whalen, Center for Global Health, College of Public Health, University of Georgia

Trustee

 

Christopher Whalen, M.D., M.S., is the Ernest Corn Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the College of Public Health at the University of Georgia. Dr. Whalen obtained his Bachelors of Arts degree in English Literature from Stanford University in 1978, his M.D. degree in 1984 from Case Western Reserve University (Case), and his Masters degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Case in 1992.  He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases. He joined the faculty at Case in 1990 and remained there until 2008 when he moved to the University of Georgia, where he is now the director of the Center for Global Health.

 

Dr. Whalen leads a multi-disciplinary research team to study the epidemiology of HIV-associated tuberculosis, transmission of tuberculosis within the community, nutrition and tuberculosis, and control of tuberculosis. His research is based in Kampala, Uganda, where he has worked since 1991. Dr. Whalen was the first to show that active tuberculosis accelerates the natural history of HIV infection, in part by stimulating the immune system and thereby enhancing HIV replication. He has spent much of his career evaluating strategies to prevent and treat tuberculosis in HIV infection. Because tuberculosis affects all Ugandans, regardless of HIV serostatus, he has expanded his scope of research to study tuberculosis transmission in African households, and in social networks within the community. His findings have helped to shape guidelines for the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis, especially among HIV seropositive people.

 

An equal part of Dr. Whalen’s efforts has been devoted to teaching. Since 1995 he has directed an international training program on HIV and tuberculosis, sponsored through the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health. This program has helped to train foreign scientists in diverse fields, such as Epidemiology, Anthropology, and Molecular Biology, and to return these scientists and public health officials to positions in government, academic institutions and non-governmental organizations in their home countries. In Uganda, these trainees have played a significant role in restoring the public health and research capacity of the country. In the U.S., Dr. Whalen is recognized as an accomplished teacher of both graduate and medical students. At Case, he won the John S. Diekhoff award for excellence in graduate teaching at Case and the Teacher of the Year award in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

Michelle Williams, Baker Donelson  

Trustee

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As former in-house counsel at large academic medical centers, Michelle Williams draws on her industry experience to advise on regulatory and structuring aspects of hospital mergers, acquisitions, and integrations. She has a reputation for smoothly obtaining attorney general and federal approvals for complex transactions, and she also advises on EMTALA, QIO hearings, medical staff issues, corporate governance and hospital authorities and districts.

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Ms. Williams focuses her practice on the regulatory and structuring aspects of hospital mergers, acquisitions, and integrations. Her experience includes obtaining attorney general and federal approvals for complex transactions and/or conversion from nonprofit to for-profit status, and issues of successor liability. She also advises on corporate governance and Medical Staff governance in connection with changes of control or ownership. She represents clients undergoing CMS, EMTALA and state surveys, Medicare terminations and regulatory review, and advises on hospital authority law, voluntary disclosures, corporate integrity agreements and qui tam defense.

 

Since 2012, Michelle has been recognized by The Best Lawyers in America® in Health Care Law. Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business has recognized Michelle for excellence in the area of health care since 2008.

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Prior to joining Baker Donelson, Michelle was a commissioner on the Advisory Committee on Childhood Vaccines, advising the U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services on the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. She was a former in-house counsel at University Hospitals of Cleveland and the former Mount Sinai Hospital, and has been on-loan in-house counsel to general academic medical centers.