FEATURED SPEAKER

Penny Wheeler, MD

Former CEO, Allina Health

About the Speaker

Penny Wheeler, MD, is chief executive officer of Allina Health and has announced plans to transition out of the role on Dec. 31 2021. Prior to her appointment as CEO, she served as president and chief clinical officer of Allina Health, responsible for leading the organization’s quality and value agenda through alignment of the clinical and operational leadership to optimally benefit those served by Allina Health. A board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist, Dr. Wheeler served patients at Women’s Health Consultants in Minneapolis, was the president of Abbott Northwestern Hospital’s medical staff, chaired the Allina Health Quality Committee and served on the Allina Health Board of Directors.

Dr. Wheeler continues to set the overall strategic direction for Allina Health, ensuring the organization delivers exceptional care and supports the health and well-being of all those served.

Under Dr. Wheeler’s leadership, Allina Health has sharpened its focus on serving those who have not always been well-served by a health care system. This includes individuals with disabilities through the creation of Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute; those with mental illness and addiction issues through significant investments in Allina Health’s mental health capabilities; and those who face discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity through Allina Health’s diversity, equity, and inclusion work.

Dr. Wheeler serves on a variety of local and national Boards. She is currently Chairing the American Hospital Association’s Health Systems Council; and serves on the Boards for NRC Health and Cedar, an organization that eases the strain of financial billing for those served. Locally, Dr. Wheeler serves on the Executive Committee of the Minnesota Business Partnership, Medical Alley, the University of Minnesota Foundation, St. Thomas University Board of Trustees, and Portico Healthnet, an organization dedicated to helping uninsured Minnesotans receive affordable health coverage and care.

Dr. Wheeler was recently recognized as a Luminary by Modern Health Care for her multiple appearances on their top 25 Women Leaders in Health Care list. In addition, she received an award as one of the 100 most influential people in health care and was recognized as one of the 50 most influential clinical executives.

Her educational background includes an undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Minnesota, and a doctorate of medicine degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Marzyeh Ghassemi, MSc, PhD

Artificial Intelligence Professor and Researcher

About the Speaker

• Assistant Professor at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES)
• Vector Institute Faculty member with CIFAR Artificial Intelligence Chair
• CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar

Marzyeh completed her PhD at MIT where her research focused on machine learning in healthcare, exploring how to predict immediate and long-term patient needs to inform decisions in the intensive care unit and ambulatory care. Her current research interests include clinical risk prediction with semi-supervised learning, optimal treatment discovery using expert demonstrations, and non-invasive patient phenotyping for behavioral conditions. Prior to MIT, she received a B.S. degree in computer science and electrical engineering at New Mexico State University as a Goldwater Scholar and Master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. Marzyeh is on the Board of Women in Machine Learning (WiML), and co-organized both the NIPS 2016/2017 Workshop on Machine Learning for Health and MIT’s first Hacking Discrimination event.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Elana Meyers Taylor

Five-Time Olympic Medalist, USA Bobsled

About the Speaker

The daughter of a professional football player, Elana was born in Oceanside, California, but grew up in Douglasville, Georgia. A naturally gifted athlete across many sports, she was drawn to softball and by the time she was nine years old, she declared her intention to become an Olympian. She attended George Washington University on a softball scholarship and went on to play professionally for the Mid-Michigan Ice. After what she calls “the worst tryout ever in the history of tryouts” for the US Olympic Softball Team, it appeared her Olympic dreams were over.

It was her parents who saw bobsled on TV and suggested she give it a try. That turned out to be great advice. In the summer of 2007 she made the trip to Lake Placid, NY, home of the US National Bobsled Team. She never left. Elana turned out to be an incredibly powerful brakeman and less than three years later she stood on the podium in Vancouver as an Olympic Bronze Medalist.

Post Vancouver, Elana decided to take the wheel, or in the case of the bobsled, the ‘D-rings’, and transition to the role of driver. That too turned out to be a great decision. Not long after, she became a regular on medals’ podiums around the world, and eventually drove herself all the way back to the Olympic podium in 2014, this time in Sochi, Russia, and this time for silver. Later that year, she became Elana Meyers Taylor, marrying fellow bobsled athlete, Nic Taylor.

In 2015, Elana made history, becoming the first woman to earn a spot on the US National Team competing with the men, as part of a four-man bobsled pilot. She went on to become the first woman to win a medal in international competition in a men’s event. That same year, she won the World Championships in the two-woman event, the first woman in U.S. history to do so. In 2018, at the Olympic Games in PyeongChang, Elana battled back and forth with Team Germany over the four heat Olympic competition, missing the gold medal by just .07.

On February 8, 2020, Elana and Nic welcomed their first child, Nico, into the world. Nico was born with Down syndrome and severe hearing loss and spent the first week of his life fighting to survive. The following winter, Nico and his parents began traveling the world in pursuit of another few minutes on the Olympic podium for Elana, for the first time as a mother. After a grueling final year leading into the 2022 Olympics–including a last minute positive Covid test just as the Olympics began–Elana made her way back to the podium not once, but twice, winning silver in the inaugural Mono-bob competition, and bronze in the two-woman competition. In doing so, she once again made history, become the most decorated black athlete in the history of the Olympic Winter Games.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Shawn Achor

Top Emotional Intelligence Speaker, Happiness Researcher, Bestselling Author of The Happiness Advantage

About the Speaker

Shawn Achor is the New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness. He spent 12 years at Harvard, where he won over a dozen distinguished teaching awards and delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard. Shawn graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics.Shawn has since become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. Shawn has now worked with over a third of the Fortune 100 companies, and with places like the NFL, the Pentagon and the U.S. Treasury. To do his work, Shawn has traveled to 51 countries, speaking to farmers in Zimbabwe, CEOs in China, doctors in Dubai and schoolchildren in South Africa. In 2014, Oprah Winfrey did a two-hour interview with Shawn on the science of happiness and meaning. His research on happiness made the cover of Harvard Business Review, his TED talk is one of the most popular of all time with over 11 million views, and his lecture airing on PBS has been seen by millions.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Matthew Luhn

Former Lead Animator and Storyteller, Pixar Studios

About the Speaker

Matthew Luhn is an accomplished storyteller, instructor, motivational keynote speaker, and story consultant, with over 20 years’ experience creating stories and characters at Pixar Animation Studios. Alongside his story work in Hollywood, Matthew works with Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, and other professionals how to craft and tell stories that bridge the gap between business and heart to build stronger brands and business communication.Matthew’s most recent clients include Adidas, Target, Coke, Procter and Gamble, Facebook, Warner Brothers, Sony, and Google.

Matthew’s story credits include Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Monsters Inc., Monsters University, Finding Nemo, UP, Cars, Ratatouille and other films currently in development.

With over 20 years experience creating and developing dozens of films, TV shows, and video games, at Pixar, The Simpsons, ILM, and other studios, Matthew Luhn knows what it takes to create memorable stories with enduring characters. From filmmaking to business, Matthew’s story talks are beneficial to anybody wanting to improve their story skills, or learn the persuasion of great storytelling. In Matthew’s story seminar, he will share his process for creating new ideas and characters, how to develop great stories and story structure, and how to realize your story ideas from script to storyboards to finished product. and business communication. 

FEATURED SPEAKER

Brent James, MD, MStat

Clinical Professor, Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC), Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine

About the Speaker

Brent James is known internationally for his work in clinical quality improvement, patient safety, and the infrastructure that underlies successful improvement efforts, such as culture change, data systems, payment methods, and management roles. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine), and participated in that organization’s seminal works on quality and patient safety. He is a Clinical Professor at the Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC), Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine. He holds adjunct faculty appointments at several other universities:

• Visiting Lecturer, Harvard School of Public Health (Health Policy and Management)
• Adjunct Professor, University of Utah David Eccles School of Business
• Adjunct Professor, University of Utah School of Medicine (Family Medicine; Biomedical Informatics)

He is a Fellow of the American College of Physician Executives. He is presently a Senior Advisor at Health Catalyst, Salt Lake City, UT; Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), Boston, MA; and a Senior Advisor at the Leavitt Group, Salt Lake City, UT. He is was formerly Chief Quality Officer, and Executive Director, Institute for Healthcare Delivery Research at Intermountain Healthcare, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Through the Intermountain Advanced Training Program in Clinical Practice Improvement (ATP), he has personally trained more than 5,000 senior physician, nursing, and administrative executives, drawn from around the world, in clinical management methods, with proven improvement results (and leading to over 50 “sister” training programs in more than 10 countries). He currently anchors an upgraded version of the ATP, Mastering Clinical Quality / Leading Clinical Change (MCQ), based at Health Catalyst in Salt Lake City, UT.
He has been honored with a series of awards for quality in health care delivery, including (among many):

• 2018 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety & Quality Individual Award, Joint Commission & National Quality Forum, March 2019
• Distinguished Alumnus, University of Utah, 2015•Deming Cup –Columbia University School of Business, 2011
• C. Jackson Grayson Medal, Distinguished Quality Pioneer–American Quality and Productivity Center, 2010
• Joint Commission Ernest A. Codman Award, 2006
• AHA HRET TRUST Award, 2005
• National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Quality Award, 2005
• American College of Medical Quality Founders’ Award, 1999

For 8 of first the 9 years it existed, he was named among Modern Physician’s “50 Most Influential Physician Executives in Healthcare.” He was named among the “100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare” (Modern Healthcare) for over 5 consecutive years, and among Modern Healthcare’s “25 Top Clinical Informaticists.”
Before coming to Utah in 1986, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, providing statistical support for the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) and Cancer & Leukemia, Group B (CALG); and staffed the American College of Surgeons’ Commission on Cancer.He holds the following degrees; Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science (Electrical Engineering) and Medical Biology; an M.D. degree (with residency training in general surgery and oncology); and a Master of Statistics degree. He serves on several non-profit boards of trustees dedicated to clinical improvement and patient safety.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Patrick McGill, MD

EVP, CAO Community Health Network

About the Speaker

Patrick McGill serves as the Executive Vice President, Chief Transformation Officer. In this capacity, he leads Information Technology,Network Analytics and the Analytics Center of Excellence, Clinical & Nursing Informatics, Transformation Services, Patient Experience analytics, Business Continuity Management and Regulatory Reporting. Most recently, he served as the Chief Analytics Officer developing the Office of Network Analytics. Before serving as the CAO, he was the Senior Vice President for Clinical Strategy, leading the Product Lines in the reduction of clinical variation, strategies for growth, and success in value-based care. Furthermore, Dr. McGill has special interests in digital transformation, population health, value-based care, process automation, advanced clinical analytics, clinical decision support, workflow efficiency, and waste reduction.

Born and raised outside of Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. McGill attended the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. He received his medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Georgia and completed his Family Medicine Residency at Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, Indiana. Before joining Community Physician Network in 2010, he practiced Family Medicine in Pendleton, Indiana, and has experience in Emergency and Urgent Care medicine. He is board certified in Family Medicine and continues clinical medicine at South Indy Family Practice.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Sadiqa Mahmood, DDS, MPH

General Manager & Senior Vice President, Life Sciences Business, Health Catalyst

About the Speaker

Sadiqa Mahmood, DDS, MPH is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Life Sciences business at Health Catalyst and is part of the executive leadership team. Sadiqa’s work focuses on identifying and addressing areas of high unmet need across different disease areas for therapeutic development through application of real-world data and generation of scientific evidence. 

She is an advisor to several healthcare and life sciences organizations, and global policy makers. Sadiqa is a dental surgeon and holds a master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Passionate about improving access to healthcare and patient outcomes by leveraging data and healthcare ecosystem, Sadiqa has spent her career at the intersection of medicine, policy, technology, and analytics. Previously she led analytics, informatics, quality and safety, value-based contracting, and population health across healthcare organizations, including the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Partners HealthCare System, and Boston Medical Center. Sadiqa has been an advocate of collaborative learning system in healthcare and has steered cross-industry multi-stakeholder national and global collaborations to drive healthcare innovation.

Sadiqa has lived and worked in Asia and UK in addition to the US. She spends time between Boston, Massachusetts and Houston, Texas. Outside of work, she is a Formula 1 fan and race as a member of a local team.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Jason Jones

Chief Analytics and Data Science Officer, Health Catalyst

About the Speaker

Jason Jones is passionate about achieving the Quadruple Aim through better and easier use of data in healthcare, including helping organizations to find analytic focus; helping providers feel that the systems they work for have their backs; and helping people to understand and have their goals and preferences respected for the hopefully brief periods during which they are “patients.”

Previously, Jones served as Vice President, Information Support for Care Transformation, at Kaiser Permanente (KP). In that capacity, he brought together and co-led the national Hospital and Healthplan Quality and Finance analytic functions and led development of national quality strategy and care delivery IT investments. Prior to that, he was KP’s Executive Director of Clinical Intelligence and Decision Support and a Research Scientist in KP’s Southern California region. Before joining KP, Jones was a Senior Medical Informaticist for Intermountain Healthcare. He also held analytic and marketing positions at Bayer Healthcare in Wayne, N.J., and Ingenix (now Optum) Pharmaceutical Information Products in Salt Lake City, where he developed a model for converting United Healthcare data into a saleable asset for external customers conducting outcomes research. Throughout his career, Jones has taught graduate courses in statistics to medical informaticists at the University of Southern California and at the University of Utah. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers in medicine, predictive modeling, and outcomes improvement.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Featured Speakers Coming Soon!

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About the Speaker

We’ll have the world-class national keynotes and analytics content you’ve come to expect at HAS, presenting on a wide variety of educational and inspirational topics. And this year, we’re adding a special new focus: the Human Side of Analytics.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Featured Speakers Coming Soon!

Check Back Soon for More

About the Speaker

This year, we’re combining the power of the best in data and analytics content with the important human skills to help you significantly raise your data-driven outcomes. The combination of these two elements will catapult you into the rare category of creating data-driven outcomes that truly matter to humans.