Heidi Wald, MD, MSPH, Dr. Wald is an accomplished physician leader and board-certified geriatrician who serves as chief quality officer of Denver Health, the safety net provider for the City and County of Denver, as well as visiting associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado. In this role, she serves as a passionate champion of safe and reliable healthcare for all residents of Denver through cultural transformation and human-centered systems design. 

Kim Smashe, DNP, MBA, RN, GERO-BC, ACM-RN, NE-BC, serves as the Geriatrics and Care Transitions Manager within Duke University Health System’s Population Health Management Office. In this leadership role, Kim oversees a team of professionals dedicated to delivering transitional care interventions. These interventions are designed to support patients as they transition from hospital or skilled nursing facilities to their homes, ensuring continuity of care and promoting optimal health outcomes. 

Dr. Oren Guttman, MD, MBA

System Vice President for High Reliability & Patient Safety | Jefferson Health

Edward Asplundh Chief Quality & Patient Safety Officer| Jefferson Health Abington

Professor of Anesthesiology & Peri-operative Medicine

Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Dr. Oren Guttman is an internationally recognized thought leader in patient safety and in the application of human factors, design science, and resiliency engineering in healthcare. He serves as the Jefferson Health System Vice President for Patient Safety at Jefferson Health, a 32-hospital system across Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey. He holds the Edward Asplundh endowed Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer at Jefferson Health Abington Hospital, and maintains a clinical commitment, as a Professor of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine at Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

Dr Guttman is the principal architect of Jefferson Health’s Safety Management System, a pioneering framework that integrates resiliency engineering, applied human factors, and modern safety science into clinical operations. This system earned the ECRI Safety Excellence Award and serves as a foundational piece of the model for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) CareOS redesign. His focus on reducing HAIs (CLABSIs) utilizing resiliency engineering principles, was among the 3 case studies that earned Jefferson Health recognition by HIMSS with the Davies Award in 2022.

Dr. Guttman’s work in integrating human factors and resiliency engineering in healthcare as a new paradigm to advance patient safety, has been featured in major media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Becker’s Hospital Review, and Healthcare Tech Outlook. He has delivered dozens of invited presentations, and spoken on multiple podcasts and webinars hosted by IHI, AHA, CMS, and others. He serves as IHI Faculty, where he supports their Transforming Safety Together Steering Committee and co-leads their Advanced Patient Safety Course.

Leah Konwinski, MS, CPE, is a health care embedded Human Factors Engineer and the Director of Human Factors and Innovation at Corewell Health in Michigan. Leah is responsible for driving the organization’s proactive improvement strategy for patient safety, quality, and experience. She and her team specialize in leveraging human-centered systems analysis and participatory design to achieve breakthrough improvement. Their applied research centers around applying resilience engineering and human factors methods to better understand and solve for barriers to simple, satisfying, and safe work. She is internationally recognized as a deep thinker and practitioner of human factors and ergonomics, and a passionate advocate for human-centered design in the healthcare field.

Before her tenure in healthcare, Leah worked in the automotive, food production, aviation, engineering, and product design industries, bringing ergonomics and human factors insights into many design and improvement initiatives. Leah received her Bachelor of Science with Honors from the University of Guelph and her Masters of Human Kinetics with a focus on Biomechanics and Human Factors from the University of Windsor, both in Ontario, Canada. Leah is a Certified Professional Ergonomist, a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the Resilience Engineering Association, and the Human Factors Transforming Healthcare group.

Jeremy Schwartz, MSN, RN, CNL, Director of Nursing Practice, Clinical Quality and Performance Excellence, has over a decade of nursing leadership experience. From a bedside Oncology nurse to a director of practice, Jeremy has a deep understanding of clinical operations, patient experience, nursing practice, change leadership and team development. He drives, innovates practice and implements system-wide improvements in patient safety, nursing practice, and quality. Jeremy has led successful initiatives to reduce CAUTI, CLABSI, falls with injury, improve mobility and decrease sepsis achieving significant gains in quality metrics. He designs and implements innovative workflows, mentors nursing leaders, facilitates shared governance councils, and collaborates across disciplines to enhance care delivery. He aligns nursing practice across a large hospital system.   

Erin Lawler-Hart, MS, CPPS, CPHQ, CPHFH is a Human Factors Engineer, patient safety consultant, and patient safety program implementation advisor with 20 years of experience improving the safety, reliability, and design of healthcare systems. She helps healthcare organizations and states build and operationalize patient safety programs, reporting systems, governance models, and learning frameworks that reduce preventable harm. Her work applies human-centered design, systems thinking, and equity-informed methods to improve how care is delivered in complex clinical environments. She focuses on designing safer systems for patients and the healthcare workforce, rather than relying on individual vigilance alone. 

Jonathan Ripp, MD, MPH, is Professor of Medicine, Medical Education and Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Dean for Well-Being and Resilience and Chief Wellness Officer at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). He received both his undergraduate and medical degrees from Yale University and completed internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.  In the role of Chief Wellness Officer, Dr. Ripp oversees efforts to assess and provide direction for system- and individual-level interventions designed to improve well-being for all students, residents, fellows, faculty, and other health professionals in the Mount Sinai Health System. He is the former Associate Dean of GME for Trainee Well-Being within the ISMMS Office of Graduate Medical Education, in which capacity he served to help spread well-being initiatives across the training programs of the Mount Sinai Health System. 

In the Department of Medicine, Dr. Ripp practices as a clinician in the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors home-based primary care program, where he maintains an active patient panel. In addition, Dr. Ripp is the Co-founder and Co-Director of CHARM, the Collaborative for Healing and Renewal in Medicine, an international group of medical educators, academic medical center and well-being leaders, experts in burnout research and interventions, and learners all working to promote healthcare professional and learner well-being. CHARM maintains several leadership networks, including the CHARM Chief Wellness Officer Network and the CHARM GME Well-Being Leaders Network, and also actively develops important content to advance the literature and field of clinician well-being. 

Recognized for his leadership in this area, Dr. Ripp has been invited to participate in the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education Symposia on Physician Well-Being, join the American College of Physician's Promoting Physician Wellness Task Force, and participate in the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-being and Resilience. He also chairs the Greater New York Hospital Association’s Clinician Well-Being Advisory Group. Dr. Ripp’s primary research interest is in physician burnout and well-being, for which he has received grant support and has published and lectured widely. His multicenter studies have served to better elucidate the causes and consequences of physician burnout and have explored interventions designed to promote clinician well-being.  

Bree Andrews, MD, MPH, is a neonatologist and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Chicago Medicine and serves as the inaugural Chief Wellness and Vitality Officer for Physicians for the Biological Sciences Division and the University of Chicago Medicine. She is also an Associate Dean for the Office of Faculty Advancement. In these roles, she is charged with assessing physician well-being across the organization and implementing programs that improve ease of practice, collegiality, resilience, and professional fulfillment. Her interests focus on professional identity and faculty as they prepare for and navigate meaningful, sustainable career trajectories. 

Jamile (Jay) Ashmore, PhD, is the Chief Wellness Officer and Director of the Division of Medical Psychology at Baylor Scott & White – The Heart Hospital.  He leads enterprise wide strategies to enhance physician well-being through systems-based and evidence-informed approaches. His work focuses on cultivating a well-being centered organizational culture, improving operational efficiencies, and advancing structural supports that mitigate burnout and promote occupational fulfillment.

Dr. Ashmore earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from The Ohio State University and completed clinical training at Duke University Medical Center in the Division of Medical Psychology. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas, where his research examined biopsychosocial determinants of health behavior change in chronic illness contexts including cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and obesity. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and industry.

He previously served as Director and Vice President of the Division of Weight Management at the Cooper Institute and Cooper Aerobics Enterprises, leading research and clinical programs.  At Baylor Scott & White-Plano, Dr. Ashmore led the hospital-based behavioral medicine service line and, as East Region Director of Behavioral Health, co-chaired the system-wide Behavioral Health Council and contributed to clinician well-being initiatives.  Nationally, he has served on the American Psychological Association’s Advisory Steering Committee for Clinical Practice Guidelines and the Healthcare Finance Advisory Committee.

In his current role, Dr. Ashmore chairs the Executive Physician Well-Being Committee and oversees programs addressing individual and system-level drivers of well-being for physicians and trainees. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine, where he supports medical student education and ACGME well-being curricula for residents and fellows. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Healthcare Professional Well-Being Academic Consortium and collaborates nationally to advance the science and practice of healthcare workforce well-being.

With over 25 years of experience working with service dogs, Dr. Ashmore directs the Dogs of Cardiac Support facility dog program at The Heart Hospital. His current scholarly interests include well-being-centered leadership in matrixed healthcare systems, psychometric evaluation of workforce well-being, and developing a unified lexicon to foster shared understanding of well-being terms and constructs. His work aims to strengthen conceptual frameworks and measurement tools that enable health systems to accurately assess well-being and translate findings into targeted, evidence-based interventions.

Colin West, MD, PhD, FACP. Originally from Seattle, Dr. West received his M.D. and Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Iowa in 1999. He completed residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Mayo Clinic, and joined the faculty in General Internal Medicine in 2004. He is currently Professor of Medicine, Medical Education, and Biostatistics at Mayo. He is Director of the Mayo Clinic Program on Physician Well-Being and was named the first Medical Director of Employee Well-Being for Mayo Clinic in 2022. Dr. West's research has focused on medical education and physician well-being, and has been widely published in prominent journals including Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, and JAMA Internal Medicine. 

Jenny Fredo is a PhD student and a certified registered nurse practitioner with dual master’s degrees in family nurse practitioner studies and nursing education and is currently pursuing her PhD.  She continues to practice, serving older adults and their families by managing care at a local memory care facility and spends the majority of her time educating undergraduate nursing students and working as the Education, Age-Friendly Health System and Resource Coordinator for the Long-Term Care Rise 3.0 program. Jenny’s passion lies in translating science to empower clinicians and implementing quality improvement initiatives to drive better health outcomes and enhance satisfaction for both patients and clinicians alike. 

Dr. Erica Taylor is a practicing orthopaedic hand surgeon at Duke University. She achieved her degree in Biomedical Engineering Science from the University of Virginia and obtained her medical degree from the Duke School of Medicine. She completed a fellowship in Hand and Upper Extremity Surgery at The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. She joined the Duke School of Medicine faculty in 2013 and received her Masters of Business Administration from the Duke Fuqua School of Business in 2020.

As a proud member of the Duke University Community, she is heavily committed to various aspects of leadership, including extensive engagement in surgical . In addition, she is the Vice Chair of Diversity and Inclusion for the Department of Orthopaedics. In 2020, she was appointed as the first Duke Health Chief Medical Officer for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In this senior leadership role, she works alongside colleagues and institutional leaders to develop thoughtful strategy and best practices towards implementation of health equity across clinical environments. She was named as one of 2022’s Top Diversity Officers in Healthcare.

Inspired by the aforementioned experiences, in 2020 she founded the Orthopaedic Diversity Leadership Consortium, LLC, a pioneering organization whose mission is to elevate the necessary components of inclusive leadership in healthcare through network and strategy development. She also has earned a faculty appointment of Executive in Residence at the Duke Fuqua School of Business, where she lectures on the intricacies of strategic diversity leadership in healthcare.

Dr. Taylor brings a lifetime of experience, passion, and has a proven track record as a leader for change. She believes that achievement of shared goals must be sustained through creative thinking, unified efforts, and sincere commitment. As a wife and mother of four beautiful children, her family and her faith are the cornerstones that bring her the energy and unwavering spirit of love to do this work.

Mary Barton is an internist, trained at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. She has worked in health care quality for over twenty years, starting with a research career at Harvard's Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention. She then served as Scientific Director of the USPSTF Program at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Next she was Vice President for Performance Measures at the National Committee for Quality Assurance, overseeing the development and maintenance of the HEDIS set of performance measures that NCQA uses to measure health plan quality. Since 2023, Dr. Barton has been an independent consultant, working for IHI and other clients.

Gill Smith is a quality improvement, patient safety and human factors professional and the Managing Director of Kaizen Kata; working with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) as a Faculty Director. Gill is an IHI Fellow and a Certified Professional in Patient Safety from the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety. Gill specialises in helping organisations and individuals to build a culture of continuous quality improvement, through capability building and strategic quality improvement support; working globally in the pursuit of quality improvement and patient safety at organisational and system levels. Gill is an Associate member of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, and the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare. Gill spent 30 years working in the National Health Service (UK), where her career was dedicated to leading large-scale transformation/reform projects, with a strong emphasis on the application of quality improvement methodology to deliver results.

Jeff Durney is the Director of Quality and Safety for the Department of Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital. In this role, he oversees the quality and safety improvement activities across 16 clinical divisions within the department. Prior to joining Boston Children’s, Jeff was the Senior Program Manager for System Safety and Human Factors at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. There, he developed a system safety assessment methodology now applied within the institute for preemptive risk assessment and mitigation. Before his tenure at Dana-Farber, Jeff served as the Quality Improvement Advisor for the Safe Surgery program at Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In this role, he coached clinical teams on implementing the Surgical Safety Checklist in ambulatory surgery centers across the United States. Jeff has also held quality, safety, and performance improvement roles at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Partners HealthCare. Additionally, he has served as a faculty member in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Patient Safety Executive Development Program. Currently, he is a co-course director in the Master of Science in Healthcare Quality and Safety program at Harvard Medical School. Before transitioning to the healthcare industry, Jeff spent ten years as an airline pilot and flight instructor. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Boston University and a Master of Science in Health Management and Policy from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Jesse McCall, MBA, is Senior Director and Improvement Advisor for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He coaches individuals and organizations through the process of improvement which includes the data-driven identification of strategic improvement priorities, development of operational systems to support improvement, and the building of practical improvement capability necessary for staff to get results that matter. McCall also has extensive experience in coaching organizations to engage clinical staff to reduce burnout and foster joy in work. McCall joined IHI in 2007 and over his tenure has designed, executed, and evaluated programs and projects around the world. McCall is also a Teaching Fellow at The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. McCall has expertise in practical application of the science of improvement, staff engagement and wellness, program and product development, marketing and communications, customer relationship management, and large-scale initiative operations. He received his undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Northeastern University in Boston and MBA from the UMASS Amherst Isenberg School of Management.

Robert Lloyd, PhD, is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He is also a visiting lecturer at Harvard University.  Dr. Lloyd served as Vice President of Improvement Science and Methods at the IHI for over 20 years.  During this time, he provided leadership in the areas of performance improvement strategies, building capacity and capability for improvement, statistical process control methods, and development of strategic dashboards. He currently serves as faculty for various IHI initiatives and demonstration projects in the US and abroad.  Before joining IHI, Dr. Lloyd served as the Corporate Director of Quality Resource Services for Advocate Health Care (Oakbrook, IL), Senior Director of Quality Measurement for Lutheran General Health System, Senior Director at the Hospital Research and Educational Trust of AHA, and spent ten years with the Hospital Association of Pennsylvania in various leadership roles. He is author of numerous articles, reports, and several books.