Kierstin Cates Kennedy
MD, MSHA FACP SFHM

Kierstin Cates Kennedy, MD, MSHA, FACP, SFHM

Kierstin Cates Kennedy, MD, MSHA FACP SFHM is dual trained in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and practices as an academic hospitalist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where she holds a rank of clinical associate professor of medicine and serves as Chief Medical Officer. She is fellowship trained in quality improvement in healthcare and has a specific interest in leadership and professional development of hospitalists.

Kheyandra D. Lewis
MD, MeD

Kheyandra D. Lewis, MD, MeD

Dr. Kheyandra D. Lewis is an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, PA. She received her BS in biology at Philadelphia University, her MD from Temple University School of Medicine and Master’s in Medical Education at the University of Cincinnati. After completing pediatric residency training and a chief residency at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, she joined the Section of Hospital Medicine. As an Associate Program Director for the pediatric residency, she directs the professional development curriculum and is the Chair of the Clinical Competency Committee. Additionally, she is a Co-Director for the Simulation Center at St. Christopher’s and co-facilitates a leadership academy for medical students at Drexel University College of Medicine (DUCOM). In 2019, Dr. Lewis was selected to participate in DUCOM’s inaugural Faculty Launch Leadership Program, a 9-month program designed to foster interdisciplinary mentoring and leadership training, and now serves as a faculty advisor for the program.

Her research interests focus on feedback, professional development, communication, and patient safety. Dr. Lewis has been a key faculty member for I-PASS education at St. Christopher’s since the creation of a standardized handoff program. She served as a site Co-Investigator for the PCORI-funded Patient and Family Centered I-PASS study and served on the Campaign Committee and Simulation and Educational Strategies Support Team. She was also a member of the Implementation and Simulation Committees in addition to her role as a physician mentor for SHM’s I-PASS Safer Communication on Rounds Everytime (SCORE) Mentored Implementation Program.

Eric. E Howell
MD, MHM

Dr. Eric E. Howell, MD, MHM
Dr. Eric E. Howell, MD, MHM is the CEO of the Society of Hospital Medicine.

Prior to his role as SHM CEO in July of 2020, Dr. Howell was faculty at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine for twenty years.

Dr. Howell trained for his Electrical Engineering Degree at the University of Maryland at College Park in 1992 and received his MD degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1996. He completed Internal Medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Bayview where he spent an additional year as Chief Resident. Upon completing residency in 2000, Dr. Howell remained at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for twenty years, becoming Professor of Medicine in 2016.

Since 2000 Dr. Howell’s professional home has been the Society of Hospital Medicine. Prior to becoming CEO, his contributions as an SHM member include the Leadership Academies where he has played important roles since the inception, including developing the Academies in 2004, faculty since inception, and most recently as Course Director. Dr. Howell was on the Board of Directors from 2009-2015 and served as Board President. Dr. Howell helped build SHM’s Center for Quality Improvement where he helped garner millions of dollars in funding and provided clinical expertise. From 2018-2020, Eric Howell was the Chief Operating Officer for SHM, while maintaining full-time faculty roles at Johns Hopkins.

Mark Williams
MD, FACP, MHM

Mark V. Williams, MD, FACP, MHM
Mark V. Williams, MD, FACP, MHM, serves as Professor & Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine and BJC HealthCare in Saint Louis, Missouri leading 120+ clinicians. A nationally recognized leader in hospital medicine, Dr. Williams was a founding member of the Society of Hospital Medicine, one of the first two elected members of the SHM Board and was subsequently selected as President of the organization. Additionally, he served as the founding Editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine and served as Principal Investigator for SHM’s Project BOOST (Better Outcomes by Optimizing Safe Transitions).

Dr. Williams established the first hospitalist program for a public hospital in 1998 at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, and built three of the largest academic hospitalist programs in the U.S. at Emory (1998–2007), Northwestern (2007–2013) and the University of Kentucky (2014-2019). A Past President of the Society of Hospital Medicine and the Founding Editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine, he actively promotes the role of hospitalists as leaders in delivery of health care to hospitalized patients.

With a history of more than $34 million in grants and contracts as principal or co-principal investigator and 190+ peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Williams’ research focuses on quality improvement, care transitions, teamwork and the role of health literacy in the delivery of health care. Overall, his efforts aim to translate scholarly work, innovation, and research into practice improvement, focusing on developing new systems of healthcare delivery that are patient-centered, cost effective and provide outstanding value. By fostering teamwork, hospitalists can succeed as leaders and broaden their impact.

Brian Harte
MD, MHM

Brian Harte, MD, MHM
Brian Harte, MD, MHM, is president of Cleveland Clinic Akron General, which includes a 532-registered-bed teaching and research medical center, a employed physician practice group, and other resources including visiting nurse services; and Cleveland Clinic’s Southern Region, which includes more than a dozen Cleveland Clinic healthcare facilities. He joined Akron General in September 2016 and previously served as president of Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights. Prior to Hillcrest, Dr. Harte was president of Cleveland Clinic South Pointe Hospital.

Dr. Harte is a practicing hospitalist and the former chairman of the Department of Hospital Medicine and the Medicine Institute at Cleveland Clinic. He earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and was in private practice for five years prior to joining Cleveland Clinic in 2004. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. He is a past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine.

Amit Prachand
M.Eng

Amit Prachand, M.Eng
Amit Prachand is the Associate Vice President, Information and Analytics in the Office of Administration and Planning at Northwestern University. Amit leads Institutional Research efforts to collect, integrate, and analyze institutional and external data to support institutional decision-making, planning, and policy development. He is also an instructor in the MS in Higher Education Administration and Policy in the School of Education and Social Policy.

Before joining the Office of Administration and Planning, he was the Managing Director, Planning and Administration, at the Kellogg School of Management and helped develop infrastructure to advance the school’s thought leadership initiatives and to measure progress against the school’s strategic plan. Amit has previously held roles in healthcare at Northwestern Memorial Hospital that ranged from leading process improvement efforts to serving as the administrator for the Division of Hospital Medicine. He has also worked within the manufacturing sector while leading continuous improvement activities at Saturn Corporation (General Motors) and RR Donnelley. Amit received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University and his Master of Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University.

Leonard Marcus
PhD

Leonard Marcus, PhD
Dr. Marcus is founding Director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Marcus’ research, scholarship and applied practice examine the advancement of health care and public health negotiation, conflict resolution and leader development.

Dr. Marcus is lead author of Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995 and in its Second Edition, 2011). The book was co-recipient of the Center for Public Resources Institute for Dispute Resolution “Book Prize Award for Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution.” It also won the Book of the Year award from the Journal of the American Nursing Association. Lenny is co-author of Mediating Bioethical Disputes: A Practical Guide (New York: United Hospital Fund, 1994).
Dr. Marcus is also lead author of the book, You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When It Matters Most (New York: Public Affairs Press, In paperback, March 2021).

Over his twenty-six years at Harvard, Dr. Marcus’s work has also focused on the implications of conflict in health settings, the uses of mediation for resolving health related disputes. He has mediated, consulted, and trained nationally and internationally, including a number of projects to facilitate the consolidation and merger of health system networks. An enthusiastic teacher, speaker and storyteller, he is recipient of the 2017 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health “Excellence in Teaching Award for Executive and Continuing Professional Education.”

Jeffrey J. Glasheen
MD, MHM

Jeffrey J. Glasheen, MD, MHM
Jeffrey J. Glasheen, MD, MHM is the Director of the Institute for Healthcare Quality, Safety and Efficiency, the Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs—Quality and Safety Education and Professor of Medicine with Tenure at the University of Colorado Scholl of Medicine. The IHQSE offers multiple distinct development programs in quality, safety and healthcare leadership having trained over 3000 participants. It is the only quality development program in the country to be associated with improvements in publicly-reported hospital quality rankings.

Dr. Glasheen is a former member of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) Board of Directors and past chair of the SHM Academic and Annual Meeting Committees. He is also the past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Hospital Medicine Committee charged with overseeing the Recognition of Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine board certification for hospitalists. He was the course director for the 2010 Academic Hospitalist Leadership Summit and is the director of the Academic Hospitalist Academy, an annual four-day meeting aimed at developing early academic hospitalists’ career skills. He is a past winner of the SHM Award for Excellence in Teaching and the University of Colorado School of Medicine’s Outstanding Clinical Science Teacher Award. He is the former editor of The Hospitalist news magazine and former Senior Deputy Editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

Russell L. Holman
MD, MHM

Russell L. Holman, MD, MHM
Rusty is a hospitalist and founder of 1821Health, an evidence-based healthcare leadership development company with a mission of “Building Leadership Capabilities.” His passion for developing leaders and shaping organizational culture are hallmarks of his 26 years as a physician executive.

Rusty has served as Past-President of the Society of Hospital Medicine, a founder of the SHM Leadership Academies, is a Nashville Healthcare Council Fellow, voted a Top 50 Physician Executive for Modern Healthcare, and is an author and co-editor of the textbook, Comprehensive Hospital Medicine. His frequent speaking engagements have included the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Society of Hospital Medicine, American Hospital Association, American College of Healthcare Executives and the Nashville Health Care Council, among others. Rusty brings a pragmatic and inclusive approach to advance healthcare leadership as the lynchpin to confronting change, empowering the workforce, and meeting the dire imperative to improve our industry.

Michael Wiederman
PhD

Michael Wiederman, PhD
Michael earned a bachelor of science degree in clinical-community psychology from the University of Michigan-Flint and master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from Bowling Green State University. He completed a pre-doctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Kansas School of Medicine Wichita. Subsequently, he was a full-time psychology professor for 20 years, during which he wrote more than 250 published articles, book chapters, and books.

In 2015 Michael left his tenured faculty position to provide professional development as the inaugural Director of Faculty Development at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville. From 2020 to 2022 Michael served as the inaugural Director of Leadership and Professional Development in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where he continues to hold a graduate faculty appointment. Michael currently provides services independently (MindfulPD.com), blogs for Psychology Today, and continues to develop new professional development programs.

Ankit Mehta

MD, FACP, SFHM

Ankit Mehta MD, FACP, SFHM

Affiliation: Hospitalist, Health Partners
Associate Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Minnesota

Ankit Mehta is a hospitalist with HealthPartners and an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota (UMN). He has a keen interest in the intersection of arts, humanities, and medicine. He co-created a one-day communication and empathy course, “CRAVE” (Communication, Resilience, Authenticity, Vulnerability, and Empathy) at HealthPartners for practicing clinicians. Dr. Mehta also directs a “medical improv” course, an adaptation of improvisational theater principles in a medical context to enhance skills including communication, empathy, and teamwork. He currently chairs the research committee for the National Medical Improv Collaborative group. He has presented at various regional, national, and international conferences. Dr. Mehta’s research is focused on the impact of improv training on communication, empathy, emotional intelligence, and uncertainty tolerance.

Dr. Mehta is a member of the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Patient Experience. He has been a part of the planning committee as creative arts/narrative medicine chair for the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare (ICCH) in 2021 and 2023. He has served on the Medical Executive Committee at Regions Hospital (St. Paul, MN) and the Patient Experience Council. Dr Mehta is passionate about graphic medicine as a powerful tool in medical education to teach self-reflection and empathy with easy accessibility and poignancy. His graphic works have been published in various journals (including JAMA and Annals of Internal Medicine) and magazines. His graphic story (in collaboration with Twin Cities PBS and UMN Medical School) was part of an Emmy® winning documentary “Speaking About Race”.

Mary Fredrickson
PhD

Mary Fredrickson, PhD
Dr. Mary Fredrickson is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Department of Medicine where she directs the Hospital Medicine Pathway. She is a practicing hospitalist with HealthPartners Medical Group in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Fredrickson’s leadership experience has included Section Head for the Department of Hospital Medicine and most recently as physician lead of Complex Care Review and as a Physician Advisor. Her scholarly focus is on education, communication, and clinician well-being and she has presented both locally and internationally on these topics. She has extensive experience in teaching clinical communication skills and is passionate about educating current and future physicians. She currently runs an applied improvisation course that teaches communication skills to future clinicians and also volunteers at a local grade school teaching improvisation and communication skills in her free time.