Speakers

Bertha Coombs is CNBC’s senior health care reporter, covering health care services and policy, as well as financial markets and business news stories throughout the business day. 

Her health care coverage at CNBC has ranged from covering the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the evolution of health care technology, and the continuing push to disrupt pharmacy models and lower drug costs, to the launch of the IRA Medicare drug price negotiations. 

Over twenty years at CNBC, Coombs has covered the tech sector from the Nasdaq Marketsite and general market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  Before joining the network, she reported for the pioneering streaming business network, Yahoo Finance Vision. Prior to that, she served as a reporter for ABC News One and a substitute anchor for “World News Now” and “World News This Morning.”  She began her reporting career in local news as a Leo Beranek Fellow at WCVB-TV in Boston. 

Coombs is a graduate of Yale University. Born in Havana, Cuba, she speaks fluent Spanish. 

Michael Dowling is one of the health care industry’s most highly respected voices, achieving the No. 1 ranking in Modern Healthcare magazine’s 2022 list of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.” As a health care executive over the past three decades, he has been a no-excuses advocate for reforms that have helped the industry become more patient-focused and committed to quality and safety. His willingness to take a stand on societal issues such as gun violence and immigration has earned widespread praise and recognition from peers and the news media. During his years in academia and government, Mr. Dowling has distinguished himself as a compassionate voice for those in need, developing and promoting innovative health and human services policies. 

As president and CEO of Northwell Health for 22 years, he has demonstrated invaluable leadership in overseeing a rapidly expanding clinical, research and academic enterprise with annual revenue of $18 billion. With a workforce of more than 85,000, Northwell is the largest health care provider and private employer in New York State, caring for more than two million people annually through a vast network of 21 hospitals, more than 900 outpatient facilities—including 220 primary care practices and 50-plus urgent care centers—along with home care, rehabilitation and end-of-life services. 

Hailing from Ireland, Mr. Dowling bridges borders and brings a global perspective to health care. In 2020, he received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad, which recognized his contributions to Ireland and to Irish communities abroad, presented by the President of Ireland. He also received an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and is a board member of the Foreign Policy Association. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science, and the North American Board of the Smurfit School of Business at University College in Dublin, Ireland. He also earned his bachelor’s degree from University College Cork, and went on to receive honorary doctorates from Queens University Belfast and University College Dublin. Mr. Dowling was the Grand Marshal of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2017, when he was also inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame. 

Mr. Dowling has invested heavily in Northwell’s research arm, the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, home to 50 research labs, 3,000 clinical research trials, and 5,000 scientists and staff who are transforming the treatment of conditions like lupus, arthritis, sepsis, cancer, psychiatric illness and Alzheimer’s disease. Feinstein has gained stature as the global headquarters of bioelectronic medicine research, where physician scientists are tapping neural pathways that signal the body to heal itself, reducing reliance on prescription drugs. 

Under Mr. Dowling’s leadership, Northwell has also pursued a visionary approach to medical education, developing innovative curricula at its Zucker School of Medicine and the Hofstra Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. Northwell’s graduate medical education programs have become one of the nation’s largest, training more than 1,900 medical residents and fellows annually. Further underscoring his commitment to education, Mr. Dowling’s first act when becoming Northwell’s CEO in 2002 was creating a corporate university, the Center for Learning & Innovation, which has helped instill a culture of lifelong learning among employees at all levels of the organization. 

Mr. Dowling’s highly visible leadership style enabled the health system to successfully navigate the intense challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, most notably in 2020 when the New York metropolitan area was at the epicenter of the epidemic’s first wave. Mr. Dowling detailed his and Northwell’s experiences in a book titled Leading Through a Pandemic: The Inside Story of Humanity, Innovation, and Lessons Learned During the COVID-19 Crisis. 

Northwell clinicians treated more than 350,000 COVID patients and the health system used its innovative culture to significantly expand bed capacity and leverage its resources to ensure adequate supplies of lifesaving drugs, ventilators, personal protective equipment and other essential provisions to protect patients and caregivers, including administering the nation’s first COVID vaccines in December 2020. 

In addition to his 2020 book about Northwell’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Dowling is the co-author of a 2020 memoir titled After the Roof Caved In: An Immigrant’s Journey from Ireland to America, which chronicles his poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland, his years as a social policy expert in academia and in New York State government, and his ascent to becoming one of the health care industry’s preeminent leaders. He is also the co-author of the 2018 book, Health Care Reboot: Megatrends Energizing American Medicine, about the trends that are driving the nation’s health care system toward greater quality, safety, access and affordability. 

Prior to becoming CEO, Mr. Dowling was the health system’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, playing a key role in initiating mergers and acquisitions that enabled Northwell to become New York’s largest integrated health system. Before joining Northwell in 1995, he was a senior vice president at Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Mr. Dowling served in New York State government for 12 years during the 1980s and early 1990s, including seven years as deputy secretary of human services to former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, state director of health, education and human services, and later, commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services. He initiated numerous innovative programs aimed at expanding primary care access to the medically underserved and uninsured, and helping the state to combat the crack cocaine epidemic at that time. 

Before his public service career, Mr. Dowling was a professor of social policy and assistant dean at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Services, and director of the Fordham campus in Westchester County. He was also a former instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health Center for Continuing Professional Education. 

Mr. Dowling has been honored with many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including: The Conference Board’s 2023 Committee for Economic Development Distinguished Leadership Award, the 2021 Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, the Columbia University School of Business’ 2020 Deming Cup for Operational Excellence, the 2012 B’nai B’rith National Healthcare Award, the National Center for Healthcare Leadership’s 2011 Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems’ 2011 CEO IT Achievement Award, the Ellis Island Honors Society’s 2007 Medal of Honor, the Foreign Policy Association Medal, the American Jewish Committee’s National Human Relations Award, the State University of New York’s Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy’s Distinguished Public Service Award, the Mental Health Association of New York State’s Outstanding Public Service Award, and the American Society for Public Administration’s Alfred E. Smith Award. 

Mr. Dowling is a member of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership, the Greater New York Hospital Association, the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS), the League of Voluntary Hospitals of New York, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), The Healthcare Institute and the Long Island Association and many other professional organizations. 

Dr. Geoffrey Ling is a pharmacologist and physician and co-founder of On Demand Pharmaceuticals. Clinically, he is a professor of neurology, neurosurgery and anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and an attending neuro critical care physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He serves as the Chair of the Veterans Administration’s National Research Advisory Council.

Dr. Ling is a retired U.S. Army colonel after 21 years on active duty. He served as an intensive care physician with the 452nd CSH (combat support hospital) in OEF-Afghanistan (2003) and 86th CSH and 10th CSH in OIF-Iraq (2005). Also, COL Ling has had four in-theater missions as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “Gray Team” to assess traumatic brain injury (TBI) care in both combat theaters (2009, 2011). The 10th CSH named him their first “Physician of the Month.” Dr. Ling was also a “requested by name” consultant to Congresswoman Gabby Gifford’s trauma team following her tragic attack.

He was the Founding Director of the Biological Technologies Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he was previously a program manager and Deputy Director of the Defense Sciences Office. He served as an Assistant Director in the Science Division of President Obama’s White House Office of Science, Technology and Policy (OSTP). His BA with honors is from Washington University in St. Louis, MD from Georgetown University (elected to AOA) and his PhD in neuropharmacology is from Cornell University. He completed his neurology residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, neuro critical care fellowship at Johns Hopkins and research fellowship in neuropharmacology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is board certified in both neurology and neuro critical care. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.

Kevin J. Tracey, is President and CEO and the Karches Family Distinguished Chair in Medical Research at The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research; Professor of Neurosurgery and Molecular Medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra-Northwell; and Executive Vice President, Research, at Northwell Health, in New York. A leader in the scientific fields of inflammation and bioelectronic medicine, his contributions include discovery and molecular mapping neural circuits controlling immunity and identifying the therapeutic action of monoclonal anti-TNF antibodies.

Professor Tracey received his B.S. (Chemistry, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Boston College in 1979, and his M.D. from Boston University in 1983.  He trained in neurosurgery from 1983 to 1992 at the New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center and was a guest investigator at the Rockefeller University before moving in 1992 to The Feinstein Institutes.

An inventor with more than 75 United States patents, author of more than 400 scientific publications, he cofounded the Global Sepsis Alliance, a non-profit organization supporting the efforts of >1 million sepsis caregivers in more than 70 countries. His honors and awards include a Doctorates honoris causa from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and Hofstra University, New York; the Boston University Distinguished Alumni Award; Fellow of the AIMBE Class (2020), the Harvey Society lecture, New York; and lectureships from Harvard, Yale, Rockefeller University, the NIH, and elsewhere. His memberships include the American Society of Clinical Investigation (2001), the American Association of Physicians (2009), the Long Island Technology Hall of Fame (2012), Alpha Omega Alpha (2014), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2014), and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2020). Professor Tracey is author of Fatal Sequence (Dana Press), and delivers lectures nationally and internationally on inflammation, sepsis, the neuroscience of immunity, and bioelectronic medicine.

David Battinelli, MD, is Northwell Health’s physician-in-chief on all clinical, research and education issues. This role follows a transition from his position as Northwell’s senior vice president and chief medical officer (CMO), in which he was responsible for the overall professional management of clinical, education, research and operational issues related to medical and clinical affairs.

Dr. Battinelli is also dean and Betsey Whitney Cushing Professor of Medicine at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. A founding member of the Zucker School of Medicine, he previously served as the vice dean and earlier as the dean for medical education and chaired the committee charged with developing the new medical school’s curriculum.

While CMO, he also served as the chief operating officer for the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research where he oversaw all operational and budgetary issues for Northwell’s research enterprise growing extramural funding and endowments while improving overall efficiency and research productivity.

Previously, he served as the health system’s chief academic officer and senior vice president of academic affairs, in charge of all undergraduate and graduate educational programs, continuing medical education, and academic affairs and institutional relationships.

A board-certified internist, Dr. Battinelli came to Northwell Health from Boston Medical Center (BMC), where he served as vice chair for education, program director for the internal medicine residency program, and professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. He was also an active staff physician at BMC and the Boston Veterans Administration.

Dr. Battinelli is a past president of the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine. He has worked closely with and served on numerous committees for a variety of national medical organizations including the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine, American College of Physicians and the Accreditation Committee on Graduate Medical Education. In addition, he has lectured extensively on clinical education, faculty development of teaching skills and internal medicine, and is a noted speaker and author on these subjects.

Dr. Battinelli earned his medical degree from the Rutgers School of Biomedical and Health Sciences and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Scranton. He completed his residency and chief residency at Boston City Hospital.

Michael “Mike” Mahoney is Chief Executive Officer of Boston Scientific Corporation and Chairman of the company’s Board of Directors. Boston Scientific is a global medical technology leader with approximately $11 billion in annual revenue and commercial representation in approximately 130 countries. Under Mike’s leadership, Boston Scientific is delivering on its mission to transform lives through innovative medical solutions that improve the health of patients around the world. The company’s team of more than 35,000 global employees reaches over 30 million patients each year, providing a range of technologies and solutions that span cardiovascular interventions, structural heart, electrophysiology, endoscopy, neuromodulation and urology, and women’s health. 

Since joining Boston Scientific, Mike has focused the company on addressing the needs of the evolving healthcare landscape by driving improvements to patient outcomes and increasing healthcare economic efficiency and access. Under his leadership, Boston Scientific has brought many transformational medical devices to market while creating significant value to its shareholders. 

Mike’s career spans more than 25 years of success building market-leading medical device, capital equipment and healthcare IT businesses. Prior to Boston Scientific, he served as Worldwide Chairman of the Medical Devices and Diagnostics (MD&D) division of Johnson & Johnson.

Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, Mike was President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX).  For the first 12 years of his career, Mike advanced through a series of leadership roles at General Electric Medical Systems, including General Manager of the company’s Healthcare Information Technology business.   

Mike serves on the Board of Directors of Baxter International, the Board of Boys & Girls Club of Boston and as the chair of the Board of Governors of Boston College CEO Club. He earned his B.B.A. in Finance from University of Iowa and his M.B.A. from Wake Forest University. He is married and has three children.   

David Feinberg currently leads Google Health, a team employing Google’s expertise in AI, product innovation, and hardware to take on big healthcare challenges. Previously, David was president and CEO of Geisinger, one of the nation’s most innovative health services organizations. While at Geisinger, David oversaw 13 hospital campuses, a 600,000-member health plan, research centers, and various initiatives aimed at better engaging patients around their health and wellbeing. Prior to Geisinger, David served as CEO of UCLA’s hospitals and associate vice chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences, as well as president of UCLA Health System. David graduated with distinction from the University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School and holds an MBA from Pepperdine University.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris is an award-winning physician, researcher and advocate dedicated to changing the way our society responds to one of the most serious, expensive and widespread public health crises of our time: childhood trauma.  She was appointed as California’s first-ever Surgeon General by Governor Gavin Newsom in January 2019 and quickly became a trusted leader in the state’s COVID-19 pandemic response.  Her career has been dedicated to serving vulnerable communities and combating the root causes of health disparities.  She is the Founder of the Center for Youth Wellness, an organization leading the effort to advance pediatric medicine, raise public awareness, and transform the way society responds to children exposed to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress.  Dr. Burke Harris’ TED Talk, “How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across the Lifetime” has been viewed more than 7 million times. Her book “The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity” was called “indispensable” by The New York Times.  She is the recipient of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award presented by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Heinz Award for the Human Condition. 

Jeff Immelt joined NEA in 2018 as a Venture Partner on both the technology and healthcare investing teams. He is the author of HOT SEAT, a memoir of leadership in times of crisis. 

Jeff served as chairman and CEO of GE for 16 years where he revamped the company’s strategy, global footprint, workforce and culture. During his tenure, he led several innovative transformations that doubled industrial earnings, reshaped the portfolio, re-established market leadership, grew a strong share position in essential industries, and quadrupled emerging market revenue.

Jeff has been named one of the “World’s Best CEOs” three times by Barron’s. During his tenure as CEO, GE was named “America’s Most Admired Company” by Fortune magazine and one of “The World’s Most Respected Companies” in polls by Barron’s and the Financial Times. He has received fifteen honorary degrees and numerous awards for business leadership and chaired the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness under the Obama administration. 

Jeff earned a B.A. degree in applied mathematics from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. He currently serves on the board for NEA portfolio companies Bloom Energy, Bright Health, Cleo, Collective Health, Desktop Metal, Formlabs, Radiology Partners, Tri Alpha Energy, and Tuya. In addition, he is on the board of Sila Nanotechnologies, Hennessy Capital, and Twilio. Jeff is a member of The American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He and his wife have one daughter.

Deena Shakir is a Partner at Lux Capital (a multi-stage venture capital firm with $4B under management), where she invests in transformative technologies improving lives and livelihoods. She is particularly interested in contrarian and underdog founders building ambitious companies in digital health and sits on the boards of companies including H1, Adyn, AllStripes, Alife Health, SteadyMD, and Shiru. The daughter of Iraqi immigrants, Deena had a very non-linear journey into venture capital, always orienting around tech and entrepreneurship for impact. Prior to joining Lux, she was a Partner at Google Ventures, led partnerships for moonshot products at Google and directed social impact investments at Google.org. She was also a Presidential Management Fellow in the Obama administration, where she worked in Secretary Clinton’s office and at USAID on programs supporting global entrepreneurship. The first-generation daughter of Iraqi immigrants, Deena self-funded her way through college at Harvard (where she delivered the commencement address!) and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. A passionate advocate for diversity, inclusion, and equity, Deena is also on the boards of several nonprofits, a Forbes contributor, Kauffman Fellow, and Council on Foreign Relations Term Member. She lives with her husband and two young children in the SF Bay Area.

A highly respected and strategic global leader, Everett is the President & CEO of GE Healthcare’s $6 billion U.S. & Canada region.  Providing the industry’s leading medical imaging, patient monitoring, and life science technologies, GE Healthcare enables precision health in diagnostics, therapeutics and monitoring through intelligent devices, data analytics, applications and services. Everett and his team of nearly 6,600 industry experts leverage the capabilities across GE Healthcare to partner with providers and governments to help improve healthcare quality, access and affordability.

Prior to joining GE Healthcare, Mr. Cunningham served as the Senior Vice President, Commercial for Quest Diagnostics, responsible for global commercial sales, marketing, and commercial operations. At Quest Diagnostics, Everett led over 1,500 employees and successfully managed $7.6 billions dollars in top line revenue. 

Prior to his role at Quest Diagnostics, Mr. Cunningham spent 21 years with Pfizer, Inc., where he served most recently as Regional President, Established Products for Asia Pacific. Beginning his career as a Sales Representative, Mr. Cunningham served in roles of increasing responsibility including Senior Director of Worldwide Learning and Development, Senior Director of Business Operations and Vice President Sales for U.S. Pharmaceuticals, and Vice President of Global Corporate Human Resources.

With 25+ years of progressive responsibility in pharmaceuticals and medical services, Everett is committed to leadership excellence with a diligent focus on methodical results, demonstrated change agility, building organizational capability, and cross functional matrix teams.

Mr. Cunningham earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from Northwestern University.

Dan Wattendorf, Director of Innovative Technology Solutions, leads efforts to identify and create biotechnology platforms that result in new options for global health. He oversees the Foundation’s strategy to develop and implement new biomarkers, diagnostic tests, and diagnostic services for the developing world.

Prior to joining the Foundation in 2016, Dan was Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he initiated and lead programs in diagnostics, mammalian cell synthetic biology, RNA vaccines; rapid discovery of monoclonal antibodies, immunoprophylaxis by gene transfer, and engineered red blood cells.

Previously, he served as Director, Air Force Medical Genetics Center; Director of the Cancer Genetics Center at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center; and was a clinician in the Cancer Genetics Branch, National Cancer Institute, NIH.

Dan holds a B.S. in microbiology from Cornell University and an M.D. with distinction from George Washington University. He completed a residency in family medicine at the National Capital Consortium; a residency in clinical genetics at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), National Institutes of Health (NIH); a fellowship in clinical cytogenetics at Georgetown University; and a fellowship in health policy from the Office of the Director, NHGRI, NIH.

He has been a member of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs Genomic Medicine Program Advisory Committee and the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Translating Genomic-Based Research for Health.

Tyler Mathisen co-anchors CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” one of the network’s longest running program franchises. He is also Vice President, Events Strategy for CNBC, working closely with the network’s events team to grow the rapidly expanding business.

Previously, Mathisen was co-anchor of “Nightly Business Report,” an award-winning evening business news program produced by CNBC for U.S. public television. In 2014, NBR was named best radio/TV show by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW). Since joining CNBC in 1997, Mathisen has held a number of positions including managing editor of CNBC Business News, responsible for directing the network’s daily content and coverage. He was also co-anchor of CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

Mathisen has reported one-hour documentaries for the network including “Best Buy: The Big Box Fights Back,” “Supermarkets Inc: Inside a $500 Billion Money Machine” and “Death: It’s a Living.” Mathisen was also host of the CNBC series “How I Made My Millions.”

Prior to CNBC, Mathisen spent 15 years as a writer, senior editor and top editor for Money magazine. Among other duties, he supervised the magazine’s mutual funds coverage, its annual investment forecast issue and its expansion into electronic journalism, for which it won the first-ever National Magazine Award for New Media in 1997.

In 1993, Mathisen won the American University-Investment Company Institute Award for Personal Finance Journalism for a televised series on “Caring for Aging Parents,” which aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Mathisen served as money editor of “GMA” from 1991 to 1997. He also won an Emmy Award for a report on the 1987 stock market crash that aired on New York’s WCBS-TV.

A native of Arlington,Va., Mathisen graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia.

Christopher Austin, M.D., joined Flagship Pioneering in 2021 as a CEO Partner. Chris is part of the broader Flagship senior leadership team, participating in Flagship leadership meetings, serving on selected Flagship company boards, and providing his experience across the ecosystem. Chris will also serve as Chief Executive Officer of a Flagship-founded company currently in stealth and to be announced at a later date.

Chris is a trained clinician and geneticist, with more than 20 years of experience in translational research in both the public and private sectors. He joins Flagship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he served as the founding Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). In this role, he led the Center’s work to transform translation – the process by which interventions that benefit patients are developed and deployed – from an empirical process into a predictive science.

Chris previously served as Senior Advisor to the Director for translational research at the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) implementing research programs to derive scientific insights and therapeutic benefits from the results of the Human Genome Project. He also founded and directed the NIH Chemical Genomics Center, Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases program, Toxicology in the 21st Century initiative, and NIH Center for Translational Therapeutics.

Before joining NIH, Chris worked at Merck, where he directed programs on genome-based discovery of novel targets and drugs, with a particular focus on treatments for schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Chris is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his A.B. in Biology from Princeton University. He completed a research fellowship in developmental neurogenetics at Harvard and trained in internal medicine and neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Janine Small is the Global President for Pfizer Emerging Markets in Pfizer’s Biopharmaceuticals Group.  In this role, she manages Pfizer’s broad pharmaceuticals portfolio and leads colleagues across Latin America, emerging Asia, Africa and the Middle East who are focused on improving the health and well-being of the more than 4 billion people living in these regions. Under her leadership, the Emerging Markets business continues to innovate to partner with governments, non-governmental organizations, patients and others to increase appropriate access to Pfizer’s portfolio in core therapeutic areas including vaccines, medicines for oncology, inflammation and immunology, internal medicine and rare disease as well as anti-infectives and sterile injectables used both in and outside of the hospital setting.  The business is also developing programs and partnerships with alliances, like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and UNICEF, which are improving health and quality of life in the poorest, underserved populations.

Janine brings more than 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, having joined Pfizer in 1988.  She moved from marketing in the United Kingdom to Russia where she was appointed Division Director. After three years, Janine’s next move took her to Slovakia and then to Poland, two countries in which she lived and served as Country Manager until 2009 when she began working as Head of Pfizer’s Global Established Products (GEP) Business Unit in Italy. In 2013, Janine assumed the role of GEP Business Unit Lead in Japan, followed by her appointment to PEH Global Marketing Lead and subsequently to the role of Regional President, PEH Asia Pacific.

In 2017, Janine was appointed Regional President, PEH Europe, where she focused on optimizing the organization for sustainable growth, and in 2018, Janine was named the Regional President for Pfizer Vaccines in the International Developed Markets (IDM) where she worked to ensure that millions of children and adults had access to vaccines that protect against infectious disease. She also led the worldwide government engagement for the BioNTech/Pfizer candidate vaccine for COVID-19 as part of Pfizer’s five-point plan to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Janine has been a Board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in several countries, and sits on the board of Nova Medica (US-Russia Business Council) and Vaccines Europe, which represents companies involved in research and development (R&D), clinical trials, production and marketing of vaccines and are dedicated to improving public health through immunisation.  She earned a BSc in Chemistry from Leeds University in the United Kingdom.

Jennifer Gregoire is a seasoned business leader who has over twenty years of experience leading Communications, Brand, and Corporate Affairs functions for global organizations.  She has extensive experience leading global teams and projects. And, she has lived and worked in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Jennifer is currently the Managing Director, Communications & Corporate Affairs for KCK Advisors, a boutique global consultancy, where she leads engagement with all of the company’s external stakeholders.  Previously, Jennifer was the Senior Director of Communications and Corporate Marketing for Medtronic. In this role, she led initiatives to position the company as a leader in global health, access to healthcare, corporate philanthropy, diversity & inclusion, and health equity.  

Prior to Medtronic, Jennifer served as the Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Orbis International where she led an award-winning communications function, oversaw enterprise-level strategic planning, and built and launched the organization’s people and culture strategy. She has also held leadership positions with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Starwood Hotels, and the International Peace Institute at the UN.

Jennifer holds a B.S. from Cornell University and a M.S. from Florida State University. 

Anar Yukhayev, MD is an OBGYN faculty attending and an Assistant Professor at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra. He spends his time caring for women and delivering babies at Northwell’s Katz Women’s Hospital at Long Island Jewish Medical Center.  In March of 2020, Dr. Yukahyev battled COVID-19 and became one of first patients in the United States to enroll in a novel therapeutic clinical trial. Dr. Yukhayev received his undergraduate degree from Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College and his doctorate from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  Dr. Yukhayev is a proud New Yorker, raised, educated and trained.