2020 Agenda

As the leader of one of fewer than 65 accredited economic development organizations globally, Quentin leads initiatives and programs related to making New Orleans the most attractive city of its size for financial and human capital investment. The Business Alliance is a national model for inclusive economic development by integrating workforce development and place-making programs into more traditional economic development activities such as business attraction, retention, small business services and perception management.

Immediately prior to joining the Business Alliance, Quentin was the Assistant Secretary for Louisiana Economic Development, (LED) the state department of economic development.

In addition to his memberships on the board of directors of the New Orleans & Co (f/k/a New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau), Audubon Nature Institute, City Park Improvement Association and University of New Orleans Research and Technology Foundation, Quentin is a member of the Board of Trustees of Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University (f/k/a Our Lady of the Lake College), and the Board of Directors of the Research Park Corporation (Baton Rouge, LA).

In 2018, he was named to Ebony Magazine’s Ebony Power 100, in the Power Player category.

Arundhati Parmar is VP and Editor-in-Chief at MedCity News. Previously she was senior editor at UBM’s Medical Device + Diagnostic Industry and has been a business journalist for more than a decade. Arundhati has three degrees from three continents – a Bachelor of Arts in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; a Masters in English Literature from the University of Sydney, Australia and a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. She has sworn never to enter a classroom again.

Arundhati Parmar is VP and Editor-in-Chief at MedCity News. Previously she was senior editor at UBM’s Medical Device + Diagnostic Industry and has been a business journalist for more than a decade. Arundhati has three degrees from three continents – a Bachelor of Arts in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; a Masters in English Literature from the University of Sydney, Australia and a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. She has sworn never to enter a classroom again.

Dr. Davis has spent the last ten years at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) where she served as the Director of the Center for Community and Preventive Health, Medical Director and Assistant State Health Officer for the Office of Public Health (OPH).

Dr. Davis is a New Orleans native who earned a Doctorate of Medicine from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard University, has extensive experience in clinical care, community engagement and healthcare systems management.

Conrod Kelly is the Executive Director, Policy / Government Relations — Social Determinants of Health at Merck. In this role, he is responsible for developing and testing innovative approaches to help strengthen health systems and reduce disparities to enhance patient and population health outcomes.

Prior to this role, he was the Executive Director for the US Diabetes Franchise. During his 10 years at Merck he has worked across several therapeutics areas including cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s disease. Prior to joining Merck, Conrod worked for Johnson & Johnson in the medical devices and diagnostics division (diabetes). Before that, he worked in Vaccines for GlaxoSmithKline.

Conrod was recently recognized at the United Nations with the SDG Leadership Award for using media and marketing for good, particularly impacting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 3) for his work on the film “A Touch of Sugar.” Conrod was also recognized in 2018 as one of the Top Blacks in Healthcare by the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University.

Conrod stays connected to the community by sitting on the executive board of Big Brothers Big Sisters — Independence Region. He is the author of RESTAGED: A Mental Model for Personal and Professional Growth. Conrod holds a BS and MBA from Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University.

Dr. Jennifer Avegno is a New Orleans native who received her undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Arts in Sociology from Tulane University and her MD from LSU School of Medicine – New Orleans.  She completed her residency at LSU/Charity Hospital Emergency Medicine and joined the faculty at both LSU and Tulane shortly after graduation, where she served as Associate Residency Director and Director of Undergraduate Emergency Medicine Education for both medical schools.  In 2017, she established the Division of Community Health Relations & Engagement in the LSU Section of Emergency Medicine, and as its director worked with institutional, governmental, and other community organizations to facilitate innovative programming, interdisciplinary partnerships, and improved population health outcomes.  Her clinical, program, and research interests include the role of social determinants of health, particularly access and barriers to care; health equity; violence intervention/prevention; sexual assault and human trafficking; and homelessness.  In 2018, she was appointed as the Director of the Health Department for the City of New Orleans, where she works with a dedicated team of public health professionals in addressing critical health needs for the community.  Honors include being named to Gambit’s “40 Under 40,” a CityBusiness Healthcare Hero, and several leadership and teaching awards.

Taylor Justice, U.S. Army veteran, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2006. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the US Army as an Infantry Officer and later received an honorable medical discharge from active duty. An entrepreneur at heart, in 2009 Taylor co-founded HigherEchelon, Inc., a government consulting company. Taylor then co-founded Unite Us in 2013 while enrolled at Columbia Business School, where he earned his MBA in 2014. Taylor is leading Unite Us on its mission to launch coordinated care networks across all 50 states. A key architect of Unite Us’ network in North Carolina, Taylor led the Unite Us team and supported their partners in creating NCCARE360, considered by some to be the most innovative statewide healthcare transformation endeavor in the country. Driven by the belief that health begins in communities, Taylor advocates for national infrastructure that connects health and human service providers: a public utility to better support those in need.

Dr. Oravetz joined Ochsner four years ago with over 20 years of innovative healthcare leadership experience in both administration and medicine. As ACO Medical Director at Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, Louisiana, Dr. Oravetz provides physician leadership to the system’s Accountable Care Network, which is the largest integrated delivery system in southeast Louisiana. As an experienced medical professional in integrated delivery, Dr. Oravetz serves as lead in development of Ochsner’s Population Risk Management Model and the Pursuit of Value initiative.

Dr. Steven R. Peskin is the Senior Medical Director/Pilot Lead at Horizon Healthcare Innovations, a Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey company. His expertise encompasses physician leadership, medical delivery management, performance improvement in health care, contracting; applications in technology include mobile/social media, clinical/scientific communications for health care professional and consumer audiences.

Dr. Peskin is the former Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for MediMedia USA, CEO of Pharmaceutical Research Plus, President/COO of Nelson Managed Solutions and has worked in multiple executive positions in health plans at PacifiCare Health Systems, CIGNA Healthcare, and John Hancock. Dr. Peskin has authored industry several articles, book chapters and spoken at various conferences and events about physician leadership, the medical home, mobile health and social media.

Scott Tornek is the Chief Strategy Officer of Penn Medicine’s Center for Community Health Workers, a national center of excellence for CHW research, patient care and dissemination. Scott initially led the development of a plan to translate the Center’s extensive work with Penn patients into a national model. Today, he leads this external effort, working with insurance plans, health care systems and state government agencies in 18 states and growing, to help design and launch effective, economically sustainable CHW programs, using the Center’s IMPaCT model. The program has served more than 10,000 high-risk people in Philadelphia and is scientifically proven to improve patients’ post-hospital primary care access, chronic disease control, and mental health while reducing hospital utilization by 65%. Scott is a former CEO and has worked throughout his career in launching and scaling new products, services and businesses. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and his MBA from the Wharton School.

Ian Chiang is a Principal on the investment team at Flare Capital Partners. Prior to joining Flare Capital, Ian served as a Senior Vice President and a founding member of CareAllies, Cigna’s family of multi-payer provider services, population health management, and home-based care businesses. In that capacity, he was responsible for developing new technology-enabled services, evolving existing solution and service lines, and providing ongoing product management across CareAllies’ businesses. In addition, he was also responsible for developing inorganic strategies for CareAllies since its inception. Before launching CareAllies, Ian held a leadership position with Cigna’s US Strategic Operations team.

Branden joined PV as a Senior Associate in 2019.

Prior to PV, Branden was an MBA candidate at The Wharton School, where he studied healthcare management, with a focus on healthcare IT, and corporate strategy. During his time at Wharton, Branden also worked at Transformation Capital, a Boston, MA-based growth equity firm focused on healthcare IT and tech-enabled healthcare services. Before Wharton, Branden spent most of his time in an investor role at Strathspey Crown, a Newport Beach, CA-based investment firm that made a wide range of investments across healthcare, spanning early- and late-stage investments. Branden also spent time at ShoutStore, an early stage e-commerce platform for physician practices and portfolio company of Strathspey Crown, where he led corporate development efforts.

Branden holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a degree in Mathematics from Northwestern University, where he was a Ryan Scholar.

Rob is a Managing Director of the Texas Halo Fund, an active personal investor, and formerly Chair, Life Sciences at the Houston Angel Network for five years. Rob oversees THF’s national Life Science investment portfolio, as well as supporting the rapidly growing Houston Life Science eco-system. He is a regular judge, panelist and speaker for various university and venture capital events. He is the founder of Yardley Group, LLC, an active chemical development and export business serving the mining industry in South America. Rob serves on the Board of Directors of Adient Medical, Inc, and as a Board Observer with other startup life science companies. Rob holds degrees in chemistry and business and resides in Houston with his physician wife.

Jeremy Fischbach, Chief Executive Officer, is a psychology graduate from Princeton who practiced corporate law at Sidley Austin LLP. Prior to Happy, Jeremy was the CEO of Myne, which built interactive educational and sports analytics software that leveraged users’ psychographic data to improve performance. These applications generated some of the most comprehensive data sets of human attitudes and behaviors currently available. Jeremy holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law and an A.B. in Psychology from Princeton University.

Dr. Amit Gir is the co-founder and CEO of Phox Health. He began his career here in the “Crescent City” completing his biomedical engineering degree at Tulane University. After medical school, he practiced inpatient care as a board-certified Internal Medicine hospitalist at Inova Fair Oaks in northern Virginia. At that time he co-founded Doctomize, a “for doctors, by doctors” service which provided in-person EHR training for physicians. In 2015 he and his wife moved to California where he worked as hospitalist and soon made partner at SCPMG, the physician group of Kaiser Permanente. After five years of practice Dr. Gir sought his passions in digital health and co-founded Phox Health. While transitioning to his new role he returned to inpatient care to support his colleagues as COVID-19 cases continued to surge nationwide. Amit lives with his wife, daughter, and Westie in Temescal Valley, CA.

There aren’t many entrepreneurs whose careers include police officer, presidential campaign fundraiser, marketing strategist and founder of two healthcare IT startups. Her first venture, a proprietary referral marketing tool for physicians called Medical Referral Source (MRS) was acquired by The Advisory Board Company in 2013 for $12.5 million. She continued her work with MRS, now known as Crimson Medical Referrals, as managing director for three more years. Cindy’s current venture came to light in 2017 when, motivated by a family member’s struggle with a mental health crisis, she became aware of gaps in healthcare and the pervasive loneliness and social isolation epidemic. Vowing to wage a war on loneliness, she was moved to create an impactful platform marrying technology and compassionate human interventions, and Pyx Health was born. Three years later Pyx Health is a proven solution designed to help our most at-risk populations. The Pyx Health platform has been adopted by over 15 healthcare organizations serving thousands of Medicaid and Medicare Advantage members. As Pyx Health grows, Cindy’s goal is to see broad healthcare industry transformation on the subject of loneliness – to have it accepted, medically and fiscally, as a treatable condition and, ultimately advocating for “a billing code for loneliness.”

Ashish is the co-founder and CEO of Dina (formerly known as Prepared Health) – a health engagement company making it easier for people to stay healthy at home by organizing and simplifying access to a large, growing ecosystem of home- and community-based providers. The comprehensive network is enabling consumers, health plans and ACOs to explore, learn and engage with the rapidly growing number of services that keep people happy and healthy in their homes.

Previously, Ashish served in several Technology Executive roles at Medicity from 2006-2014 – i.e., Chief Technology Officer (CTO), SVP of Product Management/Marketing, and Chief Architect. Under his leadership, the company outlined a market-leading product roadmap, influenced fast changing government regulations, and delivered on a progressive technical vision. The end result was a profitable and highly scalable healthcare network with over 1,000 Hospitals and 250,000 Physicians sharing over 2 billion health records annually. In addition to his operational responsibilities, Ashish served as a key advisor to many Provider-side Executives and Government Officials responsible for establishing health information exchange (HIE) networks in their respective communities. Through this work, he was frequently invited to present and publish on the topic of health information exchanges and their role in Quality Improvement initiatives, Clinically Integrated Networks, and Accountable Care Organizations.

Prior to joining Medicity, Ashish served as an Enterprise Architect with Diamond Management & Technology Consultants (now PWC Advisory Services) assisting Fortune 500 C-level Executives with the formulation of disruptive, technology-enabled business strategies. Before Diamond, Ashish was a key contributor in various design and engineering roles with Microsoft, Boeing, and Apollo Solutions (now CNet Channel Services).