Parisa “Risa” Vatanka, PharmD, CTTS is a thought leader and strategic thinker with 27+ years of experience creating novel health care delivery solutions from concept to marketplace. She has a proven record of alliance building and is a key contributor and facilitator, with keen ability to bridge efforts among diverse internal and external cross-functional groups. Risa’s background includes heading high-visibility initiatives implemented nationwide and globally. She is currently championing health care delivery optimization through digital health integration.

Risa is Senior Director of Corporate Alliances at the American Pharmacists Association (APhA). She holds a faculty appointment at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Pharmacy and volunteers as a tobacco treatment specialist at the UCSF Fontana Tobacco Treatment Center. Risa is an elected leader on the California Pharmacists Association (CPhA) Board of Trustees, Editor of the Digital Health Corner e-newsletter, and Founder/Chair of DHX Virtual (digital health conference).

Risa is a graduate of the University of Kansas, School of Pharmacy. Her professional training includes completing a Post-Graduate Year 1 (PGY1) Pharmacy Practice Residency at UCSF, a PGY2 Administrative Pharmacy Residency at Stanford University, and two externships with the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) Indian Health Service (IHS). Risa is a Certified Tobacco Treatment Specialist (CTTS), trained at the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center. These experiences instilled in Risa an appreciation of the tremendous value of a team-based, patient-centered approach to care to foster health promotion and disease prevention, ultimately contributing to a healthier society.

Daniel Kraft is a Stanford and Harvard trained physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and innovator. With over 25 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and healthcare innovation, Kraft has served as Faculty Chair for Medicine at Singularity University since its inception in 2008, and is the Founder and Chair of Exponential Medicine, a program that explores convergent, rapidly developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and healthcare.

Following undergraduate degrees from Brown University and medical school at Stanford, Daniel was Board Certified in both Internal Medicine & Pediatrics after completing a Harvard residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital & Boston Children’s Hospital, and fellowships in hematology, oncology and bone marrow transplantation at Stanford.

He has multiple scientific publications and medical device, immunology and stem cell related patents through faculty positions with Stanford University School of Medicine and as clinical faculty for the pediatric bone marrow transplantation service at University of California San Francisco.

Daniel is a member of the Kaufman Fellows Society (Class 13) and member of the Inaugural (2015) class of the Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellowship.

Daniel’s academic research has focused on: stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, stem cell derived immunotherapies for cancer, bioengineering human T-cell differentiation, and humanized animal models. Clinical work focuses on: bone marrow/hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for malignant and non-malignant diseases in adults and children, medical devices to enable stem cell based regenerative medicine, including marrow derived stem cell harvesting, processing and delivery. He also implemented the first text-paging system at Stanford Hospital.

He is also the inventor of the MarrowMiner, an FDA approved device for the minimally invasive harvest of bone marrow, and founded RegenMed Systems, a company developing technologies to enable stem cell-based regenerative therapies. He is also the founder of IntelliMedicine, focused on data driven, precision medicine.

Daniel is an avid pilot and has served in the Massachusetts and California Air National Guard as an officer and flight surgeon with F-15 & F-16 Fighter Squadrons. He has conducted research on aerospace medicine that was published with NASA, with whom he was a finalist for astronaut selection.

Aaron Black is the chief data officer at the Inova Translational Medicine Institute (ITMI). ITMI was established in 2011 to provide precision medicine as part of Inova’s vision of being a destination health care provider in the greater Virginia and Washington,D.C. area.

Previously, Aaron was the informatics manager and leader for the Biospecimen Core Resource at Nationwide Children’s Hospital for the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Genome Atlas project. He was co-architect for the flexible data model to store and access data from studies for more than 30 cancer subtypes and clinical data from biobanks and academic institutions across five continents.

Aaron has been a keynote speaker and national and international conferences for Science, Healthcare and Information Technology including TEDx Tysons, NIH, Amazon ReInvent, Precision Medicine World Conference, Tableau, HIMSS and an invited speaker at the National Research Council’s Standing Committee on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space (CBPSS).    He currently advises Industry and Academia in Health Informatics, Data Science and Executive Data Leadership.  In 2017, he was awarded Chief Technology Officer of the Year by the Washington Business Journal.

Aaron graduated from Miami University with degrees in accounting and management information systems, and studied international business at Miami’s Luxembourg campus. Aaron is a certified Project Management Professional and Certified ScrumMaster, and has dozen of technical certifications from Microsoft and the Information Technology Infrastructure Library.

Dr. Shah is the Founder and CEO of MyMeds. He is a serial entrepreneur who focuses on big challenges and approaches them with common sense solutions. He has succeeded and failed, learning from each experience.

He combines his front-line experience of understanding multiple healthcare roles (patient, physician, entrepreneur) with dedication to improving health outcomes for patients. Recognizing that changing healthcare behaviors requires a team-based approach, his TEDx talk – The New Disrupters in Healthcare – Patients and Pharmacists – has established him as a thought leader in the medication experience field.

He received his M.D. from the University of Minnesota Medical School, and a B.A. in Cognitive Psychology from Boston University. He has been recognized for his work in business, medicine and philanthropy with the Virginia McKnight Binger Award in Human Service, 40 Under 40, Ten Outstanding Young Minnesotans, Leaders in Healthcare, and Real Power 50.

He lives with his wife and twin daughters in Minneapolis.

Timothy Aungst, PharmD is an Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice at MCPHS University, Worcester, MA. He graduated from Wilkes University Nesbitt School of Pharmacy, Wilkes-Barre, PA, in 2011. Afterwards, he pursued a PGY-1 Pharmacy Practice Residency at St. Luke’s University Hospital, Bethlehem, PA, with an emphasis on Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Geriatric Care. He then completed a fellowship program focused on geriatic care, Medicare/Medicaid and drug management, and academia. While completing his post-grad training, he started writing for multiple companies on mHealth and Digital Health, with a focus on mobile apps. Since then, he has conducted research on digital health technologies in the pharmacy space and published in multiple peer review journals and spoken at multiple venues on the topic. He hopes to inspire the pharmacy profession to further integrate digital health into patient care and raise awareness on the future possibilities posed in the coming decades.

Yoona serves as the CEO of Arine. Prior to Arine, she was the Head of Clinical Modeling and Analytics at Proteus Digital Health. She was responsible for health economic and clinical implementation activities for Proteus Digital Health. Her team developed health economic value propositions from strategic conceptualization to business case development to actualization in the real-world. Yoona has also built population and clinical analytic offerings, including predictive analytics and novel algorithms for clinical decision making and population stratification. Prior to Proteus, she led health economic activities and supported multiple blockbuster launches at Novartis and Gilead, and also implemented innovative healthcare design, such as value-based insurance programs, with large self-insured employers while working at Mercer. Yoona holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Stanford University, a PharmD with an emphasis in health policy and management from the University of California, San Francisco and a PhD in health economics and outcomes from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jeff Mesaros is a pharmacist, attorney and athlete agent advising clients on a variety of business and healthcare matters. His expertise includes pharmacy practice and operations, compliance, regulatory affairs, healthcare delivery models, licensing, privacy, drugs of abuse and addiction, performance enhancing drugs, and general risk management issues.

His recent passions include initiatives to expand the reach of pharmacist care beyond traditional models. Specifically, Dr. Mesaros has done research and served as a speaker in the areas of digital health, cannabis and drugs in sports. Additionally, his unique positioning as pharmacist, attorney and agent enables him to seamlessly transition pharmacy from the prescription department to the athletic field by advising clients on performance enhancing substances, substances of abuse and therapeutic use exceptions.

Currently Dr. Mesaros is Senior Legal Counsel at CVS Health and Chair of the Florida Board of Pharmacy. He also serves as District 3 Representative on the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) Executive Committee. Previous notable roles include adjunct faculty member of both the University of Florida and the University of Hawaii at Hilo Colleges of Pharmacy.

Dr. Mesaros earned his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Wilkes University Nesbitt School of Pharmacy, and his Juris Doctor from University of Miami School of Law. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Pharmacy Regulation and Policy from the University of Florida.

Along with making many contributions to the NABP, Dr. Mesaros is an active member of other professional organizations, including the American Bar Association, the American Society for Pharmacy Law, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians and the American Pharmacists Association.

Jake Nichols is a pharmacist in long‐term recovery with extensive experience in community pharmacy, academia, primary care, managed care, and pharmaceutical industry. He specializes in the treatment of substances use disorders, with a focus on medication assisted treatment. Through his fifteen‐year struggle with substance abuse, he found his calling in the field and has dedicated his career to helping patients and their families suffering from this debilitating chronic disease. By providing clinical support for clinicians treating patients with substance use disorder and serving as a vocal advocate for treatment, Jake has established himself as a key resource within the field. Dr. Nichols has spoken at well over 200 pharmacy, nursing, and medical schools across the country in the past 9 years, sharing his story with students and faculty, and he regularly facilitates patient and parent support groups. In 2017 he established his own education, clinical consulting, and treatment group called Professional Recovery Associates, of which he is President and CEO. He received his Doctor of Pharmacy Degree from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in 2000 and his master’s degree in Business Administration from UMass Boston in 2007.

Dr. Komal Patel is a Clinical Pharmacist at Catalia Health and excels in finding innovative means to achieve better patient outcomes. She brings in a unique understanding of the healthcare industry through her consulting experiences, leading clinical program development in the outpatient setting, and heading operations management for specialty pharmacies. Finding success in her engagements has largely revolved around improving the patient experience and crafting ways to better engage patients in their overall care. While at Catalia Health, Dr. Patel has been using her clinical and patient insights to contribute to the company’s care management platform, which utilizes an AI driven robot health coach as an interface to engage and empower patients in their care. Dr. Patel graduated from the University of Southern California, and was awarded 2014 Outstanding Alumna of the Year by the School of Pharmacy for her role in the advancement of healthcare.

Dr. Kevin Rodondi is a Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco. In his current role he is focused on the development and evaluation of innovative care delivery models in health systems and teaching entrepreneurship & leadership. Dr. Rodondi is a national instructor for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health Innovation Corp (I-Corp) programs. Dr. Rodondi has over 20 years of experience in health care start-up companies primarily providing services in the community-based oncology market. Positions he has held include: Vice-President and General Manager of the Specialty Solutions Group at McKesson Specialty; Co-founder, President/COO of the National Oncology Alliance, providing GPO and clinical services to community oncologists; Vice-President of Corporate Operations at OnCare, a physician practice management company; and Director of Pharmacy Programs at the Oncology Therapeutics Network, a specialty pharmaceutical distribution company. Dr. Rodondi received is Pharm.D. from the UCSF School of Pharmacy and completed residencies in both clinical practice and administration.

Brad Tice, PharmD, MBA, FAPhA is the Senior Vice President of Pharmacy Practice for Aspen RxHealth and Founder of RxGenomix. He is also the 2019-2020 President of the American Pharmacists Association. Dr. Tice received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1994 and PharmD in 1996 from the University of Kansas. He also earned an MBA from the Vanderbilt University Owen School of Management in 2012. His career has spanned the pharmacy spectrum working with independent, chain and hospital pharmacies through Cardinal Health, entrepreneurial start-ups, independent and chain community pharmacy practice, academia at Drake University, and managed care.

His entire career has focused on elevating the profession by empowering pharmacists to improve patient care and ensuring pharmacists are recognized and compensated for the services they provide. He has served the profession through APhA in many areas, including as Trustee-at-Large and has also served as Speaker of the APhA House of Delegates, the executive committee of the Academy of Pharmacy Practice and Management (APPM), and as an APhA-ASP national student Member-at-Large.

He has also served the profession in numerous other capacities including the Pharmacy Quality Alliance, serving as initial consultant and workgroup chair, on technical expert panels regarding quality measure development (NCQA, CMS), committees with AACP and AMCP, and Speaker of the House and Board of Trustees of the Iowa Pharmacy Association. His professional recognitions include: Cardinal Health’s 2015 Product Leader of the Year, APhA’s 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award in Clinical/Pharmacotherapeutic Practice, APhA – Fellow (2008), Prescott Leadership Award (2005), and the Iowa Pharmacy Association’s Young Pharmacist of the Year (2002).