David J. Ballard
Board Director, Mentice
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David J. Ballard
Title: Chief Clinical Officer
Company: Solomon Page
Prior Experience: Health IT consulting, inpatient/outpatient healthcare admin and a very small amount of banking
Career Switcher: No
Verticals: Digital Health, Technology & Health Innovation; Health Policy & Research; Providers & Healthcare Delivery
Education:
- Doctor of Medicine (1983) – UNC Chapel Hill
- PhD in Epidemiology (1990) – UNC Chapel Hill
- Master of Science in Public Health (1983) – UNC Chapel Hill
- Master of Business Administration (2021) – UNC Chapel
- BA Chemistry and Economics (1978) – UNC Chapel Hill
Ask me about: Losing my appendix in Rome in the summer of 1978.
Fun fact: Forty-two years after visiting Italy for the first time through a Morehead Scholarship Summer Travel Fellowship, I purchased a small farm 40 miles north of Rome in February 2020 where I make olive oil from my 300 Canino olive trees and various jams from more than 15 different varieties of fruit trees and berry bushes. I am developing a game plan to explore and renovate on my Tobia, Viterbo, Lazio property its Etruscan-era constructions (caves, tunnels and building that we will use for wine storage and tasting).
Biography: A global health care thought leader, David was born in Lexington, Kentucky and is a citizen of Ireland through his maternal grandfather. A board-certified internist, he trained at Mayo Clinic, in addition to degrees in economics, epidemiology, medicine, and business at UNC, where he was a Morehead Scholar and North Carolina Fellow and inductee into Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Gamma Sigma. David received the Distinguished Alumnus Awards of UNC’s School of Medicine in 2008 and UNC’s School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology in 2019, is Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management at UNC. David was Associate Professor at Mayo, Associate Professor with tenure at University of Virginia and Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine with tenure at Emory University.
David joined Baylor Health Care System (BHCS) in 1999 in Dallas, Texas as its first Chief Quality Officer (CQO) and, upon the merger of BHCS and Scott & White Health, became CQO of Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH), Texas’s largest health care system with > 1000 clinical care sites, > 100 joint ventures and annual operating budget > $10 billion. He served on the Board of Managers of The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano, the BSWH-Kessler/Select rehabilitation and long-term care board, the High Value Health Care Collaborative board and the xG Health Advisory Board of Geisinger Health System. Awards under David’s leadership included the 2007 Leapfrog Patient-Centered Care Award and the 2008 National Quality Award of the National Quality Forum. He founded in 2012 BSWH’s Value-Based Healthcare Global Institute, providing performance improvement solutions globally.
Ballard retired from BSWH to join Mentice AB in January 2019 as EVP/Chief Clinical Officer and President, Mentice Inc., to partner with health care systems to improve safety and efficiency through endovascular simulation performance solutions. In August 2019 he was elected to the Mentice AB board and in September 2019 to the board of AlertMD, an innovative mobile health platform powered by artificial intelligence, which was acquired in 2020 by EverCommerce, a multi-vertical portfolio of management software solutions. Ballard serves a board member for Pascal Metrics, the world’s leader in health care harm measurement and related solutions to advance patient safety. In 2020, he co-founded Concentric Health Alliance, which is dedicated to the provision of safe, timely and high value Personal Protective Equipment and other relevant medical supplies for health care systems and other organizations. David also serves as Chief Clinical officer for Solomon Page, one of the world’s largest executive search companies.
David’s wife, Michela Caruso, M.D., a graduate with Honors of Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, is a Mayo Clinic-trained radiation oncologist and partner with Texas Oncology, the world’s largest independent oncology group with more than 530 physician partners and more than 280 cancer treatment centers. Their dual citizen bilingual children are Elisa, a BA and an MBA graduate of the University of Denver, where she was a University Academic Scholar and Cherrington Global Scholar, who is Vice President for Operations for Volio Imports, a wine and spirits international importation company based in Denver and Alessandro, a graduate in molecular biology and Italian of the University of Denver, where he was also a Cherrington Global Scholar, and an MBA graduate of SMU, where he was a Cox Scholar and Information Technology Operations Management Distinguished Scholar, who is Principal, Corporate Development and Strategy for WCG, a family of 30 companies improving the quality and efficiency of clinical research, following a similar role with Press Ganey.
David and Michela are Mayo Laureates and Morehead-Cain Scholarship Fund donors. David and Michela are also endowment funders of the oldest student-run health care safety net, the UNC Student Health Action Coalition Clinic, which David directed in 1980. David and his family live in Dallas, Keystone (Colorado), his wife’s hometown of Rome and on a small farm in Tobia, Viterbo, Lazio, Italy, where they have fruit, nut and olive orchards and produce Canino olive oil and are restoring 3 thousand year old Etruscan-carved caves and tunnels in their property to create wine cellars and a wine tasting environment related to their daughter’s wine and olive oil importing business.
John Chapman
Vice President, Customer Experience, Unified Women's Healthcare
John Chapman
Title: Vice President, Customer Experience
Company: Unified Women’s Healthcare
Verticals: Digital Health, Technology & Health Innovation; Provider & Healthcare Delivery
Education:
- Master of Business Administration — UNC Chapel Hill
- BS, Business Administration — UNC Chapel Hill
Bryan Dunn
Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Development, Novant Health
Bryan Dunn
Title: Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Development
Company: Novant Health
Education:
• MBA, Corporate Finance & Strategy – University of Pittsburgh
• BS, Business Logistics – Penn State University
Verticals: Providers & Healthcare Delivery
Prior Experience:
- Strategy and Corporate Development roles of increasing responsibility, UNC Health, 2011-Current
- Strategy and Business Development, McKesson Provider Technologies, 2010-2011
- Management Consulting, Health & Life Sciences, Accenture, 2004-2009
Career Switcher: Yes; pivoted post-MBA from consulting to provider strategy at major academic health system
Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
Ask me about: My family!
Fun fact: Bryan was a (short-lived) walk-on placekicker for the then #1-ranked Penn State football team during his freshman year.
Taylor Foster
Assistant Vice President, Women's Service Line, Atrium Health
Taylor Foster
Title: Assistant Vice President, Women’s Service Line
Company: Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute
Education:
- Master of Business Administration — UNC Chapel Hill
- BS, Health Policy and Management — UNC Chapel Hill
Prior Experience: Healthcare Consultant, Huron Consulting Group
Career Switcher: No
Hometown: Overland Park, KS
Verticals: Provider & Healthcare Delivery; Healthcare Consulting
Ask me about: Anything! From an industry perspective, I’m best equipped to answer questions about healthcare operations in both the ambulatory and inpatient space, as well as what it’s like working with/for health systems. Happy to share my journey and help fellow-KFBS students navigate their careers in any way I can.
Fun fact: My husband and I had to cancel our wedding in the Spring of 2020 just thirty days before it took place due to COVID-19. We ended up getting married on the original day, in a park with just us 2 and an Atrium pastoral care minister (our original officiant was unable to make the trip due to travel restrictions); it ended up being a very different but amazing day!
Biography: Taylor grew up in Overland Park, KS, and ventured to North Carolina to attend the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as an undergraduate. At UNC she developed a deep passion for healthcare while earning a Bachelor of Science in Public Health with a major in Health Policy and Management from Gillings School of Public Health.
After school, Taylor worked as a healthcare consultant in Huron Consulting Group’s Clinical Operations division. In this position, she traveled around the country helping health systems reduce their length of stay and achieve operational efficiency. After three years with Huron, Taylor moved back to Chapel Hill to pursue an MBA at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, which she completed in May 2019.
Post-graduation, Taylor completed an Administrative Fellow with Atrium Health under the preceptorship of their Central Division President. She transitioned from the Fellowship to Director of Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support (MCS) with Atrium’s Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute in 2020. Her role has since expanded to Director of Cardiovascular Programs, which includes administrative responsibility for Heart Transplant & MCS, Structural Heart, Atrial Fibrillation Center of Excellence, Sports Cardiology and Cardio-Oncology.
Tyeese Gaines
Executive Fellow, Office of the Chief Medical Officer, Humana
Tyeese Gaines
Title: Executive Fellow, Office of the Chief Medical Officer
Company: Humana
Education:
• Master of Business Administration – UNC Chapel Hill
• MD — Nova Southeastern University
• MA, Journalism – Northeastern University
• BA, African American Studies — Northeastern University
Dr. Tyeese L. Gaines is a board-certified emergency medicine and lifestyle medicine physician, healthcare executive, and J.D. candidate at Florida International University College of Law. She brings almost two decades of experience across clinical care, hospital leadership, urgent care operations, and health system strategy, and continues to practice emergency medicine while pursuing her legal training.
Dr. Gaines has prior experience across multiple hospital systems and telemedicine platforms. She has held senior leadership roles including Medical Director and Chairman of the Emergency Department at Landmark Medical Center, Founding Medical Director of UltraMed Urgent Care, and Assistant Medical Director at Raritan Bay Medical Center. She also owned and operated an urgent care practice, leading clinical operations, staffing, and business strategy.
In addition to her clinical and operational work, Dr. Gaines previously served as an Executive Fellow in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer at Humana, where she supported enterprise initiatives related to population health, clinical quality, and Medicaid strategy.
She is currently building legal experience through roles with Legal Services of Greater Miami, where she supports litigation and client counseling on heirs’ property and title matters; the National Women’s Law Center, where she contributed to reproductive rights litigation and policy advocacy; and the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida, where she conducted legal research and drafted orders in civil matters.
Dr. Gaines holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School and a Master of Arts in Journalism from Northeastern University. She is also a Registered Patent Agent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
In parallel, she has built a long-standing career in journalism, media, and public relations. She served as health editor of theGrio.com when part of NBC News and has appeared as an on-air medical expert across local and national platforms. Through her media agency, Doctor Ty Media, she provides media training, branding, and strategic communications support for physicians and healthcare organizations.
Her legal interests focus on plaintiff-side litigation at the intersection of health, environmental harm, and consumer protection, with an emphasis on addressing systemic inequities and protecting vulnerable populations.
Dr. Gaines serves on multiple advisory boards, including the Center for the Business of Health at UNC, HerHealthEq, the National Medical Fellowships Alumni Council, and previously, the now sunset American Medical Association’s Physician Satisfaction and Practice Sustainability Advisory Group. She is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians and a past recipient of the National Medical Association’s Top 40 Under 40 award.
Chase Jones
Senior Director, Growth, Thyme Care
Chase Jones
Title: Senior Director, Growth
Company: Thyme Care
Education: Master of Business Administration, Healthcare Management – University of Pennsylvania; BS Business Administration – UNC Chapel Hill
Verticals: Digital Health, Technology & Health Innovation; Providers & Healthcare Delivery
Prior Experience:
- Founder / CEO, Vs. Cancer Foundation (NPO)
- Advisor, Biden Cancer Initiative (NPO)
- Operations Manager, Davita (Healthcare / Provider Operations)
- Senior Consultant, VAL Health (Healthcare / Payor + Provider Engagement)
Career Switcher: Yes
Hometown: Raleigh, NC
Ask me about: Medicaid transformation, NC healthcare policy, Medicaid managed care, Healthcare operations in FFS / VBC arrangements, ACC Baseball hot takes, and the best low key North Carolina dive restaurants in all 100 counties.
Fun fact: Bruce Springsteen once told me ‘You the man’ in person. I’ve never been the same since.