Traction Team

Next Gen Fellows

Advisors

Founders

Expanded Bios

Gabe Charbonneau, MD - Co-founder - is a rural family physician and high-tech entrepreneur. He co-founded the EHR automation software company, Fluent Systems. He serves as EHR faculty at Practicing Excellence and has been a physician advisor to the AI scribe companies, Tenor and Saykara. He is also the passionate creator of the #FightBurnout movement on social media, and FightBurnout.org. Gabe lives and practices in Stevensville, Montana.

Lisa Scardina - Strategy and Implementation Officer - is a healthcare leader and transformation catalyst. She has been identifying and tackling areas of improvement in practice settings and patient care for more than two decades. She currently serves as an executive with Provider Solutions & Development, a recruitment firm and advocate for improvements to the overall clinician experience. Lisa lives in Oregon, dividing time between Portland and The Dalles.

Todd Otten, MD - Impact Officer - is a board-certified family physician and co-founder of Our Quadruple Aim, a movement promoting patient experience, quality care, lower costs, and clinician wellness. With 20+ years' experience in patient care, team leadership, and project management, including accolades as naval flight surgeon of the year in 2006. He co-authored "Ripple of Change," a book that candidly discusses healthcare dysfunction and offers a practical approach to inspire industry-wide disruption. Passionate about empowering change agents among patients and healthcare workers, he also serves as President of A10 Investments.

Denise Wiseman, PhD, MBA, CPXP - Interdisciplinary Relations Officer - Denise’s career in healthcare began in a critical access hospital in Washington state and expanded to serve organizations large and small across the US. After working in non-profit and for-profit healthcare sectors and the last decade in patient experience, Denise is now working to Make a Ruckus That Makes a Difference in healthcare. She brings her expertise, passion for serving frontline leaders and employees, and entrepreneurial spirit to every conversation. Denise encourages those she works with to think differently, create synergistic collaborations, develop relationships and connections beyond their organizations and profession, and, of course, make a ruckus.

Jeff Cohn, MD - Mental Fitness & Leadership Coaching Officer - is a retired hem/onc physician and healthcare executive. Jeff was Chief Quality Officer for his organization for 12 years, has led a non-profit organization (Plexus Institute), and has worked as a medical advisor on two design teams. He’s now a certified coach, supporting physicians who are interested in having more fulfilling careers. Jeff’s coaching approach focuses on mental fitness, defined as facing challenges using a positive mindset, rather than our usual survival brain approach. He proudly wears the title of "Chief Pot-Stirrer”.

Kim Downey - Community Ambassador - is a physical therapist by training. As a seasoned healthcare professional and recent three-time cancer survivor, she has experienced firsthand the challenges facing clinicians, including loss of autonomy, frustrations with the EMR, burnout, and moral injury. Her goal is to raise community awareness and mobilize support to promote physician wellness and positive ripples of change in healthcare, for doctors and patients.

MaryAnn Wilbur, MD, MPH, MHS - Public Health Strategist - is a Gyn Oncologist who has stepped back from direct patient care. She is a physician advocate and public health strategist who now lends her clinical and public health knowledge to minimize the inequities of US healthcare outcomes, particularly during public health crises. Along with her co-author, Dr. Katherine Rieth, she recently completed a book entitled The Doctor is No Longer In: Conversations with US Physicians, which is due out in August 2024. Dr. Wilbur serves as the Director and CEO of Health Equity Consulting.

Eva Lana Minkoff - Director of Healthcare Relationship Initiatives - offers an exceptionally comprehensive perspective on healthcare, blending diverse professional experiences in clinical care, health-tech, administration, media, and community building with personal insights gained from decades navigating chronic illness and her marriage to a physician. Eva is unwaveringly committed to fostering compassionate relationships in healthcare for a more effective healthcare system. Her initiatives cultivate connection at micro and macro levels; her TEDx talk, "Five Minutes to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System," reflects her dedication to catalyzing positive change through patient-provider partnerships, and now, as a coach for physicians and healthcare change-makers, she empowers others to navigate challenges and drive innovation in the industry.

Dawn Ellison, MD - Transformational Conversations & Meeting Excellence Designer - is an ABEM certified Emergency Medicine physician who has found her encore career in engagement and well-being. Communication, compassion, community and connection are core to her approach. As the president of Influencing Healthcare, LLC (circa 2008) she has leveraged her leadership and clinical experience to create collaborative healthcare cultures through coaching, workshops and retreats. As the leader of engagement and well-being in a large healthcare organization she collaborated to create accessible resources for well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a global steward of Art of Hosting and uses these skills to create inclusive spaces for robust conversations. Most recently she has been conducting retreats aimed at post-traumatic growth, relationship building and decision-making for healthcare units recovering from the pandemic. Dr Ellison is a certified Stress Management and Resilience Trainer, Certified Professional Coach and Mental Fitness Coach.

Next Gen Fellows

Scott Giberson Jr. - Co-Lead - is a medical student at the University of North Carolina and formerly conducted research and community outreach at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Much of his research centered around the mental health challenges of oncology patients. He is an advocate for medical student and resident well-being. Additionally, Scott advocates for equitable care for underserved communities, specifically low-income communities and communities of color. Scott received his B.S. from Texas Christian University and currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Jordyn H. Feingold, MD, MAPP, MSCR - Co-Lead - is a resident physician in psychiatry at Mount Sinai in NYC, a well-being researcher, curricula developer, and positive psychology practitioner. Her research and clinical interests involve the brain-gut axis, mind-body approaches to complex medical and psychiatric illness, and protecting and promoting health care worker and patient well-being through the lens of Positive Medicine. She is co-author of Choose Growth: A Workbook for Transcending Trauma, Fear, and Self-Doubt, with Scott Barry Kaufman.

Carly Kaplan is a medical student at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. During her undergraduate studies at Brown University, she became a leader in the university's mental health community serving in both student leadership and partnering with the counseling center to implement interventions to more efficiently serve students' mental health needs. After graduating with a degree in Neuroscience, she spent a year working in Mount Sinai's Office of Well-being and Resilience under Dr. Jonathan Ripp, where she began work implementing well-being interventions in the hospital system and conducting research into physician and trainee burnout and well-being. Now as a medical trainee herself, she looks forward to helping to cultivate a healthier work environment for herself, her colleagues, and her future patients.

Meher Kalkat is a medical student at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In her undergraduate years at the University of Florida she was the Ambassador Coordinator for the Counseling and Wellness Center and a volunteer for the Gator2Gator peer support program. In her time at Johns Hopkins, she has worked to create a peer support line for students that need emotional support or help with research navigation. She has written about the importance of dismantling required mental health reporting in medical licensing bodies. She hopes to continue fighting for clinician and trainee wellbeing on a national level.

Advisors

Paul DeChant, MD, MBA - ALL IN Wellbeing Ambassador - Principal and Co-Founder, Organizational Wellbeing Solutions, LLC. Speaker, author, and executive coach, Dr. Paul DeChant advises C-level healthcare executives committed to preventing clinician burnout and building the bottom line. While serving as CEO of Sutter Gould Medical Foundation the group was recognized as the highest performing among 170 medical groups across the State of California two years in a row, while improving physician satisfaction from the 45th to 87th percentile. Co-author of the book, “Preventing Physician Burnout: Curing the Chaos and Returning Joy to the Practice of Medicine”.

Nina Bianchi - Strategic Advisor - is a visionary leader with a focus on creating a digital culture of care. She has played pivotal roles in initiatives like the Biden Cancer Moonshot 1.0, the FDA's COVID-19 response, and the government's customer experience modernization. As a leadership coach, she guides healthcare and life science leaders in shifting operational mindsets and using skills in design thinking, digital product change management, and culture building. Currently, a Director at the Colorado Health Institute, she's committed to statewide value-based care payment transformation and advancing worker-centered equity in digital tools, data, and AI. Nina's approach is rooted in her collaborations with MIT, where she developed innovative digital product co-design models that integrate complex stakeholder voices into development processes, ensuring effective solutions for patients and healthcare professionals alike.

Dave Logan, PhD - Strategic Advisor - is a New York Times #1 author of six books, including Tribal Leadership. He has been an executive in the C-Suite of four organizations (currently co-CEO of the startup Care4th), consulted to over one-third of the Fortune 500s, is in his 25th year teaching in the Department of Management; Organization at the University of Southern California. From 1999-2004, as Associate Dean, he oversaw all non-degree offerings at Marshall, along with the Master of Medical Management (clinician-only degree) which ran for 19 years. He lives with his wife, two daughters and three cats in Los Angeles.

Kriti Prasad is a medical student at the University of Minnesota (UMN). After completing her Bachelor’s degree at Washington University in St. Louis, Kriti worked as a mental health worker and assisted with a hospital-wide trauma-informed care initiative at Hennepin Healthcare. For the past 3 years, she has conducted research on organizational characteristics associated with clinician stress and burnout under Dr. Mark Linzer. Currently, she is pursuing a Public Health Advocacy Fellowship with the Twin Cities Medical Society and serves as the UMN Twin Cities representative to the AAMC Organization of Student Representatives (OSR). She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Nikhil Rajapuram, MD is a medical student well-being researcher and advocate. A formerly burned-out student himself, he published the largest study of US medical student well-being since 2012 and the first to be initiated and overseen by medical students. He has worked as a Fulbright Scholar researching access to assistive technology in India, consulted for design companies on physician and patient experience, and developed peer mentorship resources for medical students. He is currently a pediatrics resident at Stanford.

Founders

Eric Topol, MD is the Founder and Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, Professor, Molecular Medicine, and Executive Vice-President of Scripps Research. He has published 3 bestseller books on the future of medicine: The Creative Destruction of Medicine and The Patient Will See You Now and latest Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again in 2019. Topol was commissioned by the UK in 2018-2019 to lead planning for the National Health Service’s integration of AI and new technologies.

Esther Choo, MD MPH is an emergency physician and researcher who studies health disparities, substance use disorders, and gender bias. She obtained her MD from Yale University, did her clinical training at Yale-New Haven Hospital and Boston Medical Center, and completed a health services research fellowship at Oregon Health & Sciences University. She has published over 65 research manuscripts on substance use disorders, health disparities, gender bias, and emergency care.

Emily Silverman, MD is an internist at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and creator and host of The Nocturnists, a medical storytelling live show and podcast. Her writing has been supported by a MacDowell fellowship, and published in The New York Times, JAMA, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and McSweeney’s. She lives in San Francisco.

Louise Aronson, MD MFA is a leading geriatrician, writer, educator, and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The author of the New York Times bestseller Elderhood, she is a regular contributor to the New York Times and the New England Journal of Medicine among other publications. Recognition of Louise’s work includes a MacDowell fellowship, four Pushcart nominations, the American Geriatrics Society Clinician-Teacher of the Year award, and a Gold Professorship for Humanism in Medicine. She lives in San Francisco.

Tatiana M. Prowell, MD is an Associate Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and serves as the Breast Cancer Scientific Liaison at the US FDA. A recognized public speaker, educator, and mentor, she contributed to the Biden Cancer Moonshot Panel and was the Past Chair of the ASCO Annual Meeting Education Committee. Honored with multiple awards, including the FDA's Excellence in Communication and a Webby for social media use during COVID-19, Dr. Prowell completed her education at Bard College and Johns Hopkins. She resides in Maryland with her family.

Brian J. Dixon, MD is a psychiatrist, social justice advocate, and mental health entrepreneur. After finishing medical school at Texas A&M HSC COM and Triple Board Residency at the University of Kentucky, he founded multiple companies and movements to address the health, wealth, and cultural disparities affecting all Americans, especially those of color. He lives with his partner in Fort Worth, TX.

Jenny Mladenovic, MD MBA MACP has served in several leadership roles over her 36 years in academic medicine. She currently serves as President, Foundation for the Advancement of International Medical Education and Research. She is passionately committed to advancing opportunities for women to flourish in academic medicine, and thus founded the Center for Women in Academic Medicine and Research. Prior to her current position, Dr. Mladenovic was Executive Vice-President and Provost at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU). Nationally, she held leadership roles in the APM, ABIM, ABMS, ASH, ACGME, and SUSME.

Sanjay Desai, MD is the Director of the Osler Medical Residency and Vice-Chair for Education in the Department of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University. He holds appointments in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, General Internal Medicine and the Carey School of Business. He chairs the Executive Committee of the iCOMPARE study group whose outcomes on-duty hours in graduate medical education were recently published in a series of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. He is also PI for an AMA Reimagining Residency grant establishing a multi-institutional laboratory measuring how to optimize clinical skill and well-being in graduate medical education.