Speakers

Anne Lord Bailey, PharmD, BCPS, is the Director for Clinical Tech Innovation for the VHA Innovation Ecosystem and serves as the lead for Immersive Technology. After completing her residency at Charles George VA Medical Center in Asheville, NC, Dr. Bailey spent 2 years focused on treating and curing Veterans with Hepatitis C. During that time she led a team of clinicians and piloted a mobile Hepatitis C Clinic for rural Veterans, an experience that greatly expanded Dr. Bailey’s passion for healthcare innovation. She continues to grow her knowledge and experience through coaching, collaborating, and networking in both healthcare innovation and direct patient care. Since joining the VHA Innovation Ecosystem, Dr. Bailey has worked diligently to expand the use of extended reality across VHA in part by co-creating and co-leading VHA’s Extended Reality (XR) network. The XR network has grown from 1 VA facility to over 100, with over 500 VA employees who are either using or interested in using XR to improve the lives and care of Veterans. In addition, she is also a Board-Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist.

Caitlin Rawlins, BSN, RN, drives innovation at VHA as the Innovation Specialist for the Western North Carolina VA Health Care System and as co-lead of the VHA Extended Reality (XR) Network. Ms. Rawlins has over 10 years’ experience in nursing, the last 5 of which she served as a registered nurse with the VA. After joining the VA, Ms. Rawlins noted a lack of non-pharmacological options for pain and anxiety in clinical settings. This experience triggered her exploration of Virtual Reality (VR) for use with post-operative patients, and, in 2017, Ms. Rawlins initiated VA’s first distraction-focused VR program for pain and anxiety management in Veteran populations. Since then, Ms. Rawlins has received grants through the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Pathway Award and investments through VHA Innovators Network. Additionally, in 2021, she became a VHA Shark Tank winner, which will allow her to expand VR use and support more Veterans in need. As co-lead of the VHA XR Network, she serves as the field expert for implementing XR modalities across all VA, consulting with VA sites across the country in the development of XR programs.

Umair A. Shah, MD, MPH, was appointed Secretary of Health for the Great State of Washington by Governor Jay Inslee in December 2020. He is the first Asian-American physician and first South Asian to serve in this leadership role in the history of the state of Washington.

His appointment came at a difficult time with the winter wave of COVID-19 and arrival of vaccines into the state. In assuming this leadership role at Washington State Department of Health, Dr. Shah made the transition from fighting on the front lines of response as Executive Director and Local Health Authority for Harris County Public Health (HCPH) – the nationally respected public health agency for the nation’s third largest community with nearly five million residents.

Dr. Shah earned his BA (philosophy) from Vanderbilt University; his MD from the University of Toledo Health Science Center; and completed an Internal Medicine Residency, Primary Care/General Medicine Fellowship, and MPH (management), at the University of Texas Health Science Center. He also completed an international health policy internship at World Health Organization headquarters in Switzerland.

Upon completing training, Dr. Shah began a distinguished career as an emergency department physician at Houston’s Michael DeBakey VA Medical Center, where he provided clinical care for over two decades. He started his formal public health journey in 2003 as Chief Medical Officer at Galveston County’s Health District before joining HCPH. Under his leadership, HCPH won numerous national awards, including recognition as Local Health Department of the Year in 2016.

Dr. Shah has held numerous leadership positions with respected entities like the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Trust for America’s Health; Network for Public Health Law; Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute; and the National Association of County and City Health Officials, where he served as president, proudly representing nearly 3,000 local health departments nationwide.

Over his career, Dr. Shah has been a clinician, innovator, educator, and leader in the field of health. He has been a champion of underserved communities, the intersection of health and healthcare, and charting a new course in health centering on cornerstone values of equity, innovation, and engagement. 

Dr. Patrick McGough (Dr. Mac) serves as the CEO of the Oklahoma City‐County Health Department, after serving as Deputy Director, and in various other executive leadership roles prior to his appointment.

Well‐versed in executive level public and private health care administration, including the creation, implementation, and oversight of numerous hospices in North Texas & Oklahoma, Dr. McGough served as owner‐administrator for the third largest privately‐held home health agency in Dallas‐Fort Worth during the 90’s. Patrick has more than 37 years of health care experience, with over 22 in public health and 20 in executive leadership.

Dr. McGough, a nurse practitioner, has extensive educational preparation, certification, and licensure. He holds a Doctoral degree in Nursing Practice/Executive Leadership and has completed three fellowships in public health leadership. He is licensed to practice in 39 jurisdictions and states through the Enhanced Registered Nursing Licensure Compact (eNLC).

Patrick is a member of the Executive Committee of the NACCHO Board of Directors. He has been widely recognized, locally and nationally, for his efforts and contributions as a leader during the pandemic. He serves on numerous local and national boards providing oversight and direction to various aspects ofhealth care and public health.

Jessica is the Managing Director of GAO’s Health Care team. The team leads GAO's efforts in supporting Congressional oversight of the federal agencies and programs that tangibly affect the lives of all Americans through providing analyses, recommendations, and policy options to Congress and the Executive Branch. The Health Care team examines Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Indian Health Service, Public Health, and Private Market issues.

Jessica joined GAO in 2000. She was previously a Director with the Health Care team, leading a portfolio of audits on Medicare, Indian Health Service, and health care quality, data, and analysis issues. She has also served as Director in the International Affairs and Trade Team, overseeing the Countering Overseas Threats portfolio.

Jessica earned a master’s degree in international development studies from George Washington University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and social science education from Appalachian State University.

Lamary, who joined the NRC in January 2020, has spent more than 26 years working in various
human resources positions. Prior to joining the NRC, she worked at the Department of Justice, where she served in the Senior Executive Service as the Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer and Director of Human Resources. Her past positions also included Director, Executive Performance and Talent Management Division at the Department of Veterans Affairs and Director, Civilian Senior Executive Management Division, Civilian Personnel Policy at the Department of Defense. Earlier in her career, she served as a Group Manager and Supervisory Human Resources Specialist in the Office of Personnel Management.

Lamary holds a bachelor’s degree in Law and Society and a master’s degree in Public
Administration from the American University School of Public Affairs. She also holds an associate
degree in Business Administration from Montgomery College in Rockville, Md.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has officially appointed Karen Marrongelle to serve as chief operating officer. Since 2018, she has led the NSF Directorate for Education and Human Resources, or EHR, which supports research that enhances learning and teaching, and broad efforts to achieve excellence in STEM education at all levels and in all settings.

Marrongelle is a leader in the STEM education research community, and her career has been marked by a deep commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. In her time as EHR assistant director, she has focused on understanding the causes of disparities in educational opportunities and establishing strategic visions for addressing those issues. She has led the funding of several STEM education research centers focused on broadening participation and initiatives to address equity and inclusion in STEM.

"Karen Marrongelle is a strong and innovative leader with a proven track record of excellence and accomplishments.  I am delighted to have her taking on this important role at an amazing time for NSF," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "In her new role as Chief Operating Officer, she will work with the stellar NSF leadership team and partners to advance the frontiers of science, engineering and technology and ensure that NSF remains at the vanguard of innovation."

Marrongelle has been instrumental in expanding NSF’s portfolio of future-oriented educational research topics, including training a diverse workforce equipped to handle the industries of tomorrow. As the co-chair of the Federal Coordination in STEM Education Subcommittee, she provided leadership in the development and implementation of the five-year federal strategy for STEM education.

"This is an incredibly exciting time to be part of NSF. I am honored to be selected for the role of COO, to work with the NSF Director and contribute to implementing his vision for the agency," said Marrongelle. "NSF is poised for unprecedented growth and impact in all areas of science and STEM education, and I am looking forward to helping lead the agency into this next phase of our evolution and continue work with the director to create pathways to success for a STEM workforce reflective of the U.S. population. This is of national importance and greatly impacts our ability to advance the frontiers of research into the future."

Prior to joining NSF, Marrongelle served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Portland State University, overseeing 24 departments and programs. In this position, she worked to implement student inclusivity measures, establish public-private partnerships to support research, and optimize the school's use of grants from NSF and other funding organizations.

Marrongelle has a bachelor's degree in mathematics and philosophy from Albright College, master's degree in mathematics from Lehigh University and a doctoral degree in mathematics education from the University of New Hampshire.

Avinash Shanbhag is the Executive Director of the Office of Technology. In this role, he advises the National Coordinator and the Deputy National Coordinator on health information technology matters, provides executive direction and control over ONC’s technology portfolio, and fosters health information innovation.

Mr. Shanbhag oversees coordination with federal agencies and industry stakeholders for advancing health information technology interoperability for improved health care delivery. He leads ONC’s standards coordination activities with all the health IT standards development organizations, including administration of the ONC Health IT Certification Program, the Certified Health IT Product Lists, and the certification testing tools.

Throughout his over 10-year career with ONC, Mr. Shanbhag has held a variety of leadership positions, including serving as the Deputy Director of the Office of Technology, Director of the Testing Division, and the Director of the Nationwide Health Information Network. During his tenure at ONC, he led the creation of the ONC testing and utilities platform to support health IT developers, developed a long term vision for the Nationwide Health Information Network, and successfully transitioned the operations of the network into the “eHealth Exchange.”

He has over 25 years of experience in developing enterprise software systems and managing large scale distributed software systems for healthcare industry. Prior to joining ONC, Mr. Shanbhag served as the Director of Core Infrastructure at the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology under the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He was responsible for developing and operating the distributed network and semantic services used by all the NCI funded institutions to share research data in a privacy protective manner.

Mr. Shanbhag holds a Master of Chemical Engineering from University of Alberta, and a Master of Operations Research from University of Maryland. He also maintains a Service Oriented Architecture certificate and a certificate in Machine Learning from MIT Sloan School of Management.

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Bob Nevins is the Director of Health and Human Services (HHS) Strategy and Business Development for Oracle Government and Education, where he analyzes, defines and manages the execution of comprehensive, integrated Health and Human Services (HHS) market and sales strategies. His domain expertise includes major HHS programs such as Medicaid, Child Welfare, Child Support Enforcement, Integrated Eligibility and Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Prevention. He develops messaging and content to help Oracle teams educate and inform system integrator partners, advisory firms, and state and local government clients. Before joining Oracle, Bob spent over 20 years in a variety of senior leadership roles in Massachusetts state government. He was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Health Connector pursuant to the Massachusetts Health Insurance Reform Law. Other senior roles in Massachusetts government have included Director of Mass.gov, Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Revenue and Associate Deputy Commissioner for Child Support Enforcement. Bob’s roles have often involved the intersection of program needs and IT capabilities.

Bob graduated from Stonehill College with a degree in Economics, and resides with
his family in Hingham, MA.

As Director of the Solution Engineering team, James leads a dedicated group of Oracle
specialists as they help guide customers toward successful software implementations. Specialists
are Oracle's “hands-on” engineers responsible to help government and education organizations
successfully deploy workloads in the modern extended enterprise. Team members are experts in
key domains including modern data management, analytics, cyber security and hybrid cloud
deployment. James has been with Oracle since 1997 working in a variety of individual and
leadership roles, primarily in the Public Sector.

Ms. Hite-Syed serves as the National Government Services Chief Information Officer. Jane is leading the NGS Information Technology organization through a digital transformation that is in alignment with the government’s path to modernization. Jane has a proven record of success in managing change in large organizations and prides herself in starting everything at the most human level.  With her guidance, the team is implementing change through the use of human centered design, model-driven development, robotic process automation, data intelligence, and DevSecOps.  Jane’s organization consists of seasoned professionals in Software Engineering, Data Analytics, Infrastructure and Networking, Data Center Management, Enterprise Architecture, and Security.  For driving change and advancement in federal health information technology, she was named to the FedHealth IT 100 list in 2022 and received the Leading for Impact: Women in Leadership Award in 2019.

Ron Emerson RN BSN is the Global Healthcare Lead at Zoom. He is a former member of the board of Directors for the American Telemedicine Association and Chair of the Industry Council. He has more than 20-years’ experience in the healthcare industry having worked on a number of Telemedicine programs in 46 countries. He is recognized as a thought leader in Telehealth, having developed a variety of innovative telehealth applications, and consulted on telehealth deployments worldwide. He also held the position of Executive Director for a large telemedicine operation in the United States, where he was responsible for the efficient provision of services to 350 sites. Mr. Emerson was the previous recipient of the American Telemedicine Association Industry Council Award for his leadership in the advancement of Telehealth.

Courtney Buble is a staff correspondent who covers federal management, oversight, contracting and regulations. Before joining Government Executive in July 2019, she worked for NBC News. Courtney graduated from The George Washington University in 2018.

George Jackson is director of events at GovExec – the largest and most-influential media
company in the public sector marketplace. He joined the company in 2020 to enhance the scale
of their events and audience experiences. In 2021, George launched GovExec TV (streaming
video content) and received the company’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, part of their first-
annual Icon Awards.

George graduated from The Ohio State University in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in English.
In 2006, he earned his master’s in broadcast journalism from the University of Maryland,
College Park.

George spent the first five years of his journalism career at WJHL-TV in Johnson City Tenn. –
beginning as an overnight producer for the station’s 6 a.m. broadcast. He advanced to lead on-air
reporter for WJHL’s 11 p.m. newscast.

As a reporter, George examined the earnings of two non-profit hospital systems, felony charges
filed against a local sheriff, predatory paving companies, a health benefits backlog for local
veterans, and a series of cold-case murder investigations. He received an honorable mention for
Best TV Reporter in the 2011 Tennessee AP Broadcast awards and won a Best Investigative
Reporting award from Media General in 2010.

George joined DC’s ABC affiliate WJLA-TV in 2012 to produce Capital Insider, which won
him an Emmy award. One year later, he developed and recorded the pilot episode of Government
Matters – a program about the business of government. It debuted as a weekly show on Sunday,
August 4 th of 2013. George led Government Matters through September of 2020, expanded its
reach to a daily worldwide audience, and produced its first feature-length documentary The
Dawn of Generation AI.

George is from Toledo, Ohio. He lives with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of rescue dogs in
Northern Virginia.

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  Senior Technology & Events Editor, Nextgov

Alisha Powell Gillis is the senior editor at Route Fifty where she is responsible for programming live and online events content, moderating panel discussions, soliciting, editing and writing analytical pieces and overseeing the annual Navigator Awards program. Before joining Route Fifty, Alisha was the director for community impact at the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) where she worked to connect urban public libraries to critical issues in state and local government and led event programming. Prior to ULC, Alisha served the nation's governors for nearly a decade at the National Governors Association where she specialized in homeland security, emergency management and cybersecurity issues. Alisha holds a master's degree in global security studies from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor's degree in political science from Hofstra University.

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Erich Wagner is a staff correspondent covering pay, benefits and other federal workforce issues. He joined Government Executive in the spring of 2017 after extensive experience writing about state and local issues in Maryland and Virginia, most recently as editor-in-chief of the Alexandria Times. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.