2023 Speakers

Shakeeb Akhter
Senior Vice President, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

In this role, he has strategic leadership of the Digital & Technology Services (DTS) department, including 650 FTEs, supporting more than 500 applications enterprise wide, while managing a $185M operating budget and $50M capital budget, with a project portfolio of more than 90 large and mid-size projects. Shakeeb is an experienced Digital and Information Technology executive with proven success in driving and delivering IT strategy, vision and capabilities aligned with business strategy. He has in-depth expertise in healthcare business drivers, hospital operations, quality, patient satisfaction and value-based cares, along with a track record of success in managing large, complex, and high-profile projects. Shakeeb was one of the honorees chosen for Philadelphia Business Journal’s (PBJ) 40 Under Forty list in 2023.

Immediately preceding his current role, Shakeeb served as Vice President of Data and Analytics for 2 years, with responsibility for developing an enterprise data & analytics strategy, overseeing data platforms, data engineering, analytics, data governance and data science. His team led the development of analytics solutions to enable data-driven decisions by clinical and operational leaders across the enterprise. Prior to joining CHOP in 2020, Shakeeb held various positions in information technology of increasing responsibility at Northwestern Medicine, Chicago, IL. Shakeeb’s professional experience also include roles at Bank of America and KPMG, LLP.

Shakeeb holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Michael Apkon, MBA, MD, PhD
President, Sand Street Advisors

Dr. Apkon is a physician executive and physician scientist serving in C-level leadership roles at several top academic hospitals in the United States and Canada. He has a unique perspective on both the US system and the Canadian single payer system. He most recently served as the CEO at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. In that capacity, he led a 415 bed hospital staffed by 6,000 employees, scientists, medical staff, students and volunteers with a $1 BB budget. The Medical Center comprised a number of subsidiaries including the New England Quality Care Alliance (NEQCA), a network of 1800 physicians, as well as the Tufts Physician Organization.

Prior to his role at Tufts Medical Center, Dr. Apkon was the President and CEO at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto Ontario, recently ranked the world’s top children’s hospital. Dr. Apkon has also held senior executive and academic roles at top academic health science centers including Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs and the Chief Medical Officer for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) as well as roles at Yale University School of Medicine and Yale-New Haven Health System including being the Vice President for Performance Management at the Yale New Haven Health System and the Vice President/Executive Director leading Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital. He has held faculty positions at the University of Toronto, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University’s School of Medicine and School of Management.
Dr. Apkon has extensive international management experience in both pediatric and adult-oriented healthcare, working with organizations and governments in the UK, Europe, China, Africa, and the Middle East as well as North America. He has consulted widely on business development, capacity development, and management systems as well as quality and safety improvement. He is an expert in strategy, systems development, and operations management, as well as the application of lean and high reliability organizational thinking to drive improvements in quality, safety, and efficiency.

Lori Benedetti
Registered Nurse, Hackensack Meridian Health

Lori is currently the Resuscitation Nurse Specialist at The Life Support Training Center at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. Lori received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Trenton State College. In Lori’s 37 years at HMH, her roles have included ancillary support, Emergency Room/Trauma Room/Surgical ICU, Interventional Radiology, and Surgical Prep.

Keith Brigley
Team Lead Supervisor,Epic ASAP team, Hackensack Meridian Health

Keith has been with HMH for 11 years, working within multiple applications within Epic. Keith received his Bachelors Degree in Public Accounting from Fordham University.

Maria Brown, MSN, RN, PCCN, CNL
Nursing Excellence Manager

Maria Brown, Nursing Excellence Manager, is board certified in progressive-care nursing and as a Clinical Nurse Leader. In her role as Nursing Excellence Manager, Maria supports innovation through Virtual Acute Care Nursing, and supports Nursing Professional Excellence. Maria is an active member of the Delaware Organization for Nursing Leadership and is the lead of the membership committee. Maria is also an active member of the state and local chapter of the American Nurses Association.

Kat Collard
Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at ChristianaCare

Kat Collard is the Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at ChristianaCare, responsible for the strategy and implementation of IT systems that directly impact nurses. Before joining Christiana Care, Collard had a substantial tenure at SUNY Stony Brook, where she held various roles including chief nursing information officer and director of clinical transformation. At Stony Brook she was responsible for the implementations of various Cerner modules, including nursing documentation, CPOE, bar coding scanning and SMART room technology.

At ChristianaCare she has led initiatives to decrease documentation burden, identify pressure ulcer on admission and various projects for nursing most recently the autonomous robot Moxi.

Collard is an experienced IT systems implementer and a strong advocate for her nursing colleagues. Her responsibilities also include being a member of the nursing leadership team and providing insight to various technology strategies to facilitate desired nursing business processes.

Michelle L. Collins, DNP, APRN, CNS, ACNS-BC, NPD-BC, NEA-BC, LSSBB
Vice President, Nursing Professional Excellence, ChristianaCare Health

Dr. Collins is Vice President, Nursing Professional Excellence at ChristianaCare Health. She is on the Advisory Board for the Coalition for Nurse Well-Being, a member of ANA’s innovation community and the Delaware Nurses Association and is president-elect of the Delaware Organization of Nurse Leaders. She promotes innovation work for enhancing nursing practice, professional advancement, and champions requests for competitive grants/awards proposals for these initiatives.

Elizabeth (Betty) Craig, DNP, RN, FACHE
Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer, Main Line Health

Craig, who brings numerous levels of progressive leadership throughout an impressive career, joined the system in August 2022. Craig spent 12 years at Main Line Health earlier in her career, working at Lankenau Medical Center from 1999 to 2011.

In her role with Main Line Health, Craig leads and oversees nearly 3,000 nurses while cultivating the nursing education, nursing leadership and nursing research within the organization. As part of the CNO responsibility, Craig will also share responsibility for Safety, Quality, Equity and Affordability within the system while ensuring consistent standards of practice across the clinical setting. As a member of the Main Line Health executive team, Craig supports and facilitates a collaborative, interdisciplinary team approach to the delivery of care.

Prior to her role at Main Line Health, Craig served as the Chief Nursing Officer at Pennsylvania Hospital, part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. During her tenure with Pennsylvania Hospital, Craig supported the organization through its Magnet redesignation in 2019, co-led the COVID-19 Response Team, oversaw organizational initiatives, achieved operational and workforce efficiency, improved patient experience, actively engaged in shared decision-making and developed a Nurse Scientist role.

Eric Jones
Director of Clinical Informatics, Hackensack Meridian Health

Eric has been working as a Registered Nurse for over ten years. He is currently the Director of Clinical Informatics for Hackensack Meridian Health and acts as a liaison between Digital Technology Services and Nursing. Eric received his Bachelor Science in Nursing from Drexel University and a Master of Science inHealthcare Informatics and Analytics from the University of Arizona. In Eric’s 17 years at Hackensack Meridian Health his roles have included ancillary support, Emergency Room nursing, nursing management and clinical informatics leadership.

Rohan Kulkarni
Practice Leader – Healthcare and Life Sciences

Rohan leads the Healthcare practice at HFS, bringing to the table his vast experience across the healthcare ecosystem.

His experience includes being the Head of Healthcare Strategy at multiple Fortune 500 companies, and Product Management leader and CIO at two Health Plans. He is passionate about the triple aim (improving health outcomes, reducing the cost of care & enhancing the care experience) and believes that health & healthcare is a polymathic opportunity that intersects with every industry and facet of our lives. His well-rounded experience & passion brings a practical approach to his analyst role at HFS.

Rohan has an engineering degree from the University of Mysore, India, and an MBA from the University of Dundee and the London School of Economics in the UK, as well as an Executive Education diploma from the Harvard Business School.

Mary Jo Loughlin DNP, RN NEA-BC
Chief Nursing Officer and Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services, Hunterdon Health

Mary Jo Loughlin started her career as a LPN and began working at Hunterdon Medical Center. She than enrolled in an accelerated program at Raritan Valley Community College and obtained her Registered Nursing degree. She obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing from Gwynedd-Mercy College, her Master’s degree in Administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University and her Doctorate of Nursing Practice from Thomas Edison State University.

Mary Jo has held multiple nursing leadership positions at Hunterdon Health and is currently the Chief Nursing Officer and Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services. She is actively involved in the Magnet process as a Magnet Steering Committee member and has been a document writer for the past four designations.

In addition, Mary Jo has held several leadership positions in professional organizations outside of Hunterdon that include, Co-Chair Nurse Manager Advisory Committee for NJHA; Co-Chair Organization of Nurse Leaders (ONL) NJ Mentorship Committee, board member for ONL NJ and is currently the President Elect for ONL NJ.

Mary Jo has presented nationally at the Academy of Medical Surgical Nurses, ANCC Magnet, ANCC pathways to excellence, and the American Association of Critical Care Nurses conferences on Mentorship.

Edward Marx
Chief Executive Officer, Marx Advisory Group

Marx began his career serving in the OR prior to physician services at Poudre Valley Health System. Recruited to Parkview Episcopal Medical Center, he served as CIO for its management services organization and director over physician systems. In 1997, he joined HCA as chief technologist for its physician services organization. In 1999, Marx moved to University Hospitals, a multi-hospital academic health system. In 2003, he became CIO and served five years before being recruited by Texas Health. Marx served as the Senior VP/CIO of Texas Health for almost eight years. As an organization, his team went on to win every major healthcare award for technology to include the Davies Award and CIO of the Year. In 2015, he spent over two years as executive vice president of the Advisory Board on loan to New York City Health & Hospital where he reported to the CEO and provided technology leadership.

Concurrent with his healthcare career, he served 15 years in the Army Reserve, first as a combat medic and then as a combat engineer officer.

Marx is active with professional organizations, advisory boards and higher education. He is a Fellow of both CHIME and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). He served as president of the Ohio and Tennessee Chapters of HIMSS and chaired the Membership Services Committee. Marx served on the CIO advisory boards for HP, Cisco, AT&T, KLAS and Microsoft. He also served on boards for Texas Christian University, University of Texas at Dallas, and Southern Methodist University. Additionally, Marx was the governor-appointed chairman of the Texas Health Services Authority, providing leadership over health information exchange for Texas for over eight years.

Carol Okupniak, DNP, RN, BC-NI
Director of Simulation at the Center for Advanced Education, Simulation, and Innovation (CAESI)

Carol Okupniak, DNP, RN, BC-NI

Jacob O’Leary
Technology Executive and Leader

Jacob has experience leading large global technology teams on a variety of complex projects, with a passion for new product development and introduction. He has deep, applied experience in Healthcare (HIT) domain, Natural Language Processing (NLP/NLU), strategy/M&A, and operational maturity scale.

Jacob has spent over 15 years as a Development Executive of Healthcare-specific AI solutions and technologies, leading research and engineering organizations across Nuance’s portfolio of solutions. In addition, he is also responsible for Nuance Healthcare’s Cloud Hosting Services function including Dev Ops.

Helen Oscislawski, Esq.
Attorneys at Oscislawski LLC

Helen is a health care attorney whose practice for over the last 20 years has focused almost exclusively on advising clients connected with the health care industry. She is the founding member of Attorneys at Oscislawski LLC, a health law boutique practice providing high-quality legal representation to clients across the nation. Helen cemented her reputation as a prominent privacy and health information technology attorney through decades of experience and working hand-in-hand with C-suite executives and in-house general counsels on how to structure and manage complex data-sharing arrangements. She is known to many as a “go to” attorney for legal advice on HIPAA and other federal and state laws governing privacy, consent, data breaches and health information exchanges & networks.
Helen was selected Best Lawyers® “Lawyer of the Year” for Health Care Law in Princeton, New Jersey in 2022 and again for 2024, a distinction awarded to one lawyer with the highest overall peer-feedback for a specific practice area and geographic region. She has also been selected every year since 2020 to a Super Lawyers® list for Health Care Law (issued by Thomson Reuters). In addition, every year since 2018, Attorneys at Oscislawski LLC has been included on the “Best Law Firms” in Health Care Law, Princeton, New Jersey list (issued by Best Lawyers).
Helen is admitted to practice law in New Jersey since 1999 and in Arizona since 2020.

Luis Taveres
Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Lehigh Valley Health Network

As the Chief Information Officer, Dr. Taveras leads a staff of nearly 600 employees who provide information technology and biomedical services to the entire organization. Luis has previously served as a Senior-level Executive at Barnabas Healthcare, St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, Accenture, Hartford Healthcare and more.

At this point in his career, Luis has over 40 years of high-level management experience within information technology and health care organizations with proven ability to lead by example and thrive in a fast-paced, patient focused and operations-driven environment while contributing to the organization’s mission and vision in a distinctive, positive, and meaningful way.

Stew Roberts
Epic Consultant, Hackensack Meridian Health

Stew is an Epic Consultant for Hackensack Meridian Health. He is a former Epic employee with 12 years of Epic experience. Stew received his Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Erin Sparnon, MEng
Senior Engineering Manager, Device Evaluation

As a Senior Engineering Manager in ECRI’s Device Evaluation Group, Erin Sparnon leads a team of engineers and analysts in the testing and evaluation of medical devices as well as accident and forensic investigations involving device failures. She has contributed to the safety of infusion pumps, electronic health records, medical device connectivity, and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled medical technologies. Since joining ECRI in 2002, Ms. Sparnon has focused on reducing medical device errors and hazards through research, education, and advocacy with industry groups including ACCE, AAMI, HIMSS, and HFES.

Ishani Ved
Director of Transformational Population Health, Saint Peter’s University Health System

An impassioned and analytical quality and public health professional, Ishani Ved is specialized in development of forward-thinking strategies and programs to ever-enhance healthcare quality and safety, resulting in improved population health outcomes for all.
Over her 12-year career, Ishani has focused on providing accurate and illuminating data to enable healthcare systems to appropriately tailor clinical strategies to better serve diverse patient communities. The foundation of her success lies in her desire to help people take better control of their health status, achieve greater access to care, and ultimately, lead more fulfilling and productive lives.

Lori Yackanicz, MBA, CPHIMS
Vice President of Knowledge Management, Technology Division at Lehigh Valley Health Network

Lori is a 30 year veteran in the health care technology industry. In the course of her career, she has managed all aspects of technology in healthcare, including software development and implementations, hardware installations and data analytics. During her career she has pioneered implementation of new healthcare technologies, including Physician Order Entry and Medication Bar Code Administration, which changed the way healthcare is delivered. She has championed technology change management initiatives in all aspects of healthcare technology implementations.

She is currently Vice President of Knowledge Management, Technology Division at Lehigh Valley Health Network. She leads teams in the development and enhancement of corporate analytics throughout the network. This centralized analytics department leads the management of data governance for the organization as well as coordinating all strategic analytics initiatives for the network. Lori has worked to create a data culture at LVHN, partnering with executive leaders to provide analytics that form the backbone of the organization’s strategic vision. Lori reports directly to the CIO at LVHN and is part of the Technology Division corporate leadership team.