Nancy Kerr completed her MD at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1975 and her residency in obstetrics and gynecology in 1979, then practiced full time for three decades in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation. She combined clinical practice with teaching medical students and residents and co-taught seminars in global health in Nepal for students and residents. An expanded interest in international teaching and research led her to obtain a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She has done teaching and research in Nepal and Papua New Guinea. With colleagues she obtained a Grand Challenges Grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and co-directed the research project on an innovative and inexpensive external device for treating postpartum hemorrhage, the Mother’s Ball and Binder, and has published extensively on that topic. She also supports Project C.U.R.E as a site assessor.

Samuel David Cook, MD, was born and raised in the vibrant borough of the Bronx, NY. He grew up in a household deeply rooted in faith, family and service. Cook received a BA in biology at Johns Hopkins University, immersing himself in its rich academic history, while maintaining clarity on the struggles of the surrounding underserved Baltimore communities, and committing to medically-oriented community service. He matriculated to Drexel University College of Medicine’s DPMS program in 2014, and later to the medical school in 2015. There, he earned the Award in Medical Genetics and the Mary Ellen Hartman Award for Outstanding Social Consciousness and Leadership.

As a medical student, Cook was actively involved with the SNMA, HOP Clinics and the PABC. In 2016, he joined the coveted Summer Research Training program at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard School of Medicine, where he worked on several studies, leading to a publication in the Journal of Surgical Oncology. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Cook served as the Lead Community Health Worker for the Leadership Council for Healthy Communities (LCHC) based out of Washington, D.C. In this role, he was one of the directors for the Faith in Vaccines initiative, which coordinated with the D.C. Mayor’s Executive Team and the D.C. Department of Health to bring targeted Covid-19 vaccination clinics to the most medically underserved wards within the city. He was also tasked by the D.C. government to author a working playbook for drop-clinics to be used throughout the Greater D.C. area.

Cook recently completed his Internal Medicine Residency training at Morehouse School of Medicine. During his residency, he was honored to testify twice before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee, using his platform as a physician of color to advocate for his colleagues and future medical trainees of color. He has also served as faculty for the American College of Cardiology’s (ACC) cardio-obstetrics course in 2024, leading off the keynote address.

He now continues his pursuit of healing the underserved as a nocturnist/hospitalist at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center in rural Minnesota. Throughout his journey, Cook has remained dedicated to his faith, his passion for medicine and his deep commitment to serving those most vulnerable among us.

Francis X. Solano, Jr. received his undergraduate degree at the University of Scranton where he graduated cum laude. He was a charter member and president of Alpha Epsilon Delta Honor Society. A member of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor society, he received his medical degree at Hahnemann Medical College in 1980. His internship and residency were completed at the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as chief medical resident. He has practiced internal medicine for the past 41 years.

Solano recently served as president of UPMC Community Medicine, Inc. (CMI), which is comprised of a network of about 500 physicians. He retired in 2023. In addition to strategic planning for the organization, he is responsible for quality control, development of clinical guidelines for preventive care, chronic disease management, medical management and risk management.

Solano served as vice president, UPMC Health Services Division, employing over 5,000 physicians. He was the division’s lead physician for quality and chaired the Physician Services Division (PSD) Clinical Quality Leadership Group in addition to the Physician Services Division Primary Care Leadership Group. He has developed physician benchmarking tools in many chronic diseases as well as in subspecialty areas and is intimately involved with the deployment of the electronic health record within the PSD as well as the Meaningful Use initiative.

In 2018, the University of Pittsburgh Department of Medicine instituted the Francis X. Solano, Jr., MD Innovation Fund. To support chief residents, the Fund helps to give start-up dollars to develop innovative quality improvement project ideas at an early stage of career leadership development. This fund has also recognized Dr. Solano’s innovation to improve primary care quality, value, and reimbursement.

Solano also collaborates with many of his academic colleagues and CMI participates in numerous PCORI and NIH funded trials in many areas. Most recently, he was involved with an early melanoma detection program which educated primary care physicians to improve their skills. Over the years, he has published many papers as well.

Solano was also the champion and lead physician for UPMC’s Shared Savings Program with the UPMC Health Plan, which began in 2012. With more than 200,000 patients in the program, it is one of the largest Medicare Advantage programs in the United States and the largest program in Western Pennsylvania.

After garnering over $25 – $33 million per year in the Shared Savings Program, Dr. Solano developed and implemented a value incentive program for primary care physicians which is one of the most innovative programs in the United States according to Sullivan Cotter. Primary care physicians can earn up to a $75,000 incentive for improving quality and reducing cost. In conjunction with UPMC Enterprises, Dr. Solano also developed the Lumanent Tool to improve risk adjustment capture for the Shared Savings Program.

He was also a board member of UPMC Health Plan, Renaissance Family Practice, UPMC Community Medicine, Inc., and former chairman of the Board of Reading is FUNdamental Pittsburgh. He was a member of the UPMC Health Plan Quality Board and the UPMC System Quality Board Committees.

In addition to his administrative roles, Solano was a practicing internist with Solano and Kokales Internal Medicine Associates-UPMC. On multiple occasions, he has been recognized in Pittsburgh Magazine’s “Top Doctors” and received the peer group award by “Best Doctors in America” many times. Among his many accolades over the years, he has been listed in US News and World Report’s “Top Doctors 2011”and has been named a top internist in Pittsburgh by KDKA radio.

Solano has been married to his loving wife, Lenette, for 44 years and has three wonderful adult children and two grandchildren. He is an avid golfer.

For the last 40 years, John A. Bennett, MD, has been one of the most recognized entrepreneurs in the Philadelphia area. A local and national leader in the healthcare, technology and international business industries, Bennett is the founder and president of the Devon International Group (DIG).

He joined Delaware County Memorial Hospital as an emergency room physician in 1978. Three years later, he was elected to the hospital’s Medical Executive Committee and made Director of Emergency Services. In June of 1984, he was elected president of the Medical Executive Committee. In 1984, Bennett founded ATI Centers, Inc., which consisted of 13 outpatient diagnostic imaging and physical therapy centers located throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Fueled by immediate interest in the company, Bennett and a handful of employees set out to build a preferred provider organization (PPO) with services to encompass all provider specialties – and succeeded. Renamed Devon Health Services, Inc., in 1995, the company was the Northeast’s largest privately-owned PPO, operating nationally and covering 3,000,000 lives. Bennett used the success of Devon Health to expand into different industries, countries and international business markets. He expanded on his healthcare background to create Devon Medical Products, an engineer and manufacturer of medical devices, and SMI Health, a point-of-care marketing company. He also expanded into the technology sector and founded Devon IT, Inc., an IBM Business Partner and the world’s third largest provider of thin client terminals, in 2005.

Subsequently DIG created manufacturing of medical devices in a company-owned factory in China with distribution around the world. The company distributes sequential compression devices, lymphedema therapy; and negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT), cold therapy, bracing, muscle stimulators and orthopedic hardware. Bennett next started a laboratory with the advent of Covid. He is now launching two medical device companies. His new technology will be focused on cold hot therapy for sports injuries and wound therapy for chronic ailments.

Bennett’s other interests include the production of Oakwell Wines (named after his estate in Villanova) and JE Anderson Bourbon. He is a true entrepreneur who identifies unique products and services that enhance global business. His work takes him throughout the world, where his international relationships and business partnerships help drive revenue in domestic markets.

Amy P. Murtha, MD, an accomplished researcher and maternal-fetal medicine specialist, joined Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School as dean in August 2022. Her research and clinical work focus on caring for complicated pregnancies and on identifying the best ways to diagnose and care for patients at risk for preterm birth, particularly for pregnancies complicated by the premature rupture of fetal membranes.

Murtha served as professor and chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and chief medical officer of Women’s Health at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), before becoming dean. As chair, she increased support for faculty researchers and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, led the rapid establishment of two national registries focused on COVID in pregnancy.

After earning her medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania, Murtha completed residency training in obstetrics and gynecology and fellowship training in maternal-fetal medicine at Duke University. She joined the faculty at Duke, where her career as a translational scientist focused on fetal membrane biology and its role in preterm premature rupture of membranes. During her tenure at Duke, Dr. Murtha assumed increasing leadership roles, including founder and course director of Duke Molecular Techniques Workshop (CRP 265), serving as interim chair of OB-GYN and vice chair for research; director of the Duke CTSI Research Career Development Harmonization Program; and program director for the NIH-funded K12 training grant Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH), among other leadership positions. She is a frequent invited speaker at national and international symposia and is the recipient of numerous awards recognizing her research and leadership accomplishments.

As dean, Murtha leads the school’s commitment to excellence in patient care and community health, ensures comprehensive medical training for our learners, promotes innovation in research across the school, and advances the equity and inclusion missions of the medical school. She serves as founding dean of the future Rutgers School of Medicine (RSOM), positioned to be one of the leading public medical schools in the country and a hub of biomedical and health sciences education, research and clinical care.

James L. Madara, MD, serves as the CEO and executive vice president of the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest physician organization. He holds the academic title of adjunct professor of pathology at Northwestern University.

Since taking the reins of the AMA in 2011, Madara has helped sculpt the organization’s visionary long- term strategic plan. He also serves as chairman of Health2047 Inc., the wholly owned innovation subsidiary of the AMA, created to overcome systemic dysfunction in U.S. health care and located in Silicon Valley. Working closely with the AMA, Health2047 finds, forms and scales transformative health care spinout companies in four fields: chronic care, data utility, radical productivity and health care value. Several companies have been launched to date.

Prior to the AMA, Madara spent the first 22 years of his career at Harvard Medical School, receiving both clinical and research training, serving as a tenured professor and as director of the NIH-sponsored Harvard Digestive Diseases Center. Following five years as chair of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University, he served as dean of both biology and medicine, and then as CEO of the University of Chicago Medical Center, bringing together the university’s biomedical research, teaching and clinical activities. While there he oversaw the renewal of the institution’s biomedical campus and engineered significant new affiliations with community hospitals, teaching hospital systems, community clinics and national research organizations.

Madara also served as senior advisor with Leavitt Partners, an innovative health care consulting and private-equity firm founded by former Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.

Having published more than 200 original papers and chapters, Madara has served as editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Pathology and as president of the American Board of Pathology.

In addition to Modern Healthcare consistently naming him as one of the nation’s 50 most influential physician executives, as well as one of the nation’s 100 most influential people in health care, he has been recognized with several national and international awards. These include the prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health, the Davenport Award for lifetime achievement in gastrointestinal disease from the American Physiological Society, and the Mentoring Award for lifetime achievement from the American Gastroenterological Society.

Madara is an elected member of both the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He also co-chairs the Value Incentives & Systems Action Collaborative of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and is a member of NAM’s Leadership Consortium for Value & Science-Driven Health Care.

Madara and his wife, Vicki, have two children, Max and Alexis.