Dr. Shereef Elnahal was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden to serve as Under Secretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and confirmed by the Senate on July 21, 2022. In this role, he leads the largest integrated health system in the nation alongside a team of nearly 400,000 professionals delivering world-class care to 9 million enrolled Veterans.

In the first year of his tenure, Dr. Elnahal has overseen the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) implementation of the Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, the largest expansion of Veteran benefits in a generation. To prepare the enterprise to provide more care and more benefits to more Veterans, caregivers, and survivors than ever before, he has spearheaded initiatives to improve access, expand infrastructure, and train employees to serve Veterans impacted by toxic exposures. Under his direction, VHA also embarked on an aggressive hiring effort, growing its workforce at historic rates despite recruitment and retention challenges in the broader health care market.

Prior to his appointment, Dr. Elnahal served as President and Chief Executive Officer of University Hospital in Newark, NJ from 2019 through 2022, leading the hospital through the COVID-19 public health emergency and providing a model for urban hospital and regional response efforts. Under his leadership, the hospital also realized substantial improvements in care quality and patient safety against national benchmarks.

Previously, Dr. Elnahal served as New Jersey’s 21st Health Commissioner, appointed to the Cabinet post by Governor Phil Murphy and confirmed unanimously by the New Jersey Senate. During his nearly two years as Commissioner, he expanded the New Jersey Health Information Network, worked to improve infant and maternal health outcomes and reduce health disparities, and made strides in curbing the opioid epidemic.

This is Dr. Elnahal’s second tour of duty at VA, having served as VA’s Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Quality, Safety, and Value from 2016 through 2018, overseeing national policies around quality of care for the VHA, and as a White House Fellow in the VA from 2015-16. During that time, he co-founded the VHA Innovation Ecosystem, a program that continues to foster the spread of innovation and best practices that improve Veteran care across the nation.

Dr. Elnahal holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and an M.B.A. with Distinction from Harvard Business School.

Heather Hudnall, BSN, RN is the Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at NTT DATA. She brings over 15+ years of healthcare and IT experience in the clinical setting, nursing informatics, leadership, and healthcare technology. A nurse by trade, her passion for better patient care and transforming the future of healthcare motivates her in designing and delivering cutting-edge technologies that positively impact both clinicians and patients. Leveraging her experience as a bedside nurse, she has designed nurse-friendly technology including clinical mobility and communication solutions, clinical scheduling, role-based enterprise analytics for healthcare, and digital front door for nurses. In her current role, Heather is dedicated to leveraging clinical best practices and innovative technologies to create secure, connected health platforms that elevate patient care experience, accelerate operational efficiencies, and deliver quality outcomes. She is an inspirational thought leader providing a clinical perspective and an advocate for amplifying the “voice of the nurse” on key issues in healthcare. She’s a member of The Commission for Nurse Reimbursement focused on solving the nationwide nurse staffing concerns and nursing shortage. She also serves as a nurse liaison for the Missouri Nurse’s Association Political Action Committee representing the voice and advocating the interests of professional nurses in Missouri. Heather holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from University of Missouri- Kansas City and has been recognized as one of the HIMSS Top Women Trailblazers in Healthcare IT.

Lee Kim is the Senior Principal, Cybersecurity and Privacy at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) North America. Lee’s roles include subject matter expert, public policy professional, and analyst. She is a member of the U.S. DHS Analytic Exchange Program and the National Cybersecurity Training & Education Center (NCYTE) National Visiting Committee. Lee is an AV Preeminent peer review rated attorney in healthcare and intellectual property law.

Lee authors domestic and international works on topics that include information privacy, cybersecurity, law, and public policy. Her publication credits include GCN, ABA, Digital Health Legal, Nursing Management, and the California Continuing Education of the Bar.

Lee presents before a variety of audiences—technical, non-technical, and legal—for entities which include ABA, CERT/CC, Cisco, ICSJWG, FDA, NIST, OCR/HHS, HC3, Health Care Industry Cybersecurity Taskforce, (ISC)², PBI, RSNA, SANS, Sectra AB, Strafford, and Verizon.

Lee is a licensed attorney in the District of Columbia and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and a registered patent attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She is admitted to practice before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Western District of Pennsylvania, the Federal Circuit, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Her professional work experience includes system, network, database, and web administration and legal experience in the fields of intellectual property, information technology, privacy, cybersecurity, healthcare law, and EU GDPR.

Dave Mazik is the Director of the VA Lighthouse Developer Experience Program in the Office of Information and Technology at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Before joining the VA, Mr. Mazik led the global software team for Qualcomm’s small cell product line culminating in the successful commercial launch of several products at major North American and international mobile operators.

Dr. Kimberly McManus is the Deputy CTO – AI at the Department of Veterans Affairs where she leads efforts to improve AI capabilities across the agency. She initially joined the federal government as a Presidential Innovation Fellow in the Office of the CTO at the VA in 2020. Her expertise is at the nexus of software engineering, machine learning and digital health.

Previous to VA, she built ML and AI products in industry at 23andMe, LinkedIn and start-ups. She has a bachelor’s degree from MIT, and a MS and PhD from Stanford University, in Biomedical Informatics and Population Genetics, respectively, where she developed computational and statistical methods with genomic data.

Steven Posnack serves as the Deputy National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. In this role, he advises the national coordinator, leads the execution of ONC’s mission, and represents ONC’s interests at a national and international level. In conjunction with the national coordinator, Steve oversees ONC’s federal coordination, regulatory policy, public-private initiatives, and the overall implementation of statutory authorities and requirements, such as those from the 21st Century Cures Act and HITECH Act.

Dr. Paul Tibbits has more than 35 years’ experience leading change management, process re-engineering, and IT initiatives that support federal healthcare programs. He developed and implemented two worldwide medical record systems in the Department of Defense (DOD), restructured IT management, and regularly represented IT projects to senior government and private sector executives and Congress. Among them was the first and largest change management program in support of DOD’s first and largest medical IT program. In December 2006, Dr. Tibbits began his career with the Department of Veterans Affairs where he served as deputy CIO for enterprise development; deputy CIO for architecture, strategy and design; and program executive officer for the Financial Management Business Transformation program, prior to his current position. He currently serves are executive director for the OIT Office of Technical Integration. Dr. Tibbits is board-certified in internal medicine and cardiology and is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology. Dr. Tibbits is a veteran, having served 26 years in the U.S. Navy, and was qualified in undersea medicine. He was a member of the Navy Acquisition Corps and was a Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act trained acquisition professional.

Mr. La Monte Yarborough is currently the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG). La Monte has held former roles as the CISO at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Headquarters, as well as the CISO at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He was involved in standing up HQ DHS’ information security organization from the ground up. Prior to his work at DHS, La Monte served as a consultant and spent over 20 years in the U.S. Army specializing in information technology. He holds Master’s of Science degrees in cybersecurity and information assurance, and is also a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP).