Carol has over 30 years of healthcare experience, the last 28 at various positions within UnitedHealth Group. Her healthcare management experience at UnitedHealth Group includes positions with responsibility for product development, sales, compliance, claims and billing operations. Most recently, Carol has been integral to the development and deployment of physician and hospital quality and cost measurement programs including the UnitedHealth Premium program. Carol has been involved in taking the program from a pilot to a national program which includes 47 specialties available in 44 states.

Carol is a C.P.A. and a graduate of the University of North Dakota (B.S.B.A., Accounting) and the University of St. Thomas. St. Paul, MN (M.B.A., Management).

In her role at Fallon Health, Christine Cassidy is responsible for all of the company’s communications and corporate relations functions, including corporate and marketing communications; advertising; brand management and promotion; public, community and government relations; digital communications; internal communications; strategy implementation; and enterprise governance.

Cassidy joined Fallon in 2002 and has held various communications-related roles, including Vice President of Corporate Communications. In her most recent position as Chief Communications Officer, Cassidy led Fallon’s 2014 rebrand campaign.

Prior to joining Fallon, Cassidy was the Editor of The Lancaster Times and North County Family & Health. She also spent 15 years at the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company in Boston, where, as a System Project Manager, she led a 16-member team through a multi-million dollar project to optimize the automatic adjudication of group health claims.

Cassidy is Vice Chair of the Becker College Board of Trustees, a member of the Board of Directors for Girls, Inc. Worcester, and the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, and a member of the United Way of Central Massachusetts’ Women’s Initiative. She also volunteers for numerous community events including the United Way’s Day of Caring and Working for Worcester. Additionally, she was the Chair of the 2015 and 2016 Worcester Women’s Leadership Conferences and selected by the YWCA of Central Mass. as its 2017 recipient of the Katharine F. Erskine Award in Business and Law. Cassidy graduated summa cum laude from Becker College where she received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.

Doug Cottings , Staff Vice President, Market Strategy & Insights leads Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield’s capable team of research experts -- a dedicated team specializing in working with internal stakeholders to help them improve Anthem’s consumer centricity and competitive advantage in these challenging times.

Doug brings a wealth of experience and relevant leadership to the Market Strategy & Insights team, with a strong focus on the financial industry plus experience in healthcare. Most recently, Doug held the position of Managing Director at GfK, one of the world’s largest market research consultancy companies, where he held responsibility over the Financial Services and Multicultural Research lines of business and their P&Ls.; During his time at GfK, Doug was instrumental in pivoting the research organization to partner more closely with clients and helping them understand both the research conducted and how that research could be turned into actionable initiatives to improve business results.

Doug’s background also includes time at UBS Financial Services, as Executive Director, Marketing Research & Analysis Head, and Bank of America where he served as Senior Vice President, Strategy & Business Intelligence. Prior he held senior positions in Global Business Intelligence and Global Research at Principal Financial Group. As a recognized thought-leader in his field, Doug has multiple industry publications, press quotes, news articles, and speaking engagements to his credit.

Doug received his MBA from Xavier University and his BS in Business from Miami University (Oxford). He was an adjunct marketing professor at both Miami University and Drake University.

Sven Gierlinger is an expert in building an emotionally engaging and innovative culture that drives growth and consumer loyalty through customer satisfaction. He has more than 20 years experience in the hospitality and service industry.

As Chief Experience Officer for Northwell Health, Sven is responsible for creating a superior and consistent service experience for patients, visitors and employees. Prior to his current position he was Vice President of Hospitality and Service Culture at Henry Ford Health System in Michigan. He established a culture of service excellence through development and implementation of standards, system-wide rounding, and training programs for all employees ranging from first impressions to leader coaching. He was a driving force in creating excellence and consistency in the patient experience.

Prior to his corporate responsibilities at Henry Ford he played a critical role in the start-up and success of Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital where for nearly 3 years he lead the areas of non-clinical operations, retail, wellness, and service culture.

Sven also had the privilege to work for 8 years in various leadership roles and destinations for the acclaimed Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company including opening properties worldwide.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management from the Bavaria Hotel Management School in Germany.

Sarah Hodkinson is VP, Marketing for Smarter Travel, a subsidiary of TripAdvisor. In this role Sarah oversees a team that is responsible for driving consumer acquisition and engagement. Her charter includes search engine marketing, digital advertising, CRM, brand marketing, PR and creative functions.

Prior to joining TripAdvisor, Sarah spent 5 years as Senior Director, Marketing at PayPal, overseeing marketing operations and strategic partnerships.

A passionate advocate for diversity in tech, Sarah has previously served on the board of StartOut, a non-profit that cultivates entrepreneurship within the LGBTQ community and has also spoken at the Lesbians Who Tech summit and Fenway Community Health.

In 2015, Sarah was honored by VC firm, Accomplice, as one of Boston’s Top 20 Women in Tech. Originally from the UK, Sarah graduated from Lancaster University. She is also an active angel investor, advisor to start-ups and currently serves on the Board of Directors for Radius Bank.

Dr. Sara Laskey, MD, was named the first Chief Patient Experience Officer at Cleveland’s MetroHealth System in late 2013. In this position, Dr. Laskey is responsible for the leadership, design, and implementation of initiatives that fulfill the patient-centered mission and vision of MetroHealth. She collaborates with MetroHealth executives, medical staff, and department directors to develop and implement best practices, training programs and communications that are transforming the culture of MetroHealth.

In the past three years, Dr. Laskey and her team developed and implemented Pathways to Patient Experience and Pathways to Caring two innovative training programs that emphasized culture, values and service recovery. She has launched a recognition program, “Star IQ Genius,” to honor those employees whose behavior is exemplary of patient-centered care as well as implementing data driven “Executive Rounding” for administrative and clinical leaders throughout the organization. Dr. Laskey has also spearheaded the full transparency of her organization with the publication of ratings and reviews of providers and service lines on their website. They are changing the focus of their patient metrics from a CAHPS driven model to one of patient retention and loyalty with a focus on timely feedback that can be adjusted according to the needs of the customer and the organization. The Office of Patient Experience encompasses seven departments including Patient Centered Healthcare, Volunteer Services, Arts-in-Medicine, Patient Relations, Language Access/Customer Service, Pastoral Care and Survivor Recovery Services.

In addition to her Patient Experience responsibilities, Dr. Laskey is also an active attending physician in the Emergency Department at MetroHealth and previously was the Director of Medical Operations for the department, a position she held from 2011 through 2013. She is an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. Her undergraduate degree is in performance studies from Northwestern University. She has also studied at The Second City in Chicago and earned a BFA (bachelor of Fun arts) from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. She performed as a circus clown with the Greatest Show on Earth from 1988-1990.

About MetroHealth: The MetroHealth System, with more than 500 primary care and specialty care physicians, is one of the most comprehensive healthcare providers—and the only level one trauma center—in Northeast Ohio. As a public healthcare system, MetroHealth provides services to any resident of Cuyahoga County regardless of ability to pay. MetroHealth also is a center for medical research and education, affiliated with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. All staff physicians hold faculty appointments with Case Western Reserve.

Sarah leads BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina’s corporate customer experience and large group product marketing areas. She has championed numerous consumer engagement efforts including the direction of sponsored well-being programs, implementation of a corporate virtual visit solution and most recently the creation and execution of the company’s digital strategy. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Relations from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in Political Management from George Washington University.

Michael E. Ruiz is vice president and chief digital officer for MedStar Health. In this role, he is responsible for the oversight and execution of MedStar’s digital strategy to become a premier digital healthcare presence. Mr. Ruiz thoughtfully integrates business strategy with digital technology, focusing on the user experience. Named on Hot Topics’ list of “100 Digital Change Agents Future-proofing their Brands”, Mr. Ruiz believes in making health care as seamless as ordering coffee at Starbucks and tirelessly seeks ways to innovatively improve the patient experience. In support of this, Mr. Ruiz creatively integrates real-world technology trends, such as chatbots and artificial intelligence, into the healthcare industry.

With over 25 years of experience in information technology and systems integration, Mr. Ruiz has designed, developed and deployed large scale information systems for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, as well as for government agencies, both in the United States and abroad. Prior to MedStar, Mr. Ruiz was a founding member of Deloitte Digital, which was the first Big-4 global digital practice. Previously, Mr. Ruiz was also chief technical officer for Net-Enabled Operations at BearingPoint and continued in that role after the acquisition of BearingPoint by Deloitte. In this position, Mr. Ruiz led research and development projects for BearingPoint/Deloitte’s Department of Defense and National Intelligence practices. He was also a founding member of the global technical standards body OASIS’ Service Oriented Architecture Technical Committee.

Mr. Ruiz has served as an affiliated faculty member at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business in the Information Systems department, where he lectured at the graduate level on the topics of service orientation, Web 2.0 technologies, enterprise governance, and organizational decision-making. Mr. Ruiz is adept at bridging the gap between business and technology, with the ability to explain technical matters in a business vernacular.

Mr. Ruiz has a Bachelor of Science in computer science, and holds a Master of Science in computer and information system security from Virginia Commonwealth University. His doctoral research was focused at the intersection of predictive analytics and cyber security, which included non-deterministic complex algorithms such as genetic algorithms, neural networks and swarm optimization.

Juhan Sonin specializes in healthcare design and system engineering. He is the Director of Involution Studios (goinvo.com). His work has been recognized by the New York Times, Newsweek, BBC International, WIRED, and National Public Radio (NPR) and published in The Journal of Participatory Medicine and The Lancet. Juhan has spent time at Apple, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and MITRE. He currently lectures on design and engineering at MIT.

Juhan’s laser focus on healthcare and open source design has infected national efforts for the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the California Healthcare Foundation (CHCF) to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). His open source healthcare products have also been leveraged by Walgreens, Crossover Health, NextGen EHR, and Hallmark Clinics, to name a few. In 2017, his team is shipping a national clinical decision support (CDS) authoring tool and open source precision medicine services.

Cecilia Sun is vice president of Digital Customer Experience at Blue Shield of California, a 4 million-member nonprofit health plan that serves the state’s commercial, individual and government markets. She is responsible for Blue Shield’s digital experience across all user groups, including members, providers, brokers and employers.

Cecilia has more than 15 years of experience in product development, partnership management and customer experience for large organizations. Prior to joining Blue Shield, she served as vice president of Global Digital Servicing at American Express, where she led a global team of product managers responsible for developing customer facing digital products and experiences, including live chat, voice response and mobile video service channels.

Cecilia earned a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.