Diana Bianco is a health care consultant with almost twenty years of experience in policy development, management, advocacy, community relations, and communications. Diana has a range of clients that she advises on policy, strategy, and management. Diana helps diverse groups reach consensus on challenging problems and develop policy solutions through facilitation of staff and board retreats, community meetings, and strategic planning sessions for health organizations.

Before launching Artemis Consulting, Diana was the Executive Vice President of FACCT – Foundation for Accountability, where she oversaw daily operations, and directed FACCT’s communications and advocacy work. Previously, Bianco headed the health care team at the West Coast Regional Office of Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports magazine), where she focused on increasing access to health care for vulnerable populations. Diana also has represented children and adults with disabilities in health care cases. Diana has served elected officials -- she was a policy and communications advisor to the Multnomah County Chair in Portland, Oregon and worked in the New York City Mayor’s Office.

Diana is a cum laude graduate of New York University School of Law. She received her B.A. from Brown University.

Nancy Clarke is the Executive Director of the Oregon Health Care Quality Corporation. This non-profit partnership brings together physician groups, hospitals, health plans, purchasers, consumers and policy makers to improve the quality of health care through collaborative leadership. In this role, she oversees projects in measuring and reporting care quality, aligning quality improvement assistance to providers, engaging consumers in a quality health care system, and fostering electronic exchange of health information.

Sherry Prowda is currently the Communications Director for Herndon Alliance, a coalition based in Seattle of over eighty state and national organizations working for health reform. Prior to moving to Seattle, she was a writer and editor at Willamette Week, Publications Manager at Reed College, and co-founding Executive Director of the nonprofit literary arts organization Literary Arts in Portland, Oregon. Following her move to Seattle, she was the founding Executive Director of Seattle Arts & Lectures and a communications and organization consultant to such organizations as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, Global Partnerships and WRQ, an IT solutions company.

Tami is the Global Benefits Design Manager, within Intel’s Worldwide Compensation and Benefits Group. Tami was formerly a member of Intel’s HR Legal Group as a legal advisor for the design and administration of Intel’s compensation and benefit programs. Prior to joining Intel in 1999, Tami served in a similar legal role with JCPenney Company, and in private legal practice advised many large companies on a wide range of benefits matters.

Tami holds a J.D. from Hastings College of the Law, and a B.A. from Sonoma State University. Tami is admitted to the state bars of Texas, Oregon and Ohio, and belongs to many professional organizations and trade associations focused on employee benefits policy.

Dr. Kilo is the CEO of GreenField Health, a network of medical practices and a teaching and consulting company serving those interested in health care quality and performance improvement. He is Executive Director of the newly formed non-for-profit Trust for Healthcare Excellence which promotes the collective efforts and conditions necessary for health and healthcare excellence. He is a Fellow and Senior Faculty of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) where he was previously Vice President. At IHI, he developed and led the international Idealized Design of Clinical Office Practices initiative. This work sparked a national focus on medical practice performance improvement.

Dr. Kilo speaks frequently on topics related to health care quality and safety, health system design, information technology, and performance improvement. He is a practicing internist with subspecialty training in infectious diseases. He attended Washington University School of Medicine where he also completed his internal medicine training. He subsequently completed an infectious diseases fellowship and Master of Public Health at Harvard University.

Mel Kohn is the State Epidemiologist for Oregon and the Administrator of the Office of Disease Prevention & Epidemiology. This office runs a variety of programs that cover a wide spectrum of public health including outbreak investigation, communicable and chronic disease prevention, public health preparedness, injury prevention, health statistics and vital records. Dr. Kohn oversees six sections and more than 200 employees.

Dr. Kohn received a B.A. from Yale, took pre-med courses at Columbia University, received his M.D. from Harvard, and received his Masters in Public Health (MPH) from Tulane School of Public Health. He completed his internship and residency in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital in Boston, is a board-certified pediatrician, and has taught pediatrics at Harvard, Tulane, and Louisiana State University medical schools.

Author, educator, software entrepreneur, and now Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Executive at The Regence Group, Mohan is focused on transforming the healthcare system. He is now accountable for all front-end activities for Regence which includes product management, marketing communication, sales, business development and corporate performance management. Mohan is Chairman of the Board of Regence Life and Health, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Regence Group. Regence, the largest health insurer in the Northwest/Mountain State Region, operates not-for-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans in Oregon, Washington, Utah and Idaho.

As adjunct professor of business with the Kellogg School of Management, Mohan teaches executive courses in supply-chain management and cost and performance management. He has authored two books titled “An Executive’s Guide to Activity-based Management Systems” and “Essentials of Balanced Scorecard” (Wiley and Sons).

His non-profit duties include Chair Emeritus, American Electronics Association; Chair, Venture Oregon; Board Member, Oregon Entrepreneurs Forum. Mohan is currently on the Board of Trustees for the Oregon Independent College Foundation and is also a board member for the Big Brother Big Sister Association.

A specialist on American national institutions and a political scientist, much of Professor Peterson’s scholarship focuses on interactions among the Presidency, Congress, and interest groups, evaluating their implications for policy making, both within the general domain of domestic policy and with special attention to health care policy. His most recent research examines how transformation of the interest group community, institutional dynamics in Congress, changes in the context and demands of political leadership, and various dimensions of social learning by policy makers promote or constrain enacting major health policy innovations. As a founding member of the Blue Sky Initiative team, he and his colleagues are developing a plan for the transformation of the U.S. health and health care system. These various projects have been supported by, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Dirksen Congressional Leadership Research Center, the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research and other RWJF grants, The California Endowment, the California Wellness Foundation, and time as a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. In 2004, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Social Insurance. The volume he edited with Joel Aberbach on the Executive Branch, part of the Annenberg Institutions of American Democracy series, won the 2006 Richard E. Neustadt Award for the best reference book on the presidency.

Professor Peterson has also been engaged with politics and policy making more directly. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, he was Democratic Party Ward Chair in the First Ward, and worked on many political campaigns. As an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, he served as a Legislative Assistant for Health Policy in the Office of U.S. Senator Tom Daschle. During 2000-2003 he was on the Study Panel on Medicare and Markets organized by the National Academy of Social Insurance. He has often been interviewed for television, radio, and print media stories, including for National Public Radio, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Christian Science Monitor.

At UCLA, he chaired the Department of Public Policy and is currently a Faculty Associate of the Center for Health Policy Research, on the faculty boards of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy, the Center for Policy Research on Aging, the Center for Governance, and the Institute for Social Science Research, and is Co-Director of the Policy Core of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services.

Known for his blend of idealism and pragmatism, Paul Starr is one of the country’s most eloquent speakers on politics, social trends and public policy. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Social Transformation of American Medicine. Most recently, he authored Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism, a passionate articulation of political liberalism. His previous book, The Creation of the Media: The Political Origins of American Communications, won the Goldsmith Book Prize.

He has written dozens of articles on healthcare and testified before Congress on the subject three times. The Social Transformation of American Medicine has become a standard in disciplines from health law to political science and history. In 2004, a twenty-year retrospective on Social Transformation was published, entitled Transforming American Medicine.