The Crossover with Dr. Rick Komotar: Recent Episodes
Dr. Rick Komotar
The Crossover is a discussion based podcast where experts in every field from neuroscience to Navy SEALS to Environmental Science to NFL athletes sit down and talk with world renowned Neurosurgeon and Professor of Neurological Surgery Dr. Rick Komotar.
Dr. Alexander McKinney is the Chair of the Department of Radiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Chief of Service for Radiology at both UHealth and Jackson Health System. A nationally recognized neuroradiologist, he spent 26 years at the University of Minnesota, where he completed his medical training and rose to the rank of professor before joining Miami. Dr. McKinney is an accomplished physician-scientist with more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, numerous textbook contributions, and a research portfolio spanning neuroradiology, advanced imaging, and artificial intelligence in medicine. He has emerged as a leading advocate for integrating AI into radiology, championing a vision in which radiologists leverage advanced technology to improve diagnostic accuracy, efficiency, and preventive care.
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Ali Landry is an actress, entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and former Miss USA. Best known as the iconic “Doritos Girl” and for her work in television and film, she has successfully reinvented herself as a business leader, author, and champion for healthy living. Through her RE/SHAPE platform, Ali inspires others to pursue personal growth, resilience, and intentional living while balancing a thriving career and family life.
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Colonel Merryl Tengsedal is a trailblazer in the field of aviation and a symbol of perseverance and excellence. She is notably recognized as the first and only African American woman to pilot the U-2 “Dragon Lady,” a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft in the United States Air Force. Her journey to this remarkable achievement began with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of New Haven, where she was one of only three women in her program and actively participated in basketball and ROTC. Merryl’s military career started in the Navy as a commissioned officer after graduating from Officer Candidate School in 1994. She excelled as a Naval Aviator, piloting the SH-60B Seahawk Helicopter and serving in various global locations, including the Middle East, South America, and the Caribbean. Her transition to the Air Force marked a historic moment as she became the only Black woman to fly the U-2 spy plane, accumulating over 1,000 flight hours and participating in critical reconnaissance missions worldwide. In addition to her flying career, Merryl has held significant leadership roles, such as the Chief of Flight Safety for the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, Director of Operations for the 9th Physiological Support Squadron, and Commander of Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Detachment 2 at Palmdale, CA. Her last assignment before retiring in 2017 was as the Director of Inspections at the Pentagon, where she managed the USAF Nuclear Surety Inspections (NSI) program.
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Michael Maroone has served as President and Chief Operating Officer of AutoNation, Inc., the world’s largest automotive retailer, since 1999. Today, AutoNation represents more than 35 brands, from Porsche to Rolls Royce and Honda to Chevrolet. AutoNation has twice been ranked in Forbes magazine’s annual Top 500 Companies in the United States and has received numerous awards such as Time Magazine’s Quality Dealer and Fortune’s America’s Most Admired and and was ranked the Number One Industry Champion five out of the last six years. In 2001, Maroone, along with five other entrepreneurs, purchased the Florida Panthers hockey team from H. Wayne Huizenga, allowing the team to remain in South Florida. Michael is an active member of the community, sitting on the board of organizations such as the Dan Marino Foundation, the Boys and Girls Club of Broward County, Police Athletic League, and the Children’s Cancer Caring Center. He is also the chairman of the board for Take Stock in Children, a program that helps low-income children receive assistance for education.
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First Woman Thunderbird Pilot, Combat Veteran, White House Adviser & Voice of Resurgence. Nicole Malachowski is one of the most compelling leadership voices on today’s stage. A retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, combat veteran, and the first woman pilot to fly with the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, she has lived a life defined by challenge, responsibility, and bold decisions. From leading fighter formations in combat to advising at the highest levels of the White House, Nicole understands what it means to perform when the stakes are real. When a devastating neurological tick-borne illness abruptly ended her flying career and left her unable to walk or speak for months, she was forced to redefine strength itself. Her story is not about bouncing back. It is about becoming resurgent and choosing growth when the path forward is uncertain.
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Heitner has been referred to as one of the foremost experts on name, image, and likeness (NIL) by The Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, and On3, a power player in NIL deals by Action Network, “a founding father of college athletes earning rights,” and a top sports trademark attorney by Sportico. Heitner has been honored with the University of Florida’s 40 Under 40 Award, the University of Florida Levin College of Law’s Oustanding Young Alumnus Award, and named the best lawyer in Fort Lauderdale by Fort Lauderdale Magazine. In 2023, Heitner Legal was the only law firm named to Sports Business Journal’s first list of NIL Power Players. Heitner’s sports clients have included Pro Football Hall of Famer Terrell Owens, Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel, University of Florida Athletic Hall of Famer Fred Taylor, Antonio Brown, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Tyreek Hill, Xavien Howard, Jamal Adams, Nick Chubb, Mac Jones, Shane Bieber, Manny Ramirez, Anna Kournikova, Draymond Green, Terry Rozier, Haley and Hanna Cavinder, and Rick Pitino.
In 2019, Heitner was asked by Florida Representative Chip LaMarca to assist with the crafting and promotion of legislation that sought to provide Florida college athletes with the right to profit off of their names, images, and likenesses (NIL). Heitner has continued to be an advocate for athlete rights and worked on behalf of numerous athletes and brands, including Gatorade, INFLCR, Marketpryce, and Icon Source, in the NIL space.
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Elizabeth Pérez is a sports anchor for CNN en Español. Since joining CNN, Elizabeth Perez has covered a variety of sporting events: the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the 2011 Pan-American Guadalajara games from Mexico, and more recently the Churchill Downs 139th edition of the famous Kentucky Derby, the first and most important of the three races that make up the U.S. Triple Crown. She has also presented special shows: “Vive el Golf”, “Herencia Hispana”, the playoffs, “Resumen Navideño Deportivo”, and “Tras el Oro”, among others. Throughout her journalistic career she has covered major sporting events like NASCAR in Indianapolis, Indy300 at Homestead Speedway, Red Bull SoapBox Race in St. Louis, Air and Sea Show in Ft. Lauderdale and Smash Super Bowl Party for the NFL. She has Interviewed some of the most widely recognized personalities in sports, music and international art like: Keegan Bradely, Emerson Fitipaldi, Miguel Cabrera, Oscar de la Hoya, Udonis Haslem, Shaquille O’Neal, Juan Pablo Montoya, Carl Lewis, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Oscar de la Renta, Shakira, Miguel Bose, Romero Britto, Jose Feliciano, John Leguizamo, David Bisbal, Daddy Yankee, Chayanne, Juanes, America Ferrera, Enrique Iglesias and Rosario Dawson, among others.
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Three-time Super Bowl champion and leader of UM’s 1987 national championship team … One of the elite receivers in Dallas Cowboys and NFL history … Cowboys’ first-round pick in 1988, the 11th player overall … Played 12 seasons … Selected to five straight Pro Bowls (1991-95) … Led the NFL with 1,523 yards on 93 receptions in 1991 … Recorded 1,000-yard seasons in all but one year from 1991-98 … Set an NFL record with 11 100-yard games in 1995…Totaled 750 receptions for 11,904 yards and 65 touchdowns … Had 47 100-yard games … Named to NFL’s All-Decade Team of the 1990s … Teamed with quarterback Troy Aikman and running back Emmitt Smith to give the Cowboys’ three of the top play-makers in pro football … Won back-to-back Super Bowls over the Buffalo Bills (XXVII and XXVIII) and over the Pittsburgh Steelers (XXX) … Had his finest season in 1995 with 111 receptions for 1,603 yards and 10 touchdowns … Fort Lauderdale native who attended St. Thomas Aquinas High School … Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007.
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Born and raised in Milwaukee Wisconsin, Rick joined the U.S. Navy at age 17. He attended Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL (BUD/S) training Class 109 in Coronado, CA. Rick was assigned to SEAL Team TWO in Little Creek, VA in 1980. He served at SEAL Team TWO from 1980 until 1985, specializing in winter warfare, combat diving, and sniping until he was selected for duty at SEAL Team SIX in 1985. In 1993, Rick received the Silver Star Medal for Valor during the Battle of Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down). He served at ST-6 from 1985 through October of 2012. During his time at ST-6, Rick acted as sniper, explosives expert, lead training Chief, sniper team leader, and Deputy Operations Officer. Rick continues to serve his country and fellow SEALs by helping to educate others about this unique special operations force and further the Frogman heritage as the Executive Director of Navy SEAL Museum Fort Pierce. Rick is married to Barbara Kaiser and has two children, Emily and Eric. Rick and Barbara currently reside in Vero Beach, Florida.
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Brian Edwards carved his path alongside icons like Donna Summer and Joan Rivers. Over the decades, he built a reputation as a multi-award-winning talent executive, client relations rep, producer, writer, and occasional performer – working with some of the most recognizable names in show business: Cindy Crawford, Susan Sarandon, Melissa Rivers, Whoopi Goldberg, Farrah Fawcett, Shirley Jones, Naomi Judd, and Vanessa Williams—just to name a few. As a tribute to his work with the legendary Queen of Disco, his legacy even takes the stage in the Tony-nominated Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, where Edwards is portrayed—reminding us that the voices behind the scenes deserve to be honored just as boldly as those in front of them.
Edwards has now released his third collection of life stories, Come Sit With Me and Let’s Talk—an unfiltered, heartfelt companion to his multi-award winning books, Enter Miss Thang (2013) and I Might Have Been Queen (2019). This latest volume distills Edwards’ singular journey into the intimacy of a heart-to-heart, blending the most memorable stories from his earlier books with fresh recollections, untold chapters, and photos. He shares the triumphs and trials that shaped a career defined by resilience, recognition, and influence—offering perspective, encouragement, and the kind of advice that only comes from living it.
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Key “Future-Ready” Initiatives:
MIA Airport Modernization: The “Modernization in Action” (M.I.A.) plan is renovating over 600 elevators/escalators, replacing 126 boarding bridges, and updating 196 restrooms. Major projects include a $136-million Flamingo Garage expansion (2025 completion), a new $350-million Westin MIA Hotel (2027 completion), and a planned $750-million Concourse K expansion.
Economic & Workforce Development: The county is investing in high-growth industries like tech, construction, and hospitality. This includes the Future Ready Miami-Dade Scholarship, which covers up to 60 credits at Miami Dade College for eligible students.
Innovation & Technology: The Future Ready plan includes creating a streamlined, digital business-permitting tool, expanding broadband access, and partnering with startups for environmental solutions.
Resilience & Sustainability: The agenda prioritizes storm-hardening infrastructure, energy-efficient building upgrades, and fostering green technology to protect against climate change.
* Government Efficiency: The WISE305 initiative aims to modernize county operations by cutting red tape, updating old policies, and leveraging automation to reduce costs for businesses.
These initiatives are designed to make Miami-Dade a global hub for business and travel, ensuring long-term sustainability and economic growth.
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PLAYR is a science-backed nutrition brand specifically designed for youth athletes to support growth, focus, and performance. It provides tailored, age-appropriate supplements—such as CORE for daily hydration and CLUTCH for game-day, featuring ingredients for muscle recovery, focus, and gut health without adult-level dosing.
Key aspects of PLAYR include:
Targeted Nutrition:
Key Products
Foundational Focus
Expert Backing
* Nutraceutical Approach
PLAYR is designed to build a solid, healthy foundation for young athletes’ long-term development.
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Allison DiPalo is an author, educator, and founder working at the intersection of neuroscience, mental health, ethics, and meaning. With over two decades of experience in direct patient care, trauma-informed practice, and program development, her work bridges rigorous scientific inquiry with deep respect for the human experience. Her writing focuses on responsible approaches to altered states, integration, nervous system regulation, and the ethical considerations surrounding psychedelic science and mental-health innovation. She is known for translating complex neurobiological and psychological concepts into grounded, accessible language without oversimplifying their depth. Allison is the founder of Community of Compassion Church and Compassion Campus, where she develops education, facilitator training programs, and curriculum grounded in safety, evidence-based practice, and integrity. Her work is guided by a commitment to discernment over hype, structure over bypassing, and care over performance.
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Dr. Grettel Garcia, MD, is a board-certified internist based in Miami, FL, affiliated with UHealth - University of Miami Health System and Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. She graduated from the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine in 2017 and completed her residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. She specializes in internal medicine, treating conditions like hypertension, diabetes, and kidney disease, and is fluent in Spanish.
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Jaclyn Sklaver is an internationally recognized sports nutritionist who works with gym enthusiasts and the world’s top professional athletes to optimize performance, body composition and metabolic health. She is the former Head of Performance nutrition for the Orlando Magic NBA team.
Jaclyn’s practice, Athleats Nutrition is operated with the combined philosophy of both performance nutrition and functional medicine. Jaclyn uses her years of experience to optimize health and correct existing obstacles which improve immediate and long-term performance. Her philosophy is that each individual requires their own tailored plan and approach. Jaclyn’s attention to detail, extensive knowledge and years of experience educating and coaching clients set her apart from the rest. Jaclyn is a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS), a Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist in both Florida and New York State, a NASM-certified personal trainer and a USAW-L1 weightlifting coach. Jaclyn holds a Masters of Science in Human Nutrition from The University of Bridgeport. She is a recipient of the 2020 Atlanta Women in Sports Trailblazer Award. Her work can be found in Muscle & Fitness Hers, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Shape, Fitness Magazine and CBS Sports.
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Dr. Earl J. Campazzi is board certified and has trained and practiced at some of the finest medical institutions in the country. At the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. Campazzi spent several years on staff providing medical care and teaching resident physicians. He completed his medical training at The Johns Hopkins University and served as chief resident. He earned his medical doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Campazzi holds additional postgraduate degrees including a Master of Public Health with emphasis in Health Care Policy and Management and a Master of Health Sciences with emphasis in Immunology and Infectious Diseases, both from The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2020, he completed The Stanford Genetics and Genomics Certificate program at Stanford University. Dr. Campazzi also earned his Master of Business Administration with Health Services Management concentration from Duke University Fuqua School of Business. He completed his Bachelor of Arts at The Johns Hopkins University.
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Fitomics provides data-driven, personalized health & fitness solutions using advanced testing (VO₂ max, body composition, metabolism) and expert coaching (exercise, nutrition, primary care) to create individualized, science-backed plans, moving beyond generic advice with precise biometric insights for better results in fitness, body composition, and overall wellness. They offer mobile labs, online coaching, apps with expert workouts, and deep-dive reports to support long-term health and performance goals.
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Nancy Jill Sundberg is a writer and teacher of self-knowledge. Her passion for communication began as an actor and stand-up comedian and evolved into the creation of Stand Up Express—an adult and youth program to facilitate artistic self-expression. Nancy spent over 20 years in spiritual contemplation, meditation, and service alongside her mother Ngeton, a wisdom teacher in the spiritual lineage of the Navnath Sampradaya. As Ngeton’s successor, Nancy’s teachings are rooted in love, wisdom, joy, and clarity. Nancy has recently published her debut work, “The Art Of Awakening True Communication,” which offers foundational elements of Nancy’s teachings on expanding self-knowledge through observation, honesty, and willingness to an ever-growing audience.
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Jordan Amadio, M.D., is a board-certified neurosurgeon, and his clinical practice focuses on minimally invasive spine surgery, surgical neuro-oncology and neurotrauma. Amadio received his medical education at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before completing a neurosurgery residency at Emory University. At Emory, he pursued research fellowships as a Council of State Neurosurgical Societies socioeconomic fellow and a Congress of Neurological Surgeons innovation fellow. He also earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, with emphasis on medical technology innovation. As affiliated faculty and a National Institutes of Health-funded investigator within Texas Robotics, he works with robotics experts to build next-generation tools and implants for spine surgery. Previously, he co-founded the NeuroLaunch incubator for neurotechnology startups and has since advised dozens of medical technology ventures. Outside his academic work, Amadio is closely involved with the development of brain-computer interface technology as a director of neurosurgery at Neuralink. Amadio is deeply committed to mentoring the next generation of physicians and enjoys teaching students and residents. As a way of giving back, he has also been active in providing neurosurgical care to socioeconomically challenged populations, from Texas to Mirebalais, Haiti.
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Jake Paul rose to prominence through his entertaining videos on Vine and YouTube. Paul’s career took a surprising turn in 2018 when he ventured into the world of professional boxing. He has fought against a range of opponents, including Nate Robinson, Ben Askren, and Tyron Woodley, among others. Despite his loss to Tommy Fury in 2023, Paul has demonstrated his prowess as a boxer, earning him recognition such as the ESPN Ringside Award for “Knockout of the Year’ over his victory on Woodley. In 2024, Paul boxed legend Mike Tyson in a highly anticipated Netflix live event, defeating Tyson in an eight-round unanimous decision and drawing in 108 million viewers.
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EJ Manuel, a former first-round NFL Draft pick, joined ACC Network in 2019 and is a studio analyst on The Huddle, ACCN’s signature football show that airs Saturday mornings throughout the fall. He also makes regular appearances across ESPN’s studio shows including SportsCenter and College Football Live during the college football season. Along with his ESPN duties, Manuel co-hosts Off Campus on SiriusXM with Jimbo Fisher and Jacob Hester. One of the most productive quarterbacks in Florida State history, Manuel led the Seminoles to a 25-6 record as a starter during the 2009-12 seasons, and the fourth-most wins in program history. The Virginia Beach, Virginia, native also helped Florida State to notable victories including the 2013 Discover Orange Bowl, 2012 Dr Pepper ACC Football Championship Game and 2009 Gator Bowl – the final game of legendary coach Bobby Bowden’s career. He is the second quarterback in FBS history to win four straight bowl games, and also went 15-3 in his career against ACC opponents. Manuel is FSU’s all-time leader in completion percentage (66.9), which is tied for third in ACC history, and ranks among the top five Seminole quarterbacks all-time for passing yards (7,736, 4th), total offense (8,563, 3rd), completions (600, 3rd) and attempts (897, 5th), despite only two seasons as the full-time starter. He earned second team All-ACC honors for the 2012 season and was named the 2013 Senior Bowl MVP. Following his career at FSU, Manuel was a first-round draft pick by the Buffalo Bills in 2013.
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Christian Ponder is a former American football quarterback who played six seasons in the NFL, most notably with the Minnesota Vikings, who drafted him 12th overall in the first round of the 2011 draft. He played college football at Florida State, where he was a three-year starter and won the 2010 Bobby Bowden Award. After his NFL career, which also included stints with the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers, he has been involved in business ventures and works on a platform for athletes transitioning to the business world. The Post by Christian Ponder is an invite-only leadership network for athletes who have transitioned into business careers. It provides a community, professional coaching, exclusive content, and physical clubhouses for members to connect, learn, and grow their professional lives after sports.
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The Neuralink N1 chip is a brain-computer interface (BCI) device with 1,024 electrodes across 64 ultra-thin, flexible threads that are surgically implanted into the brain by a robotic system. The coin-sized implant records neural activity, processes the signals, and transmits them wirelessly via Bluetooth to a connected app, which allows users to control external devices like a computer cursor with their thoughts. It is designed to be fully implantable, hermetically sealed, and wirelessly charged.
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Dr. McCarthy is a board certified Reproductive Endocrinologist practicing at the South Florida Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Jupiter, Florida. Dr McCarthy completed her undergraduate work at Dartmouth before attending medical school at the University of Michigan where she graduated with distinction in research. Dr. McCarthy completed a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology and a clinical and research fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of Michigan Medical Center. She is one of only a handful of physicians selected by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology to complete her training as a combined, 6 year residency/fellowship. After completing her training in 2010, Dr McCarthy moved to Florida because, after growing up in New England and training in Michigan, she was tired of not being able to feel her fingers. She loves living in South Florida with her husband and 2 grown children. Dr McCarthy focuses on providing her patients with patient-centered care with a personal touch. She is an active member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility (SREI), and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). She is an ad-hoc reviewer for ASRM and the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
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Hailing from Ottawa, Ontario, Akheem Mesidor has taken a unique path to his future in the NFL. After a stint at the Royal Imperial Collegiate of Canada, Mesidor made waves at Clearwater Academy International in Florida, racking up 92 tackles and 10 sacks in his senior year. His dominance caught the eye of college recruiters, earning him a 4-star rating from ESPN. Mesidor’s college career began at West Virginia, where he quickly established himself as a defensive standout. In just two seasons with the Mountaineers, he amassed 70 tackles, 14.5 tackles for loss, and 9.5 sacks. His freshman campaign was particularly impressive, earning him spots on multiple Freshman All-America teams and All-Big 12 Second Team honors. Transferring to Miami (FL) for his junior season, Mesidor continued to wreak havoc in the backfield. Despite an injury-shortened 2023 campaign, his 2022 performance showcased his potential, notching 38 tackles, 10.5 tackles for loss, and a team-leading seven sacks. His standout game against Virginia Tech, where he recorded 3.5 sacks, earned him national recognition as the Walter Camp National FBS Defensive Player of the Week.
Mr. Phillips served as Counselor to the Secretary at the U.S. Treasury from January 2017 to January 2019. Under Secretary Mnuchin, he focused on financial institution and capital markets policy, fiscal operations, government asset and liability management and general economic policy. He led the development for policy under the Core Principles established by Executive Order 13772. He supported Secretary Mnuchin in the development of policy for comprehensive housing finance reform and in oversight of Treasury’s investment in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Between 2008 and 2017, Mr. Phillips was a Managing Director of BlackRock where he founded and led the Financial Markets Advisory Group, a global risk consulting group that leveraged the strengths of BlackRock’s Aladdin risk platform. Mr. Phillips is a pioneer in the securitized products industry. He led numerous innovations in residential mortgage, asset-backed and commercial real estate securitization markets. From 1994 to 2006 he was a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley and led its global Securitized Product Group. Mr. Phillips serves on the Board of Directors of Ripple, a leading financial technology company that has developed a real-time gross settlement system powered by blockchain ledger that is revolutionizing the speed and efficiency of cross-border payments.
J. Mack Slaughter Jr. is an American emergency physician, philanthropist, youtuber, tiktoker and retired actor and singer. Slaughter began acting in local theatre as a child. At the age of 15, he successfully auditioned for a boy band called Sons of Harmony started by a radio station in Dallas. They toured with Destiny’s Child and opened for Bon Jovi and Jessica Simpson. Three years later, in 2001, the band broke up, after which Slaughter moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. In 2003, he won the role of Keith in the WB sitcom Like Family. The following year, Slaughter had a role in the comedy film, Fat Albert, starring Kenan Thompson and Kyla Pratt. In 2008, he founded the non-profit Music Meets Medicine, where musicians volunteer with children and youth at local hospitals, performing and teaching music. In 2018, Music Meets Medicine teamed up with non-profit, Kidd’s Kids, to raise $150,000 to create a therapeutic arts space at Dallas Children’s Medical Center.
Slaughter eventually left acting to attend UT Southwestern Medical School, graduating in 2013 and is currently an emergency room physician, at several hospitals in the Fort Worth area.
Dr. Dipen J. Parekh is a globally renowned urologic oncologist, healthcare innovator, and leader in academic medicine. He was appointed Executive Vice President for Health Affairs at the University of Miami and Chief Executive Officer of its health system (UHealth) on June 1, 2025. He remains Founding Director of the Desai Sethi Urology Institute and is an accomplished researcher and professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine who holds the Victor A. Politano Endowed Chair in Urology and is widely celebrated for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of robotic-assisted urologic oncology. Having served as Chief Operating Officer of UHealth from 2020-2025, Chief Clinical Officer from 2017-2020, Chairman of the Department of Urology since 2012, Executive Dean of Clinical Affairs at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and Director of Robotic Surgery for UHealth, Dr. Parekh brings a wealth of academic, clinical, administrative, and institutional experience to the role.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Parekh has performed more than 6,000 robotic urologic cancer surgeries, making him one of the most experienced practitioners worldwide. He led the groundbreaking RAZOR trial, published in The Lancet in 2018, which established the efficacy of robotic-assisted radical cystectomy as comparable to open surgery for bladder cancer. He is an NCI funded surgeon scientist with over 200 peer reviewed publications in urologic oncology. His dedication to innovation has also included establishing advanced robotic surgery programs in academic centers across the globe.
Don is a coach & fitness expert known for his work with celebrities & athletes. With a passion for helping individuals achieve their best selves, he emphasizes the importance of strength training, especially as we age. He opened his first NYC Gym in 2005. After operating gyms for 15 years, he expanded to a global online fitness business. He has developed a reputation for training some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Chip & Joanna Gaines, Sebastian Stan, Annie Hathaway, Matt Bomer, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Liev Schreiber, Hugh Jackman, Drew Powell, & David Harbour are among his roster of clients. As a trusted fitness expert, Don’s advice and programs have been featured in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, and Muscle & Fitness, as well as People, US Weekly, Origins, In Touch, Cosmopolitan, and Shape. He has demonstrated workouts and shared his training philosophy on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Golf Channel, Page Six TV, People NOW, E! News, Fox News, and WebMD. He also serves on the advisory board for Men’s Health magazine.
Prior to coming to NYU, Dr. Caplan was the Sidney D. Caplan Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, where he created the Center for Bioethics and the Department of Medical Ethics. He has also taught at the University of Minnesota, where he founded the Center for Biomedical Ethics; the University of Pittsburgh; and Columbia University. He received his PhD from Columbia University. Dr. Caplan is the author or editor of 35 books and more than 880 papers in peer reviewed journals. His books include Vaccination Ethics and Policy, with Jason Schwartz, and, Getting to Good: Research Integrity in Biomedicine, with Barbara Redman. He has served on a number of national and international committees including as the chair of the National Cancer Institute Biobanking Ethics Working Group; chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning; and chair of the Advisory Committee to the Department of Health and Human Services on Blood Safety and Availability. He has also served on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses, the Special Advisory committee to the International Olympic Committee on Genetics and Gene therapy, the Special Advisory Panel to the National Institutes of Mental Health on Human Experimentation on Vulnerable Subjects, the Wellcome Trust Advisory Panel on Research in Humanitarian Crises, and as the co-director of the Joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on Trafficking in Organs and Body Parts.
Edward Miguel is Distinguished Professor of Economics, the Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, & Faculty co-Director of the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 2000. He earned S.B. degrees in both Economics and Mathematics from MIT, received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow, and has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and Stanford University. Ted’s main research focus is African economic development, including work on the economic causes and consequences of violence; the impact of ethnic divisions on local collective action; interactions between health, education, environment, and productivity for the poor; and methods for transparency in social science research. He has conducted field work in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and India. He has published over 130 articles and chapters in leading academic journals and collected volumes, and his work has been cited over 50,000 times according to Google Scholar.
The “Whole Eye Transplant Moon Shot” refers to the ambitious research initiative at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute to transplant a whole eye, including the optic nerve, with the goal of restoring vision in blind patients. This project is considered a “moonshot” due to the immense scientific and technical challenges involved in successfully transplanting and reconnecting all the intricate components of the eye, particularly the optic nerve. The goal is to achieve whole eye transplantation, including the optic nerve, to restore vision in individuals with blindness. The project involves a team of experts in various fields, including ophthalmology, neurosurgery, and immunology. The primary challenge is regenerating and reconnecting the optic nerve, which is part of the central nervous system and does not readily regenerate in adults. The research is expected to lead to significant advancements in transplantation techniques, nerve regeneration, and potential cures for other diseases.
EJ Manuel, a former first-round NFL Draft pick, joined ACC Network in 2019 and is a studio analyst on The Huddle, ACCN’s signature football show that airs Saturday mornings throughout the fall. He also co-hosts ACCN’s In Play with Kelsey Riggs and is a regular each week on ESPN’s College Football Live. Along with is his ESPN duties, Manuel co-hosts College Sports Today on SiriusXM with Brock Huard.
One of the most productive quarterbacks in Florida State history, Manuel led the Seminoles to a 25-6 record as a starter during the 2009-12 seasons, and the fourth-most wins in program history. The Virginia Beach, Virginia, native also helped Florida State to notable victories including the 2013 Discover Orange Bowl, 2012 Dr Pepper ACC Football Championship Game and 2009 Gator Bowl – the final game of legendary coach Bobby Bowden’s career. He is the second quarterback in FBS history to win four straight bowl games, and also went 15-3 in his career against ACC opponents. Manuel is FSU’s all-time leader in completion percentage (66.9), which is tied for third in ACC history, and ranks among the top five Seminole quarterbacks all-time for passing yards (7,736, 4th), total offense (8,563, 3rd), completions (600, 3rd) and attempts (897, 5th), despite only two seasons as the full-time starter. He earned second team All-ACC honors for the 2012 season and was named the 2013 Senior Bowl MVP.
Following his career at FSU, Manuel was a first-round draft pick by the Buffalo Bills in 2013.
Kevin J. Tracey is president and CEO and the Karches Family Distinguished Chair in Medical Research at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research; professor of Molecular Medicine and Neurosurgery at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell; and Executive Vice President, Research, at Northwell Health. A leader in the scientific fields of inflammation and bioelectronic medicine, his contributions include discovery and molecular mapping of neural circuits controlling immunity. Dr. Tracey received his BS in chemistry, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Boston College in 1979, and his MD from Boston University in 1983. He trained in neurosurgery from 1983 to 1992 at the New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center and was a guest investigator at the Rockefeller University before moving in 1992 to the Feinstein Institutes. There he directs the Laboratory of Biomedical Science and was appointed president and CEO in 2005.
An inventor of more than 120 United States patents and author of more than 400 scientific publications, he cofounded the Global Sepsis Alliance, a non-profit organization supporting the efforts of more than 1 million sepsis caregivers in over 70 countries. Dr. Tracey is the author of Fatal Sequence (Dana Press) and delivers lectures nationally and internationally on inflammation, sepsis, the neuroscience of immunity, and bioelectronic medicine.
Bryan became nationally known as the man who “talked South Florida through” Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which lead to his work on NBC, as the CBS News Hurricane Analyst, and as Senior Hurricane Specialist at The Weather Channel. He is currently the Hurricane Analyst at Fox Weather.
Manuel Kadre is a businessperson who has been at the helm of 5 different companies. He is Chairman of Republic Services, Inc., Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of MBB Auto, LLC, President at CC1 Caribbean Importers LLC, Director & Partner at Gold Coast Restaurants, Inc. and Vice President & General Counsel at de la Cruz Cos. He is also Member of New York State Bar Association, Member of The Florida Bar and Senior Member at Orange Bowl Committee and on the board of 10 other companies. Manuel Kadre previously held the position of Chief Executive Officer for Gold Coast Caribbean Importers, LLC, Member of Murai Wald Biondo Moreno & Brochin PA, President, Secretary, Director & Vice President at CC1 Cos., Inc. and Chief Executive Officer at ClearPath Immigration LLC.
Mr. Kadre received a graduate degree from Fordham University and an undergraduate degree from Iona College.
Dr. Susanna Søberg is an international leading scientist in our metabolism during stress and rest. She did her PhD at The University of Copenhagen and has contributed to a deeper understanding of our metabolism during stress and rest in humans. She is an expert in cold & heat therapy and functional breathing for optimized health and performance. She is the founder of the “Soeberg Institute” and her science backed program “The Thermalist Cure” has helped thousands of people out of stress and burnouts and optimized their performance to new levels. She communicates and teaches “The Thermalist Cure” for private and corporate via her talks, workshops, and online programs. One of her principles is to “end cold” to increase metabolism and prolong the benefits of chemicals in the brain - A principle, which Professor Andrew Huberman from Stanford University named after her: The #soebergprinciple.
While balancing his studies as a medical student at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Marquardt finished fourth in the 2024 IRONMAN Pro Series with three podium finishes at IRONMAN Texas, IRONMAN 70.3 Mont Tremblant, and IRONMAN Lake Placid. He is driven not only to be one of the best triathletes in the world but also to make a positive impact by increasing cancer awareness and supporting research that integrates his experiences in triathlon and the medical field.
Carlos A. Migoya has served as CEO of Jackson Health System since May 2011, overseeing one of the nation’s largest and most respected public healthcare networks. Jackson has the distinction of bringing world-class medical care – including the medical school faculty and students from the University of Miami and Florida International University – to a taxpayer-owned system that guarantees a single high standard of care for all residents of Miami-Dade County. The system is anchored by Jackson Memorial Hospital, one of the most respected hospitals in Florida. The system also includes three neighborhood community hospitals, Holtz Children’s Hospital/The Women’s Hospital at Jackson Memorial, Jackson Behavioral Health Hospital, the Christine E. Lynn Rehabilitation Center for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at UHealth/Jackson Memorial, two nursing homes and a network of urgent care centers, physician practices, and clinics.
In his first year at Jackson, Mr. Migoya led a transformation that reversed years of massive losses, including an $82 million loss in the prior year, and produced a surplus of more than $8 million. It was the first time Jackson produced a surplus since 2006, and the system has earned an annual surplus every year since. At the same time, key indicators of healthcare quality and patient satisfaction improved, proving that public hospital systems need not choose between medical excellence and operational sustainability.
Mariandl Hufford is the first female head of school at Miami Country Day School, one of the top schools in the USA. Mariandl is the seventh head of the school, which is located in Northeast Miami-Dade near Miami Shores. The private, co-educational school has about 1,250 students from preschool to 12th grade. Previously, Hufford served as the assistant head of school and director of the Center for the Advancement of Girls at the Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. Hufford grew up in Suriname and Belgium before attending Bryn Mawr College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in classical studies. She holds three master’s degrees in teaching and curriculum, educational leadership and psychological services, from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. She succeeded James Connor, the interim head of school during the previous school year. Dr. John Davies retired in 2018 after 32 years, including the last 18 years as head of school. Miami Country Day was founded in 1938.
Dr. Nownes is an internationally renowned scholar on American Politics. His research focuses upon interest group politics in the United States. His book, Total Lobbying: What Lobbyists Want (and How They Try to Get It) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. He is currently working on a number of projects, including one that examines the role of lobbyists in the government procurement process.
Dr. Sandberg is Professor of Pediatric Surgery and Neurosurgery and is the Dr. Marnie Rose Professor of Pediatric Neurosurgery at McGovern Medical School/UT Health. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed neurosurgery residency training at Weill Cornell Medical College at Cornell University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He was awarded the Resident Traveling Fellowship in Pediatric Neurosurgery by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. He completed this fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. After residency, he completed fellowship training in pediatric neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. After 8 years on the faculty of the Miller School of Medicine of the University of Miami and Miami Children’s Hospital, he moved to Houston to become the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the McGovern School of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He holds a joint faculty appointment at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he is co-director of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Program. His major research interest involves novel delivery methods to treat malignant brain tumors in children.
Dr. Andrea J. Heuson has been on the Finance Faculty at the School of Business Administration at the University of Miami since 1982. She served as the Director of the International Finance and Marketing major from 1998 to 2008 and was appointed Academic Director of Real Estate Programs in 2009. Dr. Heuson has presented research at more than 100 academic conferences in her career and published articles on mortgage finance and other fixed-income markets in numerous academic journals while teaching valuation, international finance, management of financial institutions and real estate finance in undergraduate, graduate and executive level programs. Her research has appeared in Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Research and the Journal of Housing Economics. In addition to her academic duties, Heuson serves as a consultant on all aspects of real estate brokerage and appraisal licensing for the State of Florida, including evaluation of licensing examinations and educational materials. In addition to her 2015 appointment as the Secretary of AREUEA, she is also the Treasurer of the Financial Management Association and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Research.
Paul A. Pavlou’s research has been cited more than 90,000 times by Google Scholar, and Thomson Reuters recognized him among the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” based on an analysis of Highly Cited Researchers. Paul was ranked No. 1 globally in publications in top Information Systems journals from 2010 to 2016. He earned a Ph.D. in Information Systems and a master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California, and a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and managerial studies, magna cum laude, from Rice University. In his former position as Dean of the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, Paul helped raise over $150M in philanthropic gifts and commitments. During his tenure, the Bauer College led all business schools by ascending 34 spots in the U.S. News & World Report rankings to become a Top 50 MBA program; climbed 44 spots in the online master’s programs rankings; joined the Top 15 public undergraduate programs by Poets&Quants and ranked #1 undergraduate entrepreneurship program by The Princeton Review for five consecutive years. He also prioritized experiential learning and job placement through initiatives like the Office of Experiential Learning and various research institutes, while also enhancing community inclusion with programs such as the Center for Economic Inclusion, securing over $10M in philanthropic support.
Feld arrived in Coral Gables after spending the previous four seasons working in the same capacity at the University of Oregon under Cristobal. In Feld’s four years in Eugene, the Ducks compiled a 35-12 overall record, won two Pac-12 Championships and won the 2020 Rose Bowl. Feld arrived in Oregon from the University of Georgia, where he spent the previous three years as the assistant director of strength and conditioning while working with the Bulldogs’ football program. Before working at Georgia, Feld was the head strength coach at the University of North Alabama and a volunteer strength coach at the University of Alabama, where he worked with Cristobal. Feld is a graduate of Mississippi State University and holds certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association and the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association. He began his career at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he worked with both the football and women’s basketball programs.
Joel Totoro is a registered dietitian and former director of sports science at Thorne where he oversaw human performance integration with Thorne’s sports partners. Totoro became the first full-time sports dietitian in professional sports serving eight years as team dietitian for the New England Patriots directing all aspects of the team’s nutritional needs. He was also University of Michigan’s sports dietitian and served as the assistant chief dietitian at St. Luke’s Hospital in Massachusetts, specializing in trauma nutrition. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Allied Health-Dietetics from the University of Connecticut.
Dr. Adrian L. Mesa is the founder and CEO of AMP Mental Health. Active within the healthcare field since 2006, he earned his doctorate degree from the University of Miami, and has board certifications by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as both a Family Nurse Practitioner and Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. Aside from AMP, Dr. Mesa is an Army veteran, a father, a fitness enthusiast, and a photographer. Adrian traces the roots of his interest in mental health long before the start of his career. Being a first generation Cuban-American, he saw in real time the repercussions of the stigmas held by the Latino community, and even in his own family, toward those with mental illness. Dr. Mesa saw firsthand how mental illness impacted his uncle, who remains a role model and life mentor to this day and cites him as a frequent source of inspiration.
Gregory Shepard is a 20 year startup veteran and serial entrepreneur with 12 liquidity events under his belt, two of which were sold as part of a $925M transaction that won 4 Private Equity awards for transactions between $250M-$1B. He is a ForbesBooks author who has also written over 100 articles published in 25 national and international publications. A TEDX speaker and keynote speaker for universities, associations and conferences worldwide, his talks inspire the masses.He is the host of the Forbes Radio ‘Meet The BOSS‘ podcast and has been featured as a guest on over 25 popular podcasts as well as numerous network TV shows. Greg Co-Founded Boss Capital Partners, a global syndicate for investing in tech startups. He also Co-Founded Boss Startup Science with a learning center based on the University of San Diego campus. He developed the Business OperatingSupport System (BOSS) as an open source methodology to empower entrepreneurs while increasing startup success rate. Greg’s massive success can also be linked to his 7 neurodivergent conditions which allow him to see business opportunities differently.
Luis Manuel Tumialán is a Professor of Neurosurgery at the Barrow Neurological Institute specializing in minimally invasive spinal surgery. He graduated from Georgetown University School of Medicine, completed his internship at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. Dr. Tumialán completed additional training in undersea medicine in Groton Connecticut and Navy Dive School in Panama City, Florida. Upon completion of his operational training, he served as the Diving Medical Officer assigned to Naval Special Warfare Unit One in Guam during the Global War on Terror in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001. He received a Naval and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for service in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Southeast Asia and a Navy Humanitarian Medal for the search and maritime rescue of a foreign national.
Once he returned to the mainland, Dr. Tumialán completed his neurosurgery training at Emory University School of Medicine and returned to the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. He joined Barrow Brain and Spine in 2010 where he serves as the director of minimally invasive spine surgery. Dr. Tumialán’s main interests are in minimally invasive spinal surgery and motion preservation surgery as well as developing techniques for the next generation of spinal surgery.
In his 15th year of service, Eric Renaghan is in his first year as Director of Sport Science for Football. His role uses scientific principles to support the health, safety, and performance of their student-athletes through research, education, and innovation. Prior to the University of Miami, Renaghan was the Head of Sports Performance for the St. Louis Blues. He also held assistant strength and conditioning positions with the Vancouver Canucks and San Jose Sharks. Additionally, in 2020-2022, Eric was the High-Performance Advisor to the Italian Ice Hockey Federation. In 2018, Renaghan received his M.S. in Human Performance from Lindenwood University and his B.S. in Kinesiology (2005) from San Jose State University. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Exercise Physiology. Renaghan is certified in strength and conditioning (CSCS)(RSCC*) by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). Additionally, he has presented at numerous national and international conferences on various topics in sport.
Dr. Krista Varady is a Professor of Nutrition at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her research focuses on the efficacy of intermittent fasting for weight loss and metabolic disease reduction in people with obesity. Her work is funded by the NIH, American Heart Association, International Life Sciences Institute, and the University of Illinois. She has published over 100 publications on intermittent fasting and co-authors the book “The Every Other Day Diet.”
Diane Hennacy Powell, M.D. is an author, researcher, public speaker and practicing psychiatrist who started as a neuroscientist before obtaining her medical degree and training in medicine, neurology, and psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. She became a member of Harvard Medical School’s faculty and later an original member of the La Jolla Group for Understanding the Origin of Humans, a think tank at the Salk Institute with several world-renowned neuroscientists and Nobel laureates. She has spoken at international conferences such as Towards a Science of Consciousness and the IONS annual conference. Her research findings and hypotheses about the brain and psi are published in her book,The ESP Enigma: A Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena.
Her current research focuses on autistic savants. Their abilities are so similar to psychic phenomena that they defy the current paradigm about the brain and consciousness, but unlike psychic abilities, theirs are accepted because they are reproducible. Her current project investigates savants who also report psi.
Drew Rosenhaus negotiated over 10 billion dollars in contracts. Only Agent ever to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Appeared in national ESPN commercial. Published Autobiography with brother Jason titled ‘A Shark Never Sleeps”. Cameo appearance in and consultant to “Jerry MaGuire” and “Any Given Sunday” motion pictures. Regular contributor to the HBO Series “Arliss”. Ranked #1 Agent by the Sports Business Journal in 2006. Frequent national commentator on current sports issues. Has appeared on ABC Primetime Live, ABC Nightline, ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, ESPN’s Outside the Lines, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and many others. Recently featured on HBO’s Real Sports and Inside the NFL. Appeared in a national Burger King commercial with client “The King”
Dr. Anil Menon was selected by NASA to join the 2021 Astronaut Candidate Class. Menon was SpaceX’s first flight surgeon, helping to launch its first humans to space during the Demo-2 mission and building a medical organization to support the human system during future missions. Prior, he served NASA as the crew flight surgeon for various expeditions on the International Space Station. Menon is an actively practicing emergency medicine physician with fellowship training in wilderness and aerospace medicine. As a physician he was a first responder during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, 2015 earthquake in Nepal, and the 2011 Reno Air Show accident. In the U.S. Air Force, Lt. Col. Menon supports the 45th Space Wing as a flight surgeon and supported the 173rd Fighter Wing where he logged over 100 sorties in the F-15 and transported over 100 patients as part of the critical care air transport team.
Dr. Crane is a distinguished leader in cancer control and is passionate about her commitment to the science of better outcomes for patients and community. Her work sits at the intersection of lifestyle medicine and digital health with a goal of developing targeted interventions, utilizing digital biomarkers to deliver the right intervention, at the right time to the right person. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and is an R25 Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer (TREC) NCI Fellow.
Dr. Crane was recruited to Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center to co-lead the Cancer Control Research Program and direct the Lifestyle Medicine, Prevention and Digital health initiative. She serves on the University of Miami IRB’s consent to contact committee as the Sylvester representative for cancer-related studies and is an appointed cabinet member to the Executive Dean for Research of the Miller School of Medicine. As the population science representative, she serves on the Gynecologic Oncology and Lymphoma site disease groups and works with clinical and research faculty members. She was recently appointed the Vice-Chair for NRG Oncology NCORP Cancer Prevention and Control Committee.
Dr. Crane joined Sylvester from the College of Nursing, Biobehavioral Health Sciences Division, at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she served as co-lead of the Behavioral Measurement and Interventions Shared Resource at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. She also held joint appointments in the Department of Nutrition Sciences, Data Science Institute, and Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.
Dr. Michael Fischer is an Assistant Scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) at the University of Miami. His research interests involve environmental and convective influences on tropical cyclone structure and intensity change, with an emphasis on processes associated with tropical cyclone rapid intensification. His research utilizes a combination of satellite and aircraft observations, reanalysis products, numerical modeling, and machine-learning techniques.
Sean Swarner is a living testament to resilience. Given 14 days to live, he emerged as the first cancer survivor atop Everest, scaling all seven continents’ peaks, skiing to both Poles, and completing the Hawaii Ironman World Championship. Beyond milestones, he founded The Cancer Climber Association, wrote “BECOMING UNSTOPABLE: Conquering Your Everest” and is a sought-after speaker. From crawling in a hospital to Everest’s summit, Sean’s journey inspires globally.
Achievements:
2-Time Cancer Survivor
1st Cancer Survivor to Summit Mount Everest
1st Cancer Survivor to Complete the 7-Summits
Has Spoken In Front of Over 1 Million People
* Taken Over 1000 People on Adventure Expeditions
Dr. Bob Hariri is an accomplished surgeon, biomedical scientist, and serial entrepreneur in two technology sectors, biomedicine and aerospace. He is the chairperson, founder, and chief executive officer of Celularity, Inc., one of the world’s leading human cellular therapeutics companies.
Dr. Hariri was the founder and CEO of Anthrogenesis Corporation, and after its acquisition by Celgene Corporation, served as CEO of Celgene Cellular Therapeutics. Dr. Hariri also co-founded the genomic-based health intelligence company, Human Longevity, Inc. Dr. Hariri has served on numerous public boards including Cryoport. Dr. Hariri pioneered the use of stem cells to treat a range of life-threatening human diseases and continues today to make transformative contributions in the fields of immuno-oncology and cell therapeutics along with tissue engineering and functional regeneration. He is widely acknowledged for his discovery of pluripotent stem cells derived from the human placenta, and as a member of the team that discovered the physiological activities of tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Dr. Hariri and his team of scientists were the first to obtain FDA approval to use its cryopreserved allogeneic, off-the-shelf Natural Killer (NK) cell therapy to treat COVID-19 infected adults. He holds over 170 issued and pending patents for discoveries including placenta-derived stem cells, which Nature recognized as one of the ten most important patent estates in the field. He has authored over 150 published chapters, articles, and abstracts.
Eric Mac Lain joined ACC Network in 2019 and is a studio analyst on The Huddle, ACCN’s signature football show that airs Friday evenings and Saturday mornings throughout the fall. Mac Lain also appears on studio shows across ESPN networks throughout the college football season. He also contributes to ESPN’s XFL game coverage as a field analyst.
A Hope Mill, N.C., native, Mac Lain played at Clemson 2011-15, where the Tigers captured two conference championships and made a national championship appearance. He obtained the most wins (46) by a single player in Clemson history, while earning Strength and Conditioning All America honors. As a student, Mac Lain was an All-ACC Academic Football Team selection and was graduated with a bachelor’s in health science (2015) and a master’s in athletic leadership and administration (2017). He joined ACCN from JMI Sports where he worked on multimedia sponsorship rights for Clemson athletics.
As President of the University of Miami and CEO of UHealth, Joe Echevarria leads more than 20,000 professionals whose focus is transforming lives through education, research, and patient care.
A seasoned chief executive, Mr. Echevarria served as the CEO of Deloitte LLP, a global provider of professional services, from 2011 until his retirement in 2014. During his 36-year tenure with the firm, he served in various leadership roles, including Deputy Managing Partner, Southeast Region, Audit Managing Partner, and U.S. Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer. His leadership responsibilities extended to approximately 70,000 professionals in nearly 90 U.S. cities and India, as well as the firm’s US-owned consulting businesses in Germany, Mexico, China, and Brazil.
Mr. Echevarria has a long history of service to the University of Miami, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1978. Following his retirement from Deloitte and seven years of service on its Board of Trustees from 2012 to 2019, Echevarria brought his expertise to the University of Miami Health System as a Senior Advisor to former President Julio Frenk, Interim Chief Financial Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, and Interim Chief Executive Officer. He became Chief Executive Officer of UHealth in 2020 and his responsibilities as CEO grew to include the entire University in 2022. On June 12, 2024, the University of Miami Board of Trustees appointed him Acting President of the University.
One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., is a passionate educator, author, political commentator, and public intellectual who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including “Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul”, “In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America”, and his most recent, the New York Times bestseller, “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own”, takes an exhaustive look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy. Of Baldwin, Glaude writes, “Baldwin’s writing does not bear witness to the glory of America. It reveals the country’s sins and the illusion of innocence that blinds us to the reality of others. Baldwin’s vision requires a confrontation with our history (with slavery, Jim Crow segregation, with whiteness) to overcome its hold on us. Not to posit the greatness of America, but to establish the ground upon which to imagine the country anew.”
A highly accomplished and respected scholar of religion, Glaude is a former president of the American Academy of Religion. His books on religion and philosophy include “An Uncommon Faith: A Pragmatic Approach to the Study of African American Religion”, “African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction”, and “Exodus! Religion, Race and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America”, which was awarded the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Book Prize.
Educated at the Universities of Keele and London, Professor Tipton joined the University of Surrey in 1986. After 12 years at the Robens Institute and European Institute of Health and Medical Science he moved to the University of Portsmouth in 1998. In addition to his University positions, Professor Tipton was based at the Institute of Naval Medicine (INM) from 1983 to 2004 and was Consultant Head of the Environmental Medicine Unit of the INM from 1996. He has spent over 30 years researching and advising in the areas of thermoregulation, environmental and occupational physiology and survival in the sea. He has published over 400 scientific papers, reports, chapters and books in these areas. Professor Tipton is a consultant in survival and thermal medicine to the Royal Air Force and UKSport; he sits on the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s Medical & Survival Committee, Surf Lifesaving GB’s medical and research advisory panel and the Ectodermal Dysplasia Society’s medical advisory board. He Chairs UKSport’s Research Advisory Group which oversees all medical and technological research undertaken with and for Team GB’s athletes. Prof Tipton is Patron of the SARbot charity, a Trustee of Surf Lifesaving GB and section editor of the journal Extreme Physiology and Medicine. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Prof Tipton provides advice to a range of universities, government departments, industries, medical, search and rescue and media organizations.
Renée DiResta is the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies. Renée investigates the spread of narratives across social and media networks, with an interest in understanding how platform algorithms and affordances intersect with user behavior and factional crowd dynamics. She studies how actors leverage the information ecosystem to exert influence, from domestic activists promoting health misinformation and conspiracy theories, to the full-spectrum information operations executed by state actors. She was a 2021 Emerson Fellow and 2018-2019 Mozilla Fellow, a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar, a Council on Foreign Relations term member, and a Truman National Security Fellow. She is the author of The Hardware Startup: Building your Product, Business, and Brand and has degrees in Computer Science and Political Science from Stony Brook University.
Daniel Corbett III served as an elite Navy SEAL operator, part of SEAL Teams 5, 6, and 17. He’s now an ex-military operator for hire. He joined the navy shortly after graduating high school in 2002 and was deployed to Iraq in the summer of 2005 with SEAL Team 5. He joined SEAL Team 6 in 2007, deploying to various locations around the world. In 2010, Daniel returned to the West Coast and began instructing at the Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command (NSWBTC). Daniel ended his active-duty career after two years with NSWBTC and quickly fell into the world of private military contracting. Daniel joined the active reserves in 2014 and maintained his active reserve status until 2019. In 2017, Daniel made international news when he was thrown in jail in Belgrade, Serbia, for eighteen months after traveling there as a private contractor to track a terrorist financier. Daniel still monitors international news and continues to entertain phone calls and meetings with those who need unique solutions to unique problems.
Alex R. Piquero is Professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminology and Arts & Sciences Distinguished Scholar the University of Miami and previously served as the Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one of the nation’s thirteen federal statistical agencies (appointed by President Biden, June 2022). Dr. Piquero is a nationally and internationally recognized criminologist with more than 26 years of experience. Over the course of his career, Dr. Piquero has given congressional testimony on evidence-based crime prevention practices and has provided counsel and support to several local, state, national and international criminal justice agencies and elected leaders. His expertise ranges from criminal careers to criminal justice policy and crime prevention to the intersection of race/ethnicity and crime, with a focus on quantitative methodology. Dr. Piquero has published over 500 scholarly articles and several books and is among the most highly cited criminologists in the world. He also served as editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology and the Justice Evaluation Journal. He is a Fellow of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. In 2019, he received the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Bruce Smith Sr. Award for outstanding contributions to criminal justice, and in 2020, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology of the American Society of Criminology.
Rico Simonini is an Italian-American actor and cardiologist. Rico Simonini graduated New York University with a bachelor’s degree and the John Parkes History Award. As an actor he has enjoyed the opportunity to play leading roles in dozens of plays on stages in New York, Los Angeles and a few places in between. However, Rico’s journey in the dramatic arts has shadowed his primary vocational pursuit which propelled him from tree-lined Brooklyn roots, to New York’s Bellevue Hospital, then to San Francisco, Boston, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Chicago and eventually Los Angeles; cardiovascular medicine.
Eventually after being recruited by one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious medical centers, it was an inevitability that his artistic pursuits would blossom as often times his clients would recruit him and indulge his fancy for film and theater. In 2014, playwright Willard Manus chose Rico to originate the role of Frank Sinatra in “Frank and Ava” a two-hander developed at the Actors’ Studio, that portrayed the iconic romance between “extraordinary individuals” facing obstacles relatable to all: impossible love and lofty dreams, the yearnings for which push us to the brink. This story, based on true events, of Sinatra’s redemption and resurrection despite improbable odds in an unfriendly world (the scrutiny of the 1950’s) inspired Rico to undertake a screenplay adaptation and his first feature film production premiere in 2018, with global release in early 2019. The film, “Frank and Ava” is now available on major streaming platforms.
Management thought leader and award-winning organizational psychologist Wendy K. Smith is on a mission to help individuals and organizations turn our problems into possibilities. Smith currently holds the prestigious title of Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management and serves as the faculty director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware. Wendy is also one of the youngest people named as an Academy of Management Fellow. As an organizational psychologist, she is a leading expert on the power of paradox - applying both/and thinking to help us innovate, change and generate more creative, sustainable solutions to our toughest challenges. In her talks, Wendy brings science-based research to life with real world stories to both captivate and motivate her audiences.
Smith is the co-author of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, along with Marianne Lewis, named a Top 10 Management Book by Thinkers50, a finalist for the Next Big Idea Award, and a #1 Amazon New Release. Smith and Lewis were awarded the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award for these groundbreaking ideas. Wendy is also an award-winning scholar. She has been named the Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers for being among the top 1% most-cited researchers for 5 years in a row.
Dr Hernandez Rey specializes in treating patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), recurrent pregnancy loss (miscarriage), and severe endometriosis. He is especially interested in fertility preservation (egg freezing) for patients who must delay childbearing for personal or medical reasons, including cancer and systemic lupus erythematosus. As one of only two fertility specialists offering robotic surgery in Miami, Dr. Hernandez-Rey is able to offer minimally invasive surgeries with faster recovery times and minimal scarring, often as an alternative to advanced treatments such as IVF. He has performed numerous tubal reanastomosis procedures (tubal ligation reversal), myomectomies (removal of fibroids), and surgery for severe cases of endometriosis for the management of infertility.
Dr. Hernandez-Rey has made dreams come true for hundreds of families from South Florida and across the world. He prides himself on being accessible to his patients to ensure they are calm and reassured, a key component to his success. Dr. Hernandez-Rey is an assistant clinical professor at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University and serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for the prestigious peer-reviewed journal, Fertility and Sterility.
EJ Manuel, a former first-round NFL Draft pick, joined ACC Network in 2019 and is a studio analyst on The Huddle, ACCN’s signature football show that airs Saturday mornings throughout the fall. He also co-hosts ACCN’s In Play with Kelsey Riggs and is a regular each week on ESPN’s College Football Live. Along with is his ESPN duties, Manuel co-hosts College Sports Today on SiriusXM with Brock Huard.
Myron was ranked the No. 1 high school football prospect in the country. With 83 scholarship offers from Division I institutions, Myron matriculated to FSU. At FSU, he earned his degree in just two and a half years and was awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship upon graduation, enabling him to study at Oxford University in England. Rolle skipped his senior year of football to pursue a master’s degree at Oxford and simultaneously train for the NFL Draft. In 2010, Dr. Rolle was selected in NFL Draft by the Tennessee Titans and finished his career three years later with the Pittsburgh Steelers. After life in the NFL, Myron enrolled at the FSU College of Medicine followed by neurosurgery residency at Harvard.
Dr. Agarwal has been on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Medical School prior to returning to the University of Miami in 2007, where she has been inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society, Alpha Omega Alpha and the Iron Arrow Honor Society. She has developed, directed, and taught numerous courses at the medical school including the Cardiovascular Course, Respiratory Course, Doctoring/Physicianship courses, the Internal Medicine Clerkship, the Medical Education Elective, and the Transitioning to Residency Course. She has an interest in the medical humanities and served as the pathway director in ethics and medical humanities. She founded Obliterants, the medical school’s first humanities journal. She serves as the faculty advisor for the magazine and for UM’s chapter of the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She has won many school, regional, and national teaching awards including the American College of Physicians (ACP) Medical Educator Award.
Kendall Burman serves as PHC Global’s President. Prior to joining PHC Global, Burman held leadership roles at Alloy, a data and technology start-up for the progressive political market. Burman previously served as the Deputy General Counsel for Strategic Initiatives at the Department of Commerce and as Associate White House Counsel and Special Assistant to the President in the Obama Administration. She was also a counsel in the cybersecurity and data privacy practice at Mayer Brown and served as Chief Staff Counsel for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Burman is a graduate of Bowdoin College and received her J.D. from the University of Chicago where she was an editor of the law review. She was also was a fellow at both the New America Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Daisy Sanchez is a Mexican-American surgeon, cosmetologist, and social media influencer. She attended medical school at The Medical University of South Carolina and completed her general surgery residency at Memorial Healthcare System. She is currently a plastic surgery fellow at The University of Texas, San Antonio.
EJ Manuel, a former first-round NFL Draft pick, joined ACC Network in 2019 and is a studio analyst on The Huddle, ACCN’s signature football show that airs Saturday mornings throughout the fall. He also co-hosts ACCN’s In Play with Kelsey Riggs and is a regular each week on ESPN’s College Football Live. Along with is his ESPN duties, Manuel co-hosts College Sports Today on SiriusXM with Brock Huard.
One of the most productive quarterbacks in Florida State history, Manuel led the Seminoles to a 25-6 record as a starter during the 2009-12 seasons, and the fourth-most wins in program history. The Virginia Beach, Virginia, native also helped Florida State to notable victories including the 2013 Discover Orange Bowl, 2012 Dr Pepper ACC Football Championship Game and 2009 Gator Bowl – the final game of legendary coach Bobby Bowden’s career. He is the second quarterback in FBS history to win four straight bowl games, and also went 15-3 in his career against ACC opponents. Manuel is FSU’s all-time leader in completion percentage (66.9), which is tied for third in ACC history, and ranks among the top five Seminole quarterbacks all-time for passing yards (7,736, 4th), total offense (8,563, 3rd), completions (600, 3rd) and attempts (897, 5th), despite only two seasons as the full-time starter. He earned second team All-ACC honors for the 2012 season and was named the 2013 Senior Bowl MVP.
Following his career at FSU, Manuel was a first-round draft pick by the Buffalo Bills in 2013.
Dr. Schwartz received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. After completing his residency and chief residency in Neurosurgery at The Neurological Institute of NewYork at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Dr. Schwartz spent a year at Yale-New Haven Medical Center receiving advanced fellowship training. Dr. Schwartz specializes in the surgical treatment of brain tumors, pituitary tumors, and epilepsy using the latest techniques in computer-guided surgical navigation, minimally invasive endoscopy, and microsurgery. Dr. Schwartz was recently named David and Ursel Barnes Professor in Minimally Invasive Surgery, the first endowed professorship in the department.
Dr. Schwartz has provided commentary for numerous television shows on ABC, NBC, CBS, and Larry King, in addition to national radio shows. His expertise has been sought through interviews, quoted and published, in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, and Crain’s New York Business; he is asked to lecture throughout the country and world. Dr. Schwartz has published many scholarly articles for the Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, Epilepsia, Clinical Neurosurgery the Journal of Neuro-Oncology, Nature Medicine, NeuroImage and the Journal of Neuroscience.
Dr. Schwartz has been named one of New York’s Super Doctors, Best Doctors in New York Magazine, America’s Top Surgeons, America’s Best Doctors and America’s Best Doctors for Cancer. He is the co-author of two books on endoscopic skull base surgery and endoscopic pituitary surgery.
Dr. LJ Maxfield is an Instagram star and dermatologist known for creating content about conditions that affect the skin, hair and nails. His posts include facts about acne, wrinkles and retinoids. He has published in various medical journals. He has amassed more than 170,000 followers on his dr.ljmaxfield Instagram account. Outside of social media, Dr. Maxfield is a North Carolina coastal-based dermatologist known for integrating medical dermatology and skincare into an active lifestyle. Dr. Maxfield has published extensively and worked for years in medical education teaching, building curriculum, and tutoring medical students and resident physicians. He believes that knowledge empowers and is passionate about sharing this through social media.
Dr. Jeffrey A. Engel is founding director of the Center for Presidential History at SMU and Professor in the Department of History. A Senior Fellow of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and of the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies, he graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University. He additionally studied at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before holding a John M. Olin Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University. In 2012 the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations named him their Bernath Prize lecturer, while at SMU the students voted him their Professor of the Year.
Engel has authored or edited twelve books on American foreign policy. A frequent media contributor on international and political affairs on venues including MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, National Public Radio, and the BBC, his scholarly and popular articles have appeared in such journals as Diplomatic History; Diplomacy & Statecraft; American Interest; USAToday; The Los Angeles Times; International Journal; The Dallas Morning News; The Houston Chronicle; Air & Space Magazine; and The Washington Post.
Dr. Michael Collins is the Director and Chief Neuropsychologist at The Clinical Neuropsychology Center (CNC). Dr. Collins is a licensed psychologist in Florida and Rhode Island that has testified 100’s times as an expert witness and court appointed or retained for over 2000 psychological evaluations (Civil and Criminal). Prior to founding CNC, Dr. Collins was the Director of Psychology at South University and has since that time developed the Broward County Post Arrest Diversion program. Dr. Collins earned his PHD in Clinical Neuropsychology from Nova Southeastern University and completed supervised training in forensic and neuropsychology. Dr. Collins is a medical vendor with the Justice Administration Commission in all 20 judicial circuits throughout the state of Florida.
Dr. Erin Kobetz is Vice Provost for Research and Tenured Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Public Health Sciences, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine. Additionally, she is Associate Director of Population Science and Cancer Disparities at UM’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center (SCCC), as well as, the Chief of Population Health and Cancer Disparities for UHealth Oncology Service line. Dr. Kobetz also serves as Program Director for the Community Engagement and Multidisciplinary Team Science Components of UM’s Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSA).
She earned a Master's in Public Health from Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in 1999, and joined the University of Miami in September of 2004, after completing her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Public Health. Soon after, Dr. Kobetz established Patnè en Aksyon (Partners in Action), Sylvester’s first ever campus community partnership in Little Haiti, the largest enclave of Haitian settlement, and remains committed to integrating diverse stakeholders into the translational research continuum.
Dr. Erin Kobetz is Vice Provost for Research and Tenured Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Public Health Sciences, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine. Additionally, she is Associate Director of Population Science and Cancer Disparities at UM’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center (SCCC), as well as, the Chief of Population Health and Cancer Disparities for UHealth Oncology Service line. Dr. Kobetz also serves as Program Director for the Community Engagement and Multidisciplinary Team Science Components of UM’s Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSA).
She earned a Master's in Public Health from Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in 1999, and joined the University of Miami in September of 2004, after completing her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Public Health. Soon after, Dr. Kobetz established Patnè en Aksyon (Partners in Action), Sylvester’s first ever campus community partnership in Little Haiti, the largest enclave of Haitian settlement, and remains committed to integrating diverse stakeholders into the translational research continuum.
Tricia Cullop is the eighth head coach in program history. Cullop comes to Coral Gables after spending the past 16 seasons as the head coach at the University of Toledo, where she compiled a record of 353-169. The six-time Mid-American Conference Coach of the Year led the Rockets to five MAC regular season championships and 11 postseason berths, including two trips to the NCAA Tournament. Prior to Toledo, Cullop spent eight seasons as the head coach at the University of Evansville. A respected leader in college basketball coaching circles, Cullop served as the President of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 membership years. In 2022, she received the WBCA Carol Eckman Integrity in Coaching Award, which is awarded to the member coach who best reflects Eckman’s character traits of courage, ethical behavior, honesty, sportsmanship and commitment to the student-athlete. Cullop earned MAC Coach of the Year honors in each of the past three seasons as her Rockets won a total of 85 games and captured three conference regular season crowns. In 2023-24, Toledo posted a 28-6 record, including a 15-1 mark at home, where the Rockets averaged 4,351 fans per game, good for first in the MAC and 33rd nationally. UT advanced to the quarterfinals of the WBIT.
Eric Schulze, PhD is a professional molecular biologist, genetic engineer, and former federal biotechnology regulator. He is currently Founder and CEO of GOODHUMANS STRATEGY & DESIGN AGENCY, a full-service food innovation consultancy for a climate-changing world. Previously, Dr. Schulze has served as Vice President of Global Regulatory and Public Policy at UPSIDE FOODS, the world’s first cultivated meat company. At UPSIDE, he led the company’s regulatory-, policy-, and government affairs. Dr. Schulze and his team developed the policy and processes that brought the first-ever cultivated meat product to market in the US in 2023. Dr. Schulze also served in a company spokesperson capacity and launched the first-ever cultivated meat FSQA program, first regulatory affairs program, food product development program, and cell line development program.
Before the private sector, he served as a U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulator, handling a portfolio of novel food and drug biotechnology products. As a civil servant, Dr. Schulze also served as a federal STEM education policy capacity within the National Science Foundation and currently works with the National Academy of Sciences on undergraduate STEM education transformation. He holds an interdisciplinary doctorate in genetic, cellular, and molecular biology with a specialty in embryonic stem cell engineering from the University of Southern California (2010), a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Loyola University New Orleans (2005), and is trained in broadcast communication, speechwriting, and risk assessment.
Join us this Friday as we welcome Owner/Publisher of Miami Community Newspapers and nationally recognized journalist, Grant Miller: Why American Media is Corrupt.
Wendy G. Lichtenthal, PhD, FT, is Faculty in The Department of Public Health at The Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and University of Miami. Previously she was an associate attending psychologist and director of the bereavement clinic in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and assistant professor of psychology in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Lichtenthal’s research has focused on meaning-making, fear of recurrence, and intervention development in the cancer setting for patients and their family members, with a focus on breast cancer and loss. Her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, the T.J. Martell Foundation, and Cycle for Survival. Dr. Lichtenthal was the recipient of the Kawano New Investigator Award from the International Psycho-Oncology Society in 2012 and the Research Recognition Award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling in 2019. As a licensed clinical psychologist, her practice focuses on helping breast cancer patients and their families cope and find meaning in the face of adversity.
Dominic Chambrone is the humble self-taught cobbler who managed to turn his obsession for sneakers into a stellar career and is responsible for some of the most genius, in-demand customs of all time. The celebrated sneaker virtuoso deconstructs shoes, takes them apart and rebuilds them with premium materials (and sometimes even a better fit), along with building samples and prototypes from scratch.
Chambrone started out in high school customizing a pair of all-white Air Force 1 Mids to camouflage. The props he got from his peers spurred him on to continue, moving him onto sewing machines and working with leathers, learning the ins and out of shoe repair trade.
From pro-bono paint jobs, via a pair of all-white Vans chukkas that he customized with laser-etched Tandy leather for Charlotte’s Niche Market, he was soon making shoes for the likes of Will.I.Am, Justin Bieber, NBA superstar LeBron James, DJ Khaled and Drake, with a certain python Air Jordan going viral. He also created the “Misplaced Checks,” a premium Nike Air Force 1 with multiple Swooshes in different material together with John Geiger, and lent his magic to a string of fire YEEZY Boost.
Today he is responsible for a mind-boggling array of desirable drops and high-profile collaborations, with custom sneakers clocking in anything from $3000 – $30,000 and let’s not forget the stunning Nike LeBron 15 sneakers dressed in 24 karat gold and diamonds. They were valued at $100,000, and was gifted to LeBron by The Shoe Surgeon in 2018 sending the sneakerati and fans across the globe into a frenzy.
Russell Earl "Bucky" Dent is a retired Major League Baseball player and manager widely remembered by fans for his tenure with the New York Yankees … and his famous tie-breaking home run versus the Boston Red Sox at the end of the 1978 season. The St. Louis Cardinals originally selected Dent in the 1st round of the 1970 amateur draft but he did not sign with the team, allowing the Chicago White Sox to take him the 1st round (6th overall) of the June Secondary later that year. The right-handed shortstop spent four seasons (1973-1976) in Chicago, finishing second in 1974 Rookie of the Year balloting (behind Mike Hargrove). Bucky also appeared on the first of what would be three All-Star Game rosters (1975, 1980, 1981) while with the team. However, Dent had trouble successfully succeeded Luis Aparicio at short, compiling a .239 batting average and 209 RBI, and eventually was traded to the Yankees (1977-1982), where he became part of Bronx Bomber history. Dent hit a three-run homer that gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead in the 1978 AL East division play-off game versus the BoSox … an unlikely event as Dent had hit only 40 home runs in a dozen seasons in the big leagues. Dent batted .417 in that year’s World Series, earning MVP honors as New York topped the Los Angeles Dodgers. At the end of his professional career, Bucky spent time with the Texas Rangers (1982-1983) and the Kansas City Royals (1984) before retiring with a .246 batting average and 423 RBI. He compiled a 36-52 record managing the Yankees at the end of the 1989 and beginning of the 1990 seasons.
Miriam Kalamian is a nutrition consultant, educator, and author specializing in the implementation of ketogenic therapies. She earned her master of education (EdM) from Smith College and her master of human nutrition (MS) from Eastern Michigan University. She is board certified in nutrition (CNS) by the Board for Certification of Nutrition Specialists. Inspired by the work of Thomas N. Seyfried, PhD, Miriam draws on a decade of experience to provide comprehensive guidelines that specifically address the many diet and lifestyle challenges associated with a cancer diagnosis.
Miriam is a leading voice in the keto movement. Her passion for helping others implement this diet comes directly from her personal experience. Her son Raffi was diagnosed with a brain tumor in December 2004. Standard of care therapies failed to stop the relentless progression of his disease, and it became painfully clear that she needed to switch gears quickly. That is what originally led her to Dr. Thomas Seyfried’s research supporting the use of the ketogenic diet for cancer.
Beyond cancer, Miriam integrates nutritional strategies with metabolic therapies and lifestyle modifications to develop personalized treatments that address a broad spectrum of conditions that are currently considered intractable, including age-related, neurodegenerative, and bariatric diseases.
Dr. Al Musella interest in brain tumors started when his sister-in-law, Lana, was diagnosed with a GBM in 1992, and was told it was hopeless. After surgery and radiation, the tumor was larger than before the surgery and she was told she only had a few weeks left to live and there was no treatment options for her other than a standard course of BCNU, which had no chance to help her for more than a few extra weeks. Al created and ran the Brain Tumor Forum on Compuserve in January 1993. He organized the members and had them help survey every major hospital in the USA to find what treatments were available. That list was posted on Compuserve and became the basis for the first internet database of clinical trials. At that time, the NCI only maintained lists of clinical trials that they funded, not the trials sponsored by the drug companies or the individual doctors or hospitals. The NCI invited Al to demonstrate his technology to them, and the clinicaltrials.gov website was created.
Dr. Musella is currently focused on getting a new law passed called the promising pathway act. It will create a conditional approval pathway for brain tumor (and other serious diseases) treatments, as well as a learning system to track all patients who use the conditionally approved treatments.
Brian Levine has a rich work experience spanning over several years. Brian started their career at Goldman Sachs in 1994 and worked their way up to become a Partner and co-head of Global Equities Trading and Execution Services. At Goldman Sachs, they served on various committees, including the Firmwide Risk Committee, Firmwide Technology Risk Committee, and Securities Division Executive Committee. Brian retired from Goldman Sachs in 2019. Afterwards, they co-founded The Public Health Company in 2020, where they held the position of Co-Founder and Senior Advisor. The Public Health Company specializes in biosecurity and offers a SaaS-enabled service for the management of bio-risks. Currently, Brian is serving as the Interim Chief Executive Officer at Major League Pickleball.
Brian Levine completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at Emory University - Goizueta Business School from 1992 to 1994. Prior to that, they earned a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree from the University of Florida, where they studied from 1988 to 1992.
Lewis C. Cantley, PhD, is a Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School. Prior to this appointment, he was the Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor and Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical College/Ronald P. Stanton Clinical Cancer Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital (2012-22). Dr. Cantley is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College, obtained a PhD in biophysical chemistry from Cornell University, completed postdoctoral training at Harvard University, and subsequently taught and conducted research in biochemistry, physiology and cancer biology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. His laboratory discovered the PI 3-Kinase pathway that plays a critical role in insulin signaling and in cancers.
Dr. Cantley was elected to the National Academy of Inventors in 2020, the Institute of Medicine in 2014, the National Academy of Sciences in 2001, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. Among his other awards are the ASBMB Avanti Award for Lipid Research in 1998, the Heinrich Wieland Preis for Lipid Research in 2000, the Caledonian Prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2002, the 2005 Pezcoller Foundation–AACR International Award for Cancer Research, the 2009 Rolf Luft Award for Diabetes and Endocrinology Research from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, the 2011 Pasrow Prize for Cancer Research, the 2013 Breakthrough in Life Sciences Prize and the 2013 Jacobaeus Prize for Diabetes Research from the Karolinska Institute and the 2015 AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship.
Fifteen-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Teresa Rodríguez was the spokesperson of Univision’s corporate initiative “Univisionarios,” (2021-2023) which celebrated the positive contributions of Hispanics in the United States. For over 20 years, she was the co-anchor of the primetime award-winning weekly newsmagazine program, “Aquí y Ahora,” (Here and Now), in which she covered investigative and consumer stories as well as conducted interviews with leading newsmakers, politicians and celebrities.
She is the recipient of a George Foster Peabody Award and a Silver Angel Award for Excellence in Media. She was named to the 2013 Power Women list by New York Moves Magazine and was recognized by The Hollywood Reporter for having one of the top 10 highest Q scores for Spanish-speaking U.S. Latinos. She was also honored with the Silver Circle Award from the Suncoast, Florida chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In 2016, she received a GLAAD award for her special, “En Cuerpo Ajeno,” (“In a Foreign Body”), which examined the lives of four transgender individuals. In 2017 she won another GLAAD outstanding journalism award for her story on a well-known Venezuelan singer and her transgender son. Most recently, Teresa was recognized as “Journalist of the Year” at HPRA’s National ¡Bravo! Awards.
Dr. Grunch was born and raised in Gainesville, Georgia, and graduated from West Hall High School. For undergraduate school, she went to the University of Georgia where she completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. Dr. Grunch then attended medical school at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Georgia, and subsequently matched in neurological surgery at Duke University where she completed her internship in 2008. She trained in neurological surgery at Duke University and graduated in 2013. At Duke, she earned the Synthes Spine Fellowship from 2010-2011. Dr. Grunch’s main interests are minimally invasive spine techniques and advancing the field of neurotrauma.
Erika De La Vega is known in the entertainment industry as a talented presenter, announcer, comedian, producer, and actress. The Venezuelan beauty with a charismatic personality and irreverent humor began her career in radio, where she spent 18 years on significant radio platforms. Thanks to her highly recognized voice, she secured a role in the Spanish version of Toy Story 3 as “Dolly the doll.” After making it into Hollywood, she ventured into the world of television, both in Venezuela and in Latin America. Erika hosted “Fama, sudor y Lagrimas,” “Diente por diente,” and “Latin American Idol.”
Erika’s influences have also impacted other industries, such as Food and Beauty. She has been the image of recognized brands, including Pantene, Pepsi, Movistar, Pampers, and Directv, among others. In addition to her podcast En Defensa Propia by Erika De La Vega, she is also one of the co-hosts of E!’s Ojos de Mujer. De La Vega, alongside a group of extraordinary women, gives their honest opinion about a different trending topic in its second season. The fun talk show includes Chiky Bombón, Elizabeth Gutiérrez, and Carla Medina.
Prof. MacDuffie’s global research on the determinants of high-performance manufacturing is featured centrally in the books The Machine That Changed the World and After Lean Production: Evolving Employment Practices in the World Auto Industry. His publications can be found in top academic journals across a wide range of domains, including Global Strategy Journal, Human Relations, Industrial and Corporate Change, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Operations Management, Management Science, Organization Studies, Production and Operations Management, and Strategic Management Journal, and also in practitioner-oriented journals such as California Management Review and Harvard Business Review.
Prof. MacDuffie’s commentaries on the global automotive industry and trends in employment systems are featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bloomberg Business Week, Fortune, and on National Public Radio and Knowledge@Wharton. He is a founding board member and current President of the Industry Studies Association, co-curator of the Automotive Transformation Map of the World Economic Forum, and a former member of the Automotive Experts Group at the Federal Reserve Bank.
Lee Kaplan, M.D., is the Director of the University of Miami Sports Medicine Institute and a Board-Certified Orthopaedic Surgeon. He is also the Petra and Stephen Levin Endowed Chair in Sports Medicine, and a Professor of Orthopaedics, Biomedical Engineering, and Kinesiology and Sports Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Kaplan is a renowned specialist in sports-related knee, shoulder, and elbow injuries, and arthroscopic surgery. He earned his undergraduate degree from John Hopkins University, fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh and completed his residency at University of Miami Hospital. Dr. Kaplan received his medical degree from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kaplan is the Medical Director of the University of Miami Department of Intercollegiate Athletics and Medical Director and Team Physician for the Miami Marlins and USA Olympic Team.
Azizi Seixas, Ph.D., is Inaugural Chair of the Department of Informatics and Health Data Science at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He is also Founding Director of The Media and Innovation Lab (The MIL), Associate Director of the Center for Translational Sleep and Circadian Sciences (TSCS) and Director of Population Health Informatics in the Institute for Data Science and Computing. He was recently awarded one of Miami’s Most Influential and Powerful Black Business Leaders, an Education Champion Awardee by Amazon Web Services for his innovative work using cloud computing technology and his advocacy for improving education and has been recognized by Cell Press as one of the top 100 most inspiring Black scientists in America. His work has been widely supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF) and several industry and foundation partners.
Dr. Seixas has over 175 high impact peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and conference presentations and his work appears in several media-outlets such as CBS, CNN, NBC, Associated Press, The Guardian, Huffington Post, and is the sleep expert for NBC Health News.
Adul Samon was one of 12 boys who, along with their soccer coach, were trapped in a flooded underground cave in Thailand in 2018. Their dramatic rescue was recently made into the film Thirteen Lives, directed by Ron Howard. Adul was instrumental in the rescue effort because, as the only English speaker in the group, he was able to effectively communicate with divers and relay vital information to his teammates, which helped them survive the almost two-week ordeal. He has since immigrated to the United States and is an undergraduate student at Middlebury College.
Kasie Hunt is a CNN anchor and chief national affairs analyst. She hosts Early Start with Kasie Hunt weekdays from 5-6am ET on CNN and State of the Race with Kasie Hunt weekdays from 11am-12pm ET on CNN International, also available on CNN Max. She appears on and reports for CNN US, covering national and breaking news. Hunt joined CNN in 2021 after more than eight years at NBC News where she most recently anchored Way Too Early and served as a regular contributor to Morning Joe after anchoring KasieDC on Sunday nights. Hunt also served as NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent and played a lead role in 2020 election night coverage for the network. She joined NBC News as an off-air reporter and producer covering Congress and politics and started appearing regularly on MSNBC as a political reporter and later a political correspondent before becoming an anchor. At NBC News, Hunt covered insurgent and establishment candidates on both sides of the aisle in 2016 and 2020. She sat down with Donald Trump in Iowa back in 2013 — and was the first correspondent to interview him after he announced his presidential bid in 2015, where she pressed him in his Trump Tower office about his incendiary claims about Mexican immigrants bringing drugs and crime across the border. In 2020, she interviewed now-President Joe Biden live on the air from South Carolina at a critical moment in his bid to regain momentum and come back from behind to win the 2020 nomination.
Well-respected functional medicine practitioner, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, is the founder of the Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine®. Dr. Lyon is a nationally recognized speaker and media contributor specializing in brain and thyroid health, lean body mass support, and longevity. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is board certified in Family Medicine and completed a combined research and clinical fellowship in Geriatrics and Nutritional Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She completed her undergraduate training in Nutritional Sciences: Vitamin & Mineral Metabolism at the University of Illinois. Dr. Lyon is a subject matter expert and educator in the practical application of protein, types, and levels to health, performance, aging, and disease prevention. She has continued to receive mentorship from Dr. Donald Layman, Ph.D. over the course of two decades to help bring protein metabolism and nutrition from the bench to the bedside. Her clinical practice services the leaders, innovators, mavericks, and executives in their prospective fields. Dr. Lyon works closely with the Special Operations Military and has a private practice that services patients worldwide.
Alexander is an experienced executive who has worked for many Fortune 250 companies managing departments such as M&A, Business Strategy, Information Technology, Risk Management and Cyber Security. He has served on many corporate and industry boards (Tipping Point Technologies, CISO Governing Board). In 2005, he co-founded Nicholas K Clothing, a high-end retail fashion line. He was a former United States Navy SEAL.
Eben’s career includes decades as a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School. He was once staunchly committed to the materialist world view -- the belief that the physical world is all that exists. His scientific belief system was altered by his 2008 transcendental near-death experience (NDE), an odyssey into another realm during a week-long coma. Despite a bleak medical prognosis, Dr. Alexander awoke to make an inexplicable return to full health. His medical case and recovery were validated in the peer-reviewed Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Since his NDE, Dr. Alexander has been reconciling his rich spiritual experience with quantum physics, cosmology and the philosophy of mind. Dr. Alexander speaks around the world to educate about the role that consciousness plays in wellness, healing and recovery.
A pioneering scientist and modern thought leader, Dr. Alexander has been featured in more than 400 media interviews including for ABC-TV’s Good Morning America and 20/20, The Dr. Oz Show, Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, Larry King Now, Fox and Friends, Discovery Channel, Biography Channel and numerous international radio, digital and podcasts.
His books are available in more than 40 countries: Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife, and Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Heart of Consciousness, co-authored with Sacred Acoustics co-founder Karen Newell. http://ebenalexander.com/
Carlos Antonio Gimenez proudly represents the people of Florida's 28th congressional district, encompassing all of Monroe County and the southwest portion of Miami-Dade County. First elected to Congress in 2020, he serves on the House Armed Services Committee, the Homeland Security Committee, and the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the US & the Chinese Communist Party. He is the first career firefighter to ever serve in Congress.
Dr. Frenk is the 6th President of UM. He is also Professor of Public Health, Health Sector Policy, and Sociology. Prior to joining the UM, he served as Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Public Health at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Julio was the Minister of Health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006. He was also the founding director-general of the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, executive director at The WHO and senior fellow in the global health program of the Gates Foundation.
Dr. Frenk holds an MD from the National University of Mexico, as well as an MPH/PhD from the University of Michigan. His scholarly production, which includes over 180 articles, has been cited >23,000 times. In addition, he has written three best-selling novels. He serves on the board of the United Nations Foundation and the RWJ Foundation and has chaired the board of the Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington. Dr Frenk is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico. He was elected as a member of El Colegio Nacional, one of the most prestigious learned societies of Mexico.
He received the Clinton Global Citizen Award, the Yale University Bouchet Medal, the Welch-Rose Award, and the Columbia University Frank Calderone Prize. He has honorary degrees from Universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, and Mexico.
Drago was born in Poland while under Communist rule. His father was a devout Communist who eventually became high-ranking Communist government official. Drago was never swayed by his father’s ideology and pressure to accept the Marxist/Communist ideology, and eventually was sent to prison for opposing Communist regime in Poland. After spending time in a Communist prison as a political prisoner for his activism against agains censorship, oppression and depravity of Communist regime, he immigrated to the United States in 1984. Drago became a US citizen in 1991. After the first Persian War broke out, he enlisted in US Navy and became a Navy SEAL. He believes that it was his moral obligation to support in the best possible way his new Country that adopted him and gave him freedom. Dzieran was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. Following his honorable retirement after twenty years in the Navy, Drago began a successful career as a software engineer.
Adam Yala, PhD is an assistant professor of Computational Precision Health and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley and UCSF. His research focuses on developing machine learning methods for precision health and translating them to clinical care. His previous research has contributed to three areas: 1) predicting future cancer risk, 2) designing personalized screening policies, and 3) learning encoding schemes for private data sharing. Dr. Yala’s tools have been deployed at multiple health systems around the world and his research has been featured in the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, and Wired. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from MIT, and subsequently became a member of MIT’s Jameel Clinic and Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
A revered leader with 25 years of command experience, DeDe has been described by Dr. Brené Brown as one of her “leadership heroes and a total badass.” She has held several pivotal roles, including as an advisor to the Department of Defense’s top leader, commander of Air Force bases in Barksdale and Iraq, a national security fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, congressional fellow advising an Indiana senator, senior advisor to the Air Force chief of staff, and chief public affairs officer for the Thunderbirds.
No stranger to high-stress environments: As a senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DeDe was a trusted influence in developing solutions to the military’s most pressing issues. She also served as the military’s lead spokesperson responsible for implementing plans supporting the Department of Defense’s global communications strategy.
A Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator, DeDe is an executive coach certified through Georgetown University’s Executive Leadership Coaching Program. DeDe holds a master’s degree in leadership from American Military University and a B.A. in Communications from the University of Iowa. She is also a graduate of Air War College, Air Command and Staff College, Squadron Officer School, and Defense Information School.
Dr. Bruce Greyson is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He was previously on the medical faculty at the University of Michigan and the University of Connecticut, where he was Clinical Chief of Psychiatry. Dr. Greyson has consulted with the National Institutes of Health and addressed symposia on consciousness at the United Nations and at the Dalai Lama’s compound in Dharamsala, India. He has earned awards for his medical research and was elected a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the highest honor bestowed by that organization.
Dr. Greyson’s interest in near-death experiences began just a few months after graduating from medical school, when he treated an unconscious patient in the emergency room who stunned him the next morning with an account of leaving her body. That event challenged his beliefs about the mind and the brain, and ultimately led him on a journey to study near-death experiences scientifically, leading to more than a hundred publications in medical journals. He co-founded the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), an organization to support and promote research into these experiences, and for 27 years edited the Journal of Near-Death Studies, the only scholarly journal dedicated to near-death research. Dr. Greyson is the author of After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond.
Dr Adams is a visual neuroscientist specializing in binocular vision in humans and non-human primates. He is a principle investigator at Neuralink. He uses psychophysical, behavioral, electrophysiological, and anatomical techniques to study the primate visual system at a number of levels from the retina to the cortex. He is currently investigating the neural adaptations that occur in the childhood disease of strabismus.
Ray "Cash" Care is a 12-year veteran of the United States Navy, 10 years of which were spent serving as a member of the SEAL teams. After serving with the SEALs, Ray continued to serve his country for eight years as an overseas security officer for government agencies. With his specialized skill set, Ray deployed to remote areas around the world in the continuing efforts in the war against terrorism.
Ray infuses his training sessions with life experiences and knowledge, that which cannot be learned from a book. Knowledge amassed through grit. He brings action with both didactic and physical components. With the physical and mental fortitude of a SEAL, Ray has transformed the lives of men and women across the nation with not only tactical, but also practical seminars. Think, then execute.
Jordan Amadio, M.D., M.B.A. is a neurosurgeon, entrepreneur, and bioethicist. He is an advocate for the transformative power of emerging neurotechnology. Dr. Amadio is the co-founder of NeuroLaunch, the leading accelerator program for neuroscience startups. His work with NeuroLaunch has led to 11 thriving neuro-ventures and over $15 million in value created for young innovators seeking to advance humanity through brain science. After receiving his education at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton, where he helped develop nano-manufacturing techniques using the atomic force microscope and was named a Barry Goldwater Scholar. He also earned an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School. He completed his neurosurgery residency at Emory University.
An Engineer turned Black Belt Martial Artist, Yoga and Meditation Teacher, Donato has been one of the leaders of the Wellness scene in Miami since 2005, and has now turned this tropical city into the unlikely mecca for training the Wim Hof Method. Witty, sharp, intelligent, highly technical and creative, while fun, relatable and down-to-earth, Donato’s style and passion for teaching are refreshing in today’s spiritual world. His Integrative Living approach to being happy and healthy, combined with the techniques he learned directly from the Iceman himself, has given him the opportunity to teach worldwide and support people of all walks of life.
Josh Dickens is one of NASCAR’s most promising young drivers, winning the Winter Nationals Road Course Championship at Florida International Rally & Motorsport Park and the Associates Group Young Lion division championship at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Ross holds a BS degree in nutrition and dietetics from Queens College and a BA degree in communications from Merrimack. While at Merrimack, he spent four seasons on the blue line for the Warriors' ice hockey team. He is also certified by the International Society of Sports Nutrition. Ross brings a strong background in meal planning and performance nutrition counseling. His general experience with counseling includes allergy and intolerance accommodations, dietary restrictions, health concerns, personal preferences and eating disorders.
Highsmith was born in Baltimore and played college basketball for Wheeling Jesuit University where he was named NCAA Division II Player of The Year in 2018. After not being selected in the NBA Draft, Highsmith began his professional basketball career with the Delaware Blue Coats of the NBA G League in 2018. Late in the 2018–19 season, Highsmith made his NBA debut with the Blue Coats' parent team Philadelphia 76ers. In later years, Highsmith played in multiple stints with the Blue Coats, and the Crailsheim Merlins of the German Basketball Bundesliga. In February of 2022, Highsmith signed a 3 year contract with the Miami Heat.
Kayla Harrison made history in 2012 by winning USA's first Olympic gold medal in judo. Kayla's tenacity and dedication to whatever she pursues has rightfully captivated people everywhere. She has been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, and USA Today; in Time Magazine; on the Today Show, CNN, and MSNBC.
Kayla received the 2012 Women's Sports Foundation's Wilma Rudolph Courage Award, was named one of Glamour Magazine's Women of the Year for 2012, and placed first on Boston Globe Magazine's 2012 Athletes of the Year.
Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hof got his nickname 'The Iceman' by breaking a number of records related to cold exposure including: climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts, running a half marathon above the Arctic Circle barefoot, and standing in a container while covered with ice cubes for more than 112 minutes. Using 'cold, hard nature' as his teacher, his extensive training has enabled him to learn to control his breathing, heart rate and blood circulation and to withstand extreme temperatures. Armed with his motto 'what I am capable of, everybody can learn', Wim Hof is convinced that everyone can tap into their inner potential without having to invest the same decades worth of study, travel and daring. Wim has made it his mission to share what he’s learned with the rest of the world. He teaches people from all over the world, from celebrities and professional athletes, to people of all ages, to control their body & mind and achieve extraordinary things.
Jimmy was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 27. At first, Jimmy went into denial and "did nothing" for several years to manage his symptoms. By 2010, he walked with a cane and he hit rock-bottom when he fell down a full flight of stairs while carrying his young son. While both were physically unharmed, the fall became a catalyst for Jimmy to take back control and engage with his treatment and the PD community.
Since then, Jimmy has participated in multiple clinical trials to further research for better treatments and hopefully a cure for PD. Physical therapy led him to running and other activities that help him physically and mentally. He joined Team Fox in 2012, and ran in his first marathon that year -- and he hasn't stopped since. In July 2017, he took on a new challenge and competed on NBC’s “American Ninja Warrior” to show the world that Parkinson’s will not stop him.
Jimmy maintains a very active lifestyle, having competed in over 100 half marathons, 15 full marathons, one ultra-marathon, six Grand Fondo rides, multiple Spartan Races and countless 5K and 10K runs. To date, he has raised more than $240,000 for Parkinson's research with Team Fox... and counting. He looks forward to helping educate others about Parkinson’s and the role exercise and other lifestyle adjustments can play in treatment.
Prof. Fregni is a Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Professor of PM&R at Harvard Medical School. He leads a large clinical research laboratory (Spaulding Neuromodulation Center) that is funded by major NIH grants that are currently investigating techniques to guide and measure neuroplasticity in brain injury. He has been at the forefront of advancing neurorehabilitation science to treat conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and chronic pain. His contribution to science has given him the recognition of being a pioneer in transcranial electrical and magnetic stimulation.
He holds an MD and Ph.D. from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and three master’s degrees from Harvard University (two master’s degrees in clinical research from Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and one master’s degree in education from Harvard Graduate School of Education). He has more than 580 peer-reviewed publications and has been leading the international training program Principles and Practice of Clinical Research since its foundation in 2007 with some colleagues from the University of Sao Paulo (Dr. Marta Imamura, Dr. Wu Hsing, and Dr. Linamara Battistella). Prof. Fregni has also been awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
The Buffalo Bills selected Jim Kelly in the first round of the 1983 NFL Draft. Only three players in NFL history had reached the 30,000-yard career passing mark faster. Eight times during his NFL career he passed for more than 3,000 yards in a season, and twenty-six times he passed for more than 300 yards in a game. Kelly led the NFL in passing in 1990 and 1991. In 11 seasons in Buffalo, Kelly led the Bills to the playoffs eight times. In 17 playoff game appearances, including four consecutive Super Bowls, he passed for 3,863 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Kelly has devoted much of his post-football life to his son, Hunter Kelly, who was diagnosed with globoid-cell leukodystrophy (Krabbe Disease) and died as a result of the disease at the age of 8. To honor his son, Kelly established Hunter’s Hope: a non-profit organization aimed to increase awareness of the disease. He and his wife Jill founded the annual Hunter's Day of Hope, which is held on February 14, and The Hunter James Kelly Research Institute at the University at Buffalo, where neuroscientists and clinicians are studying myelin and its diseases. Kelly also started The Kelly for Kids Foundation, a charity committed to serving disadvantaged and disabled youth in Western New York.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is the multiple Emmy®-award winning chief medical correspondent for CNN and host of the CNN podcast Chasing Life. Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon, plays an integral role in CNN's reporting on health and medical news for all of CNN's shows domestically and internationally, and regularly contributes to CNN.com. Since 2001, Gupta has covered some of the most important health stories in the United States and around the world.
In addition to his work for CNN, Gupta is a faculty neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital and associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He serves as a diplomate of the American Board of Neurosurgery. And in 2019, Gupta was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, considered one of the highest honors in the medical field. Gupta received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a Doctorate of Medicine degree from the University of Michigan Medical School.
As Chief Operating Officer of Fontainebleau Development, Goldfarb has oversight of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa, Hilton Nashville Downtown, Marriott Courtyard Boston Downtown and Fontainebleau Aviation. Goldfarb brings over three decades of hospitality experience to his role at Fontainebleau Development’s growing portfolio of hotels and resorts. Goldfarb has been instrumental in numerous projects, including introducing new restaurant concepts and multi-million-dollar renovations to the various assets.
As a distinguished graduate of Florida International University’s (“FIU”) Chaplain School of Hospitality, Goldfarb held the esteemed position of Chair of the Dean’s Council at FIU’s Chaplain School of Hospitality. He remains an influential alumnus and has been awarded FIU’s prestigious “FIU Medallion” as well as the hospitality school’s “Torchbearer Award.” He was also recognized by the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce with the “Excellence in Tourism Award.”
Thomas began his academic career at University College London (UCL) medical school. After completing an undergraduate degree in Medical Sciences with Neuroscience, he enrolled on the UCL MBPhD programme, combining his PhD with clinical studies. He works in the theoretical neurobiology group, led by Professor Karl Friston, at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at the UCL Institute of Neurology. His research interests include active inference, computational neuropsychology, and the oculomotor system.
Cody Rall, M.D., is a board certified and United States Navy trained Psychiatrist who specializes in neurotechnology wearables. He is a co-founder of Stanford Brainstorm, the world’s first academic laboratory dedicated to transforming brain health through entrepreneurship. Dr. Rall also served as a selection judge and team member of the psychiatry innovation lab, an annual national competition at the American Psychiatric Association that works as an incubator for groups developing technological solutions to problems in mental health care. He is the founder of Techforpsych, a media and relations company that covers advancements in technology related to neuroscience.
Dr. Osborn is Chief of Neurosurgery at St. Mary’s Medical Center, a level I trauma center in West Palm Beach, FL. He completed his neurosurgery residency at NYU in 2003. HIs practice covers the gamut of brain and spine conditions, with a focus on neurosurgical trauma. Brett is a Diplomate of the American Board of Neurological Surgery.
Dr. Osborn has also been secondarily boarded by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine and obtained the CSCS honorarium from the National Strength and Conditioning Association. He is the Founder and CEO of Senolytix, a wellness and longevity clinic in West Palm Beach.
Don has coached actors, athletes, & musicians for over 20 years. He opened his first NYC Gym, Drive 495, in 2005. After operating brick & mortar gyms for 15 years, Don expanded to a global online fitness business. He has developed a reputation for training some of the biggest names in Hollywood for the big screen. Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Liev Schreiber, Sebastian Stan, Anne Hathaway, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman, & David Harbour are among his roster of clients.
He has been tapped as a fitness expert in publications such as Muscle & Fitness, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, & Men’s Fitness. He has also been featured in People, US Weekly, Origins, In Touch, Cosmo, & Shape; and has made appearances doing live fitness demos on The Today Show, Page Six TV, People NOW, E News, & WebMD. He sits on the advisory board of Men’s Health Magazine.
In March 2018 & October 2021, it was his great honor to shoot the cover of the iconic Muscle & Fitness Magazine.
Elena Sisti became only the second female bank founder in New York City when she launched Savoy Bank in 2008. Now chairperson emeritus, Sisti sits on the bank’s board of directors, as well as its credit, asset-liability and audit committees. Prior to founding Savoy Bank, she spent 25 years with Citibank, where she served as director of strategic planning and head of an initiative to re-engineer the bank’s branch network. Sisti serves her community as the treasurer and a board member of the Washington Heights/Inwood Development Corp., which helps entrepreneurs start new businesses in northern Manhattan.
Thomas currently serves as a Senior Consultant at The Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consulting group. He brings an extensive record of service with the FBI, working both\International and Domestic Terrorism cases. SA O’Connor was a Team Leader on the Washington Field Office, Evidence Response Team. In this capacity, SA O’Connor has led forensic teams to multiple terrorist attacks around the globe. These deployments include the 1998 Nairobi Embassy bombing, 2 deployments to Kosovo in 1999 for war crimes investigations, 2000 USS Cole attack in Aden Yemen, SA O’Connor was a coordinator for evidence collection at the 9-11 attack on the US Pentagon, 2002 N17 bombing in Athens Greece, 2006 attack on the US Consulate in Karachi Pakistan, 6 deployments to Iraq and 3 deployments to Afghanistan. SA O’Connor worked at the crime scenes of both the 2018 Tree of life Synagogue shooting and the 2019 Virginia Beach government building shootings. SA O’Connor specialized in Post Blast Investigation and shooting reconstruction evidence recovery. In 2005 SA O’Connor was assigned to investigate hostage takings in Iraq Theater of Operations. During this deployment, SA O’Connor was involved in the rescue of US Citizen Roy Hallums who had been held by extremists for 311 days.
Kevin Goetz has been at the center of what Hollywood calls the ‘movie research’ industry for more than thirty years and his position in the entertainment world is quite unique. Named one of the most powerful and influential people in Southern California by The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Goetz became one of the leading advisors, researchers, and focus group moderators over two decades before starting his own firm, Screen Engine/ASI out of his living room. Today, his research firm is a multi-million-dollar company that employs over 300 people worldwide where he works alongside the major film studio chiefs, decision-makers, network and streaming platform executives.
William Knight, MD, is a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Neurosurgery at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He is a fellowship trained neurointensivist who has been with the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute since 2009, and a member of the University of Cincinnati Stroke Team since 2007. He is the Mid-Level Provider medical director for the Emergency Department and the Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit (NSICU), and serves as the associate medical director of the NSICU. He is the medical director for the Lynchburg (OH) Joint Fire and Ambulance District, and has worked as a tactical physician for the Cincinnati SWAT Team. Dr. Knight still works as a flight physician with UC Health Air Care and Mobile Care.
Dr. Knight takes special interest in the initial resuscitation of the critically ill and the management of patients with Traumatic Brain Injury and Stroke. He also has an interest in end of life care in the ICU.
Mark Mattson is a Professor of Neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the former Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Aging.
Mattson has done extensive research on intermittent fasting. The National Institute of Health considers him "one of the world’s top experts on the potential cognitive and physical health benefits of intermittent fasting". He is also author of the book "The Intermittent Fasting Revolution: The Science of Optimizing Health and Enhancing Performance".
Mattson was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for research revealing the cellular mechanisms involved in neural plasticity — the ability of neurons to adapt during processes like learning or injury — and development of neurodegenerative disorders. He is the recipient of the Alzheimer's Association Zenith Award, the Metropolitan Life Foundation Medical Research Award, and the Santiago Grisolia Chair Prize. He was as the founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of NeuroMolecular Medicine and Ageing Research Reviews.
Mike Janke is co-founder and Board Member of DataTribe. Mike Janke is also a founder and former CEO of Silent Circle, the world’s leading Global Secure Communications service and the makers of Blackphone – Time Magazine’s top 10 invention of the year. Mike is also a former member of the elite SEAL Team 6 as well as an author of two best-selling books on self-discipline, leadership, and performance.
He is the 2016 recipient of the Visionary of the year award from the Center For Democracy and Technology. Mike is also the founder of Blue Pacific Studios – a Los Angeles based Film production firm. Prior to starting Silent Circle, he was the founder and former CEO of SOC-USA one of the country’s largest defense logistics and security firms headquartered in Washington DC, with over 10,000 employees in a dozen countries. Mike speaks around the world on Technology, Defense and Privacy.
Amy Loughren is a former registered nurse who is known for assisting in the arrest and prosecution of serial murderer Charlie Cullen. Before his apprehension, Cullen and Loughren were friends who both worked the night shift in the ICU at Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey. Loughren was a single mother of two children and hiding her cardiomyopathy from her employers, with some help from Cullen, in whom she confided. In 2003, Loughren was approached by detectives who suspected Cullen of poisoning hospital patients. The patient who triggered law enforcement interest was Florian Gall. After consulting with her 11-year-old daughter, Loughren agreed to assist law enforcement.As part of the investigation into Cullen, Loughren met with him at a diner, wearing a wire. The evidence from the meeting allowed police to then arrest Cullen. After he was arrested, Loughren encouraged him to make a full confession, which then supported his convictions for 29 murders.
Diane Webster is a trial attorney who defends her clients in a variety of civil litigation, including medical and healthcare litigation, products liability, pharmaceutical liability, and medical/surgical device litigation. These clients include hospitals and physicians, insurance companies, medical/surgical device companies, state and county governments, a major league baseball organization, several corporations, and school districts. Her practice also encompasses premises liability, municipal law, and government litigation. Diane defends multimillion-dollar complex/catastrophic litigation cases involving medical negligence, birth trauma, obstetrics, neonatal negligence, neurologic injuries, and alleged defective or malfunctioning medical devices. She practices in all aspects of insurance and general liability defense involving allegations of sexual abuse, personal injury, premises liability, product liability, and wrongful death. In the area of commercial litigation, Diane defends class action lawsuits alleging violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
Double Board Certified, Dr. Brown received his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia and his medical degree from The Chicago Medical School. He then completed his General Surgery residency at Northwestern University in Chicago. He then graduated and became certified by the American Board of Surgery in General Surgery. Dr. Brown completed his residency training in the field of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha. Dr. Richard J. Brown founded his practice, Brown Plastic Surgery in 2009 with the vision of creating a complete and personal plastic surgery experience focused on patients’ overall health and wellbeing. He provides procedures for cosmetic body enhancements and breast reconstruction after breast cancer. In addition to being a skilled surgeon, Dr. Brown is a published Author of the book The Real Beauty Bible: Navigating Your Journey Through Plastic Surgery.
Jorge Colina was sworn in as the Miami Police Department's 41st Police Chief on January 26th, 2018. Chief Colina began his career with the Miami Police Department in 1990. Over his subsequent 29 years of service, he has earned more than 100 commendations and numerous awards, including repeated selections as Officer of the Month by the Miami-Dade County Chief's Association. He was promoted to the civil service rank of Sergeant in 2004, then to the rank of Lieutenant in 2007. He received his first executive staff appointment in December of 2009, when he was promoted to the rank of NET Commander of the Coconut Grove neighborhood. In 2011, he was promoted to the rank of Major and served as the commanding officer of several sections, including the Tactical Operations Section, Central District, and Internal Affairs. In 2015, Chief Rodolfo Lanes appointed him to the rank of Assistant Chief of Police. He is Miami's first Chief of Police to have served as an Assistant Chief over all three of the agency's divisions: Field Operations, Criminal Investigations, and Administration.
Gino Torretta was the most celebrated football player in the University of Miami and NCAA history. Torretta won both athletic and academic awards during his prolific career as a Hurricane. He became only the second player in Hurricane history to win the coveted Heisman Trophy Award as the nation's top collegiate football player. He was also honored as the Walter Camp Football Foundation's Player of the Year. The Associated Press, Kodak, Walter Camp and The Football News named Torretta first-team All-American. He also won the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, The Maxwell Trophy and the Davey O'Brien national quarterback awards. Torretta was a unanimous selection as BIG EAST Offensive Player of the year for two consecutive seasons, the NCAA Today's Top Six Award winner, Toyota Leadership Award winner and Chevrolet Offensive Player of the Year. Torretta finished his Miami career with eleven school passing records, including career attempts (991), completions (555), yards (7,690), total offense (7,772), longest pass (99 yards to Horace Copeland vs. Arkansas, an NCAA record) and most passing yards in a game (485 vs. San Diego State). He was tapped into Iron Arrow, as one of the University's best ambassadors. He has also been inducted into the Orange Bowl Hall of Honor and the University of Miami Hall of Fame.
During his 21-year Navy career, Jason spent 11 years as an enlisted SEAL and 10 years as a SEAL officer leading teams in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s lived through it all at the highest level in his Navy SEAL career: From failures as a young leader that resulted in him almost being kicked out of the SEAL teams, to redemption and leading teams in intense combat operations in Iraq, to being shot eight times, including a round to the face, and nearly dying during an enemy ambush, Jason has lived the OVERCOME Mindset he now teaches others. Your team will walk away with a new perspective and understanding that there are no bad days, only good days and great days. They will understand how to build elite-performance teams comprising multi-dimensional leaders. Jason teaches individuals, companies and teams how to overcome failure, setbacks and catastrophic crisis through his incredible presentations on life ambushes and his proven “Get off the X” methodology.
Jason is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Trident: The Forging and Reforging of a Navy SEAL Leader” and has appeared on multiple national news networks, including Fox News, CBS, CNN, and CBN. Jason has been featured in multiple documentaries, including History channel’s Navy SEALs, America’s Secret Warriors, and as an actor he played the lead role in The Perfect Day film and a supporting character on an episode of Hawaii 5-0.
Kathy A. Fields is an Assistant Professor of Dermatology at UCSF. She is also the co-creator of Proactiv and co-founder of Rodan + Fields, leading her to amass a $1.5 billion net worth. In 2018, Forbes listed her as number eighteen on its list of “America's Self-Made Women". In the 1990s, Fields and Katie Rodan created the acne treatment Proactiv. In 2002, Fields and Rodan created the business Rodan + Fields, which primarily sold anti-aging products. Fields has also published several best selling books.
Fields started her secondary education at Northwestern University, then transferred to the University of Florida where she completed her BS in Neurobiological Chemistry. Following her undergraduate degree, Fields attended the University of Miami School of Medicine for a degree in medicine. She then completed her dermatology residency at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Gravano fell into crime at an early age. At the age of 14 he joined the Rampers, a prominent street gang in Bensonhurst. Despite his father’s attempts to dissuade him, like many of his Ramper colleagues, Gravano drifted into the Cosa Nostra. In 1970, Sammy The Bull made his first kill for the Colombo family. In 1985, he was involved in the corporate takeover and removal of Paul Castellano. John Gotti was unanimously elected as boss who named DeCicco as underboss and Gravano as captain. After DeCicco’s death in 1986, Gravano’s specific position within the family varied. Eventually, he was named by Gotti as underboss. Gravano pleaded guilty to a superseding racketeering charge. After 11 months alongside Gotti in prison and a total of 23 years in the mob, he decided to cooperate, formally agreeing to testify on November 13th, 1991. He was released from prison in 1994 and entered into the Federal Witness Protection Program. In 1996, Gravano co-wrote a book about his life, Underboss. He began living very openly and appeared in a nationally televised interview with journalist Diane Sawyer. In 2000, Gravano was implicated in an international ecstasy ring. On September 7, 2002, he was sentenced in New York to 20 years on the federal charges. He was released early, in September of 2017.
Mr. Pineiro joined the Marines at age 17 and was part of the first division, spending time in Central America and South America since he was fluent in Spanish. He transitioned to the intelligence division and spent time in Granada, where he was awarded the Silver Star Medal for his bravery in saving several agents in the field of combat. He was subsequently recruited to the CIA and was sent to Nicaragua for reconnaissance.
As an All-American at Ohio State and All-Pro linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Ryan Shazier was living his best life while excelling at the game he loves, a game that has given him so much. But then Ryan was forced to redefine success. Suddenly, it was no longer measured by tackles or sacks, but by purpose and faith.
WALKING MIRACLE is the story of this new definition of success, following the arc from December 4, 2017, when Shazier was injured playing the Cincinnati Bengals, to his retirement. For three years, Shazier doggedly pursued a return to professional football. He took small wins as “first downs” on the drive to return to the field: moving his toes, walking, dancing at his wedding, and ultimately running and returning to the team. What Shazier didn’t realize is that along the way, he was preparing himself for another purpose—that of father and husband, philanthropist, and football analyst. The journey was preparing him not for a renewed life as a middle linebacker, but a renewed life after the game.
WALKING MIRACLE—the message on a bracelet given to him by his godmother—is the story of Ryan’s comeback, but it’s also a book of life’s lessons, challenges, and a love letter to the power of positive thinking.
EJ Manuel, a former first-round NFL Draft pick, joined ACC Network in 2019 and is a studio analyst on The Huddle, ACCN’s signature football show that airs Saturday mornings throughout the fall. He also co-hosts ACCN’s In Play with Kelsey Riggs and is a regular each week on ESPN’s College Football Live. Along with is his ESPN duties, Manuel co-hosts College Sports Today on SiriusXM with Brock Huard.
One of the most productive quarterbacks in Florida State history, Manuel led the Seminoles to a 25-6 record as a starter during the 2009-12 seasons, and the fourth-most wins in program history. The Virginia Beach, Virginia, native also helped Florida State to notable victories including the 2013 Discover Orange Bowl, 2012 Dr Pepper ACC Football Championship Game and 2009 Gator Bowl – the final game of legendary coach Bobby Bowden’s career. He is the second quarterback in FBS history to win four straight bowl games, and also went 15-3 in his career against ACC opponents. Manuel is FSU’s all-time leader in completion percentage (66.9), which is tied for third in ACC history, and ranks among the top five Seminole quarterbacks all-time for passing yards (7,736, 4th), total offense (8,563, 3rd), completions (600, 3rd) and attempts (897, 5th), despite only two seasons as the full-time starter. He earned second team All-ACC honors for the 2012 season and was named the 2013 Senior Bowl MVP.
Dr. Shah aims to educate people across the globe on basic dermatology and skincare to empower them to make informed decisions about their skin health. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Yahoo News, NBC News, Fox News, Bustle Magazine, Byrdie Magazine, ABC, Nylon Magazine, Greatist, Medscape, Khaleej Times, Wired, Glossy, Mic, and Entrepreneur... among many others. You can find him educating his 17 million followers on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
He is an editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (JAAD), sits on several professional dermatology committees including the American Society of Dermatologic Surgery (ASDS), and participates in the Healthcare Leaders in Social Media Roundtable with the White House in Washington, DC.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, prompted the creation of a robust and deadly special operations force — Task Force Dagger. Alan C. Mack, Callsign Razor 03, led one of two teams of MH-47E helicopters and armed MH-60s. Their two-fold mission – Personnel Recovery (PR) and Unconventional Warfare(UW) involved flying in terrain and weather previously not thought possible. But, if that wasn’t enough, they pushed the flight envelope of their specially modified Chinooks to the limit and beyond. Alan shares his behind-the-scenes perspective of the Horse Soldier’s infil into Afghanistan. He discusses the hunt for Usama Bin Laden at Tora Bora and describes his shootdown during Operation Anaconda. Years later, he chased Bowe Bergdahl, rescued hostages in Iraq, and the Lone Survivor from the Kunar Valley.
CW5 Alan C. Mack is a Master Aviator with more than 6700 hours of flight time, of which over 3200 hours were flown with Night Vision Goggles. Alan C. Mack’s awards include Legion of Merit, 2 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 3 Bronze Star Medals, 3 Meritorious Service Medals, 10 Air Medals; one with Valor device, Combat Action Badge, and the Army Broken Wing award.
Dr Greer is the Founding Dean of the Roseman University Health Sciences College of Medicine. Previously, Dr. Greer served as Professor of Medicine, Founding Chair of Humanities, Health, and Society; and Associate Dean for Community Engagement at FIU. Dr. Greer spearheaded the nationally recognized Green Family Foundation Neighborhood Health Education Learning Program (NeighborhoodHELP) and is a nationally recognized advocate for health care equity.
He has received numerous recognitions, including: one of the 500 Most Influential Business Leaders in Life Sciences, June 2019 AMA Foundation Pride in Profession Award; Bob Graham Center for Public Service 2017 Citizen of the Year; 2014 National Jefferson Award; 2013 Great Floridian Award; the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom; and in 1993, was honored as a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” Fellow.
Nationally and internationally recognized as a leading neurosurgeon and an expert in cerebral revascularization and cerebral aneurysms, Dr. Langer brings more than 22 years of experience to his highly personalized, direct patient care practice. One of the few cerebral bypass surgeons in the country, Dr. Langer has published award-winning work in numerous peer-reviewed publications and has spoken nationally and internationally on vascular disorders, such as aneurysms and arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) of the brain. A third-generation physician, Dr. Langer attended the University of Pennsylvania to receive both his undergraduate and medical school degrees, where he also stayed to complete his neurosurgical residency under the direction of Eugene Flamm, MD. He later joined Dr. Flamm at a new neurosurgical institute in New York City in 1998. Dr. Langer also completed a mid-career fellowship at the University at Buffalo in cerebrovascular disease treatment, including aneurysms, AVMs and carotid disease. Dr. Langer has been recognized as a Top Doctor and Best Doctor by numerous publications and has a global reputation in neurosurgical excellence.
Charlton Copeland joined the faculty in 2007. He teaches Civil Procedure I and II, Federal Courts, Administrative Law, and the Regulatory State. In addition, he has served as the Faculty Coordinator of the Florida Supreme Court Internship Program, and the Law School’s Washington, DC Externship Program, where he teaches Federal Policy Making: Legislation, Regulation and Litigation. He is a 2015 recipient of the Richard Hausler Golden Apple Award for the faculty member contributing the most to the student body both academically and through his or her extracurricular activities.
His scholarship has focused primarily on the ways in which federalism as a constitutional and political structure is mediated in: the relationship between federal and state courts, the jurisprudence of remedies for state violations of federal law, and the relationship between state and federal implementation of federal policy. In addition, he has written about the intersection between law and theology as they relate to religion’s role in American democracy and the framing of liberationist critiques of same sex marriage. He is a recipient of the 2013 Dukeminier Award and the Michael Cunningham Prize, from the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School, for the best law review articles published.
Professor Copeland is a graduate of Amherst College, Yale Divinity School, and Yale Law School.
Dr. Mary Beth Wilkas Janke is a former United States Secret Service Agent and current consultant in the fields of forensic and clinical psychology and professor at George Washington University, where she teaches Abnormal Psychology and the Psychology of Crime and Violence. Mary Beth holds a Doctoral Degree in Clinical Psychology, a Master's Degree in Forensic Psychology, and a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice. She is also the author of the best selling book " The Protector: A Woman's Journey from the Secret Service to Guarding VIPs and Working in Some of the World's Most Dangerous Places"
With more than 25 years of psychology, security and investigative work, she has accomplished such varied feats as leading an inquiry during the “Iraqgate” investigation and an investigation for 60 Minutes on the Duke Lacrosse scandal, serving as the only female to ever officially protect a foreign president outside of the United States and creating a Stalking Risk Assessment Prototype for the Stalking Unit of Victim Services in Queens, NY, among others.
Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen is tasked with helping us answer some of humanity’s biggest questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone? How does the universe work? Dr. Zurbuchen is well versed in the practice of asking difficult questions that help us seek interconnected answers leading to real world impacts. He is keenly interested in innovation and how leadership is developed and how the pursuit of excellence can help change the world. Dr. Zurbuchen was a professor of space science and aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He was the founding director of UM’s Center for Entrepreneurship at the College of Engineering and developed and ran several campus wide innovation initiatives, one of which led to the top-ranked undergraduate entrepreneurship program nationally.
Dr. Kateb, is a neuroscientist with more than 20 years of research experience. His research has been focused on the introduction of advanced diagnostics and therapeutics into clinical neuroscience in order to rapidly identify and introduce game-changing technologies to treat neurological disorders such as brain cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease. Babak was Director of Research and Development in the Department of Neurosurgery at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center where he established collaboration with NASA and published and pioneered a technique for brain cancer immunotherapy. While at City of Hope, he received NASA Tech Brief Award for his pioneering work. In 2010, he joined the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars Sinai Medical Center as a research scientist where he developed a partnership between Cedars-Sinai and NASA and established a clinical trial using NASA technology for brain mapping.
He has been recognized by President Biden, Mayor of Los Angeles, and Governor of California for his dedication to science. Babak has been deeply involved in global neuroscience legislation through his close collaboration with the US Congressional Neuroscience Caucus as well as members of Canadian Parliaments. He has chaired 9 Congressional briefings. He has been one of the key players in President Obama’s BRAIN initiative and co-author of the G20 World Brain Mapping Initiative and the African Brain Mapping Initiative.
Ken Paller conducts cognitive neuroscience research at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he also serves as Director of the Training Program in the Neuroscience of Human Cognition. Ken’s collaborative research with his students and colleagues focuses on human memory, consciousness, and related issues. Recent research articles have examined sleep’s role in memory and memory dysfunction, sensory processing during sleep to reinforce prior learning, the neural substrates of conscious memory experiences, and the juxtaposition of those memory experiences with various ways in which memory can influence our behavior in the absence of awareness of memory retrieval, as in intuition. His investigations make use of various behavioral measures of memory, analyses of brain electrical activity from the EEG, patterns of cognitive deficits in neurological patients, and MRI methods.
Ken received a PhD in Neurosciences from UC San Diego following undergraduate training at UCLA. He held postdoctoral positions at Yale, Manchester, and Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, journal editor at Neuropsychologia, and program committee chair for the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. He received the Senator Mark Hatfield Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, and research funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other federal agencies and private foundations.
Deepak is founder of The Chopra Foundation and Chopra Global, as well as Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at UCSD and senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is author of over 90 books translated into 43 languages, including New York Times bestsellers. Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation and personal transformation revolution. TIME magazine has described him as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.” Larry King has described his work as “some of the most important of the decade.” The Wall Street Journal has declared his books “must reads for your career”.
His books have been awarded the prestigious Nautilus Award and Quill Award. Two of his books have been recognized on “The Books of The Century Bestsellers List”. He is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and contributes to Oprah.com, Intent.com, and Huffington Post. He has been recognized as one of “The 100 Most Influential People in Health and Fitness “, the #17 “most influential thinker in the world” and #1 in Medicine. As background, Dr. Chopra is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Dr. Padron is President Emeritus of Miami Dade College, having served as its president for almost twenty-five years. He is credited with elevating MDC, the largest degree-granting institution in America, into a position of national prominence among the best and most recognized U.S. colleges and universities. Dr. Padron’s work at MDC has been hailed as a model of innovation in higher education.
In 2018, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, for being a prominent national voice for access and inclusion in higher education. In 2015, he was inducted into the U.S. News & World Report STEM Hall of Fame. In 2012, he received the Citizen Service Award from Voices for National Service, the coveted TIAA Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence, and the Aspen Institute Ascend Fellowship. In 2011, the Washington Post named him one of the eight most influential college presidents in the United States, and he was awarded the prestigious 2011 Carnegie Corporation Centennial Academic Leadership Award. In 2010, Florida Trend magazine placed him on the cover of its inaugural “Floridian of the Year” issue. In 2009, TIME magazine included him on the list of “The 10 Best College Presidents.”
Logan is a brain cancer survivor that was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma over 6 years ago. He has been through brain surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, growing through these experiences mentally, physically, and emotionally. The most critical day, however, was the day he began the Ketogenic diet. Although doctors told him nothing would help, the ketogenic diet saved his life and helped him transform physically and internally. His surveillance MRIs are clean and he has been deemed cancer free.
Following the ketogenic diet not only helped save his life, but has helped transform lives worldwide. Thousands of people that make the decision to follow his Fusion Lean plan, simply make the decision to change and create the best version of themselves. When you choose his Fusion Lean as your online personal trainer, you're working with someone who knows how to get through the struggle. He has goals to make sure that every client conquers their journey in every way they can.
Dan Radakovich was named the 14th Director of Athletics in University of Miami history, returning to his graduate school alma mater as one of the nation’s most decorated and successful college athletics administrators. Radakovich, who most recently served as Director of Athletics at Clemson for nine years, has experience at seven schools and 30-plus years as a visionary leader in all aspects of college athletics. In his first 6 months in Coral Gables, Radakovich has worked with campus leaders to chart an ambitious course for Miami Athletics with respect to facilities, sport sponsorship, fundraising and staff development. He has worked closely with new football head coach Mario Cristobal to ramp up recruiting, evaluation, sports science and creative resources. Radakovich is the immediate past President of LEAD1, which represents athletic directors at the Division I level. He was also named Athletic Director of the Year, and was on a member of the first College Football Playoff committee.
At Clemson, Radakovich oversaw the most successful stretch in Tigers football history as the program won two national championships (2016, 2018), six ACC titles and made six College Football Playoff appearances. Clemson set a school record in the NCAA’s most recent Graduation Success Rate report, posting a 95 percent score.
Dr. Grossman is CEO of NYU Langone Health and Dean of NYU School of Medicine, which was renamed in his honor in 2019. In this role, he oversees more than 45,000 employees, students, and faculty across 6 inpatient locations and over 320 sites throughout the New York region and in Florida. Dr. Grossman increased NYU Langone’s revenue from $2 billion in 2007 to $10.2 billion in 2021, and more than $3.9 billion in philanthropy has also been raised. Also of note, NYU Langone’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2021 research awards totaled $815 million—an increase of more than 532 percent compared to 2007.
As dean of NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Dr. Grossman led the historic and unprecedented initiative of providing tuition free medical education for all students in its MD degree program. He also curated a new curriculum for the 21st Century, which emphasizes clinical training from the beginning of medical school and includes a revolutionary 3 year MD program for select candidates.
Dr. Grossman has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 50 most influential healthcare leaders who changed the state of healthcare in America. Additionally, he was named a “Living Landmark” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. A prolific and highly respected scientist, Dr. Grossman was awarded the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award by the NIH in 1999. He was a member and chairman of the Diagnostic Radiology Study Section at the NIH, was appointed to the NIH’s National Advisory Council and became the first recipient of the Outstanding Contributions in Research Award.
Marilyn is a partner in Holland & Knight's Miami office. She is a litigation practitioner, with a specific emphasis representing corporate clients in trade secret and covenant-not-to-compete, employment and business litigation, including matters related to breach of fiduciary duty and corporate governance. In her employment litigation practice, she has represented a number of high-profile individuals.
Ms. Holifield has received numerous accolades related to her law practice, professionalism and civic engagement. She was named by Black Enterprise Magazine as one of America's top employment lawyers. The Miami-Dade County Bar Association honored Ms. Holifield with its highest award, the Judge David Dyer Award for Professionalism. Within the firm, Ms. Holifield serves on the Steering Committee for the firm's Diversity and Inclusion Engagement Initiative to strengthen partnerships with clients and businesses that share Holland & Knight's values of diversity and inclusion. She also has served on the Directors Committee. In 2000, she was the recipient of the firm's Chesterfield Smith Award, the highest honor bestowed by the firm to lawyers who demonstrate a deep commitment to equal justice, public service and excellent client service.
Dr. George is an Associate Professor on the Tenure Track in the Division of Gynecological Oncology within the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine and a full member of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Sophia’s lab studies the pathogenesis of sporadic and hereditary breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers using molecular genetics, epigenetics and transcriptomics to study the disease pathogenesis and overall outcomes of women diagnosed with these diseases.
Given that Black women with breast and ovarian cancers have inferior outcomes when compared to women of other racial groups, and understanding that there is a void in the research when it comes to studying Black women’s cancers, one of the main goals of her research has been to understand why Black women are prone to getting more aggressive cancer sub-types and how/why their responses to treatment differs from those of non-Black women. She is currently part of a multi-disciplinary team who studies the incidence of HBOC mutations in Afro-Caribbean nationals. She is a co-Leader of the women’s cancer working group in the African Caribbean Cancer Consortium and co-Principal Investigator of the Transatlantic Gynecologic Cancer Consortium.
Dr. Lorenzo Cohen is the Richard E. Haynes Distinguished Professor in Clinical Cancer Prevention and Director of the Integrative Medicine Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston) and Distinguished Clinical Professor, Fudan University Cancer Hospital, Shanghai, China. Dr. Cohen is a founding member and past president of the international Society for Integrative Oncology.
Dr. Cohen is passionate about educating others on how to prevent cancer and maintain optimal health across the lifespan. As the majority of cancers are preventable, Dr. Cohen is conducting research to demonstrate that lifestyle factors can influence cancer outcomes.
Dr. Cohen leads a team conducting NIH-funded research and delivering clinical care of integrative medicine practices such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, massage, diet, exercise, acupuncture and other strategies such as stress management, music therapy, emotional writing and more aimed at reducing the negative aspects of cancer treatment and improving quality of life and clinical outcomes.
Miguel “Mike” B. Fernandez currently serves as Chairman of MBF Healthcare Partners, L.P., a private investment firm located in Coral Gables, Florida. The firm focuses on investing in healthcare service companies nationwide. He has been the Founder and/or majority shareholder of over 20 healthcare related companies. Most of these companies have been acquired by publicly traded companies. Among these enterprises are Physicians Healthcare Plans, CAC Medical Centers, Prescribit Rx, CarePlus Health Plans, Navarro Pharmacies, Hospitalists of America, Simply Healthcare Plans, and Nutri-Force Nutrition.
Mr. Fernandez’s best-selling autobiography titled ”Humbled by the Journey" details his rags to riches story, from a dirt-road Cuban town to the pinnacles of U.S. business success.
Jeffrey A. Engel is founding director of the Center for Presidential History at SMU and Professor in the Department of History. A Senior Fellow of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and of the John Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies, he graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University. He additionally studied at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before holding a John M. Olin Postdoctoral Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University. In 2012 the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations named him their Bernath Prize lecturer, while at SMU the students voted him their Professor of the Year.
Engel has authored or edited twelve books on American foreign policy. A frequent media contributor on international and political affairs on venues including MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, National Public Radio, and the BBC, his scholarly and popular articles have appeared in such journals as Diplomatic History; Diplomacy & Statecraft; American Interest; USAToday; The Los Angeles Times; International Journal; The Dallas Morning News; The Houston Chronicle; Air & Space Magazine; and The Washington Post.
Mark knows the true meaning of sacrifice, perseverance, and resilience. Mark served as a Navy SEAL Special Warfare Operator 1st Class with SEAL Team 5A. As a Navy SEAL, Mark did combat deployments to Iraq. On his last deployment, Mark sustained a gunshot wound to the head from a bullet that went over his rifle through his right eye and out the back of his head a few inches behind his right ear. The injury left him blind in his right eye. Even though Mark was gravely wounded, he refused to be carried to the medivac helicopter. He walked himself through a ‘hot zone’ to be transported to a medical facility.
Against all odds, Mark worked through his critical injury and recovered. During his first few years of recovery, mobility, endurance, awareness, and memory were significantly affected, but Mark was determined to enter a new career path in law enforcement. After leaving the Navy, Mark began working at the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and shortly thereafter completed the Police Academy. Since beginning employment, he has been to several law enforcement/investigations-related qualification courses. Mark is continuing his career at the Lake County Sheriff’s Office as a Detective in the Criminal Investigations Division. He is assigned to the Sheriff’s Office Tactical Response Team as an Assistant Team Leader and is a member of the community safety team.
Dr. Allen Sills is the NFL's Chief Medical Officer, a full-time position dedicated to advancing the health and safety of the sport of football. He became the NFL's first CMO in March 2017, joining the league from Vanderbilt University. As a neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of athletes, Dr. Sills continues to serve at Vanderbilt as a Professor of Neurological Surgery and the Founder and Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Sports Concussion Center.
Dr. Sills has published over 170 scientific articles and presentations, including over 40 in the last five years on the topic of sports concussion. He is a member of the Concussion in Sport Group, American Board of Neurological Surgery, and the American College of Surgeons.
Before joining the NFL, Dr. Sills served as a consulting neurosurgeon for the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies, the NHL's Nashville Predators, the US Equestrian Foundation, and the athletic programs at Vanderbilt University, Belmont University and Mississippi State University. He also served as an Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultant on the NFL sidelines, and as a neurological consultant to the NCAA and the International Equestrian Foundation (FEI).
Dr. Sills graduated from Mississippi State University and received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University, where he also went on to complete his internship in General Surgery, his residency training in Neurological Surgery and an NIH-funded Neuro-Oncology Fellowship.
Dr. Omalu was the first to identify, describe, and name Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy as a disease entity. Dr. Omalu has testified twice before the United States Congress and has provided hundreds of testimonies as an expert witness in federal courts across the country. Dr. Omalu is a member of the College of American Pathologists, American Society of Clinical Pathology, American College of Physician Executives, American College of Epidemiologists, American Association of Neuropathologists, American Academy of Forensic Sciences, National Association of Medical Examiners, International Academy of Pathology, and the American Medical Association.
Dr. Omalu has eight degrees in the medical sciences and business management, including his MB/BS/MD from the University of Nigeria, his MPH from the University of Pittsburgh, and his MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.
His work and life have been featured extensively, including a major Hollywood film by Sony Motion Pictures, “Concussion”, and several New York Times best-selling books including “The League of Denial” and “Concussion”.
Charlie Morley is a bestselling author and teacher of lucid dreaming, shadow integration and Mindfulness of Dream & Sleep. He has been lucid dreaming for over 20 years and was “authorized to teach” within the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Yeshe in 2008. Since then he has written four books which have been translated into 15 languages and has run workshops & retreats in more than 20 countries. He’s spoken at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the Ministry of Defence Mindfulness Symposium, The Houses of Parliament (on Buddhism & youth culture) and the Mindfulness Association Annual conferences. In 2018 he was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship grant to research PTSD treatment in Military Veterans and continues to teach people with trauma affected sleep a set of practices. His 2021 book Wake Up to Sleep is a practical guide to these practices. Charlie has been the lead consultant on scientific studies into lucid dreaming at both Swansea University and the Institute of Noetic Science. In 2019 he created the first Lucid Dreaming for Therapists course which trained a group of hypnotherapists, meditation teachers and therapists to use lucid dreaming with their clients. Charlie formally became a Buddhist at the age of 19. In his past life he trained and worked as an actor & scriptwriter before running a hip hop collective and touring Europe with them throughout his 20’s.
Dr. Dominic D’Agostino is a tenured Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. He runs the website KetoNutrition and has been on over 200 podcasts talking about metabolic health. He is also a Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. His laboratory develops and tests metabolic-based strategies for targeting CNS oxygen toxicity, epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, brain cancer, and metastatic cancer.
The main focus of his lab over the last 12 years has investigating the anticonvulsant and neuroprotective mechanism of the ketogenic diet and ketone metabolite supplementation. This approach can be used to treat a wide variety of pathologies linked pathophysiologically to metabolic dysregulation. Other areas of interest include researching metabolic-based drugs for cancer.
He was a research investigator and crew member on NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operation and has a personal interest in environmental medicine and methods to enhance safety and physiological resilience in extreme environments. His research is supported by the Office of Naval Research, Department of Defense, private organizations and foundations.
Professor Larry Backer focuses his research on governance-related issues of globalization and the constitutional theories of public and private governance, with an emphasis on institutional frameworks for public-private law governance systems. He has an interest in the transformations of university governance and its relation to wider changes in societal ordering in the 21st century. He currently teaches courses on corporate social responsibility, corporations, multinational enterprises, and the constitutional law. He teaches courses on policy aspects of these areas at the Penn State School of International Affairs, along with the SIA core course, Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs. He has lectured on issues of transnational, corporate and constitutional law in Asia, Latin America, Europe and Australia.
Professor Backer serves on the board of a number of journals and is a member of the American Law Institute and the European Corporate Governance Institute. He served as an elected member of the Penn State University Faculty Senate, and as chair of the Penn State University Faculty Senate.
Thomas Seyfried is Professor of Biology at Boston College and received his Ph.D. in genetics and biochemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of New England, where he recently received the distinguished Alumni Achievement Award. He also holds a master’s degree in genetics from Illinois State University. Seyfried served with distinction in the United States Army’s First Cavalry Division during the Vietnam War and received numerous medals.
Seyfried presently serves on several editorial boards, including those for Nutrition & Metabolism, Neurochemical Research, the Journal of Lipid Research, and ASN Neuro. He has over 180 peer-reviewed publications and is author of the best selling book Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer (Wiley Press).
Brett Jones is a Certified Athletic Trainer and Strength and Conditioning Specialist based in Pittsburgh, PA. Mr. Jones holds a Bachelor of Science in Sports Medicine from High Point University, a Master of Science in Rehabilitative Sciences from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).
Brett is currently the Director of Education for StrongFirst and presenter and advisory board member for Functional Movement Systems. With over 25 years of experience, Brett has been sought out to consult with professional teams and athletes, as well as present throughout the United States and internationally.
As an Athletic Trainer who has transitioned into the fitness industry, Brett has taught kettlebell techniques and principles since 2003. He has taught for Functional Movement Systems (FMS) since 2006, and has created multiple DVDs and manuals with world-renowned physical therapist Gray Cook, including the widely-praised “Secrets of…” series.
Brett continues to evolve his approach to training and teaching, and is passionate about improving the quality of education for the fitness industry.
Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen is tasked with helping us answer some of humanity’s biggest questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone? How does the universe work? Dr. Zurbuchen is well versed in the practice of asking difficult questions that help us seek interconnected answers leading to real world impacts. He is keenly interested in innovation and how leadership is developed and how the pursuit of excellence can help change the world. Dr. Zurbuchen was a professor of space science and aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He was the founding director of UM’s Center for Entrepreneurship at the College of Engineering and developed and ran several campus wide innovation initiatives, one of which led to the top-ranked undergraduate entrepreneurship program nationally.
During his career, Zurbuchen has authored or co-authored more than 200 articles in peer reviewed journals in solar and heliospheric phenomena. He earned his doctorate and Master of Science degrees in physics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. His honors include multiple NASA ground achievement awards, induction as a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW), a NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and the 2018 Heinrich-Greinacher prize, the leading science-related recognition from the University of Bern.
Myron was ranked the No. 1 high school football prospect in the country. With 83 scholarship offers from Division I institutions, Myron matriculated to FSU. At FSU, he earned his degree in just two and a half years and was awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship upon graduation, enabling him to study at Oxford University in England. Rolle skipped his senior year of football to pursue a master's degree at Oxford and simultaneously train for the NFL Draft. In 2010, Dr. Rolle was selected in NFL Draft by the Tennessee Titans and finished his career three years later with the Pittsburgh Steelers. After life in the NFL, Myron enrolled at the FSU College of Medicine followed by neurosurgery residency at Harvard where he has excelled on all fronts.
The Myron L. Rolle Foundation, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 2009, dedicated to the support of global health, wellness, educational, and other charitable initiatives benefitting children and families in need. Dr. Rolle also serves on the Knight Commission on Athletics and the Clinton Global Initiative and is a co-creator of the Emerging Scholars Project for underrepresented college students applying for a Rhodes Scholarship. Myron's charitable work, bravery on the front lines, academic excellence and grit have been featured in top global and national outlets such as CNN, ABC News, ESPN, CNBC and many more.
Anna Lembke is a clinician scholar, having published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, keeps an active speaking calendar, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.
In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop, which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic. Dr. Lembke recently appeared on the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives. Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, an instant New York Times Bestseller, explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.
Hanna Faulhaber is an internationally recognized Olympic Freestyle Skier. A 17-year-old from Basalt High School in Colorado, Faulhaber got 3rd place at the 2022 X-Games in Aspen. Before this year’s X-Games, Faulhaber also got 3rd place on the Dew Tour 2021, as well as 2 world cup podiums. She competed in the 2021 FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships where she placed fourth in the women’s ski halfpipe. Faulhaber recently competed in the 2022 Winter Olympics in China where she achieved the highest score for Team USA.
Ben Milligan became a US Navy SEAL in 2001 and served until 2009. He is the recipient of the prestigious Bronze Star and other awards. A native of Indianapolis, he received a BA in History at Purdue University and an MA in International Relations at the University of San Diego. He currently lives in the Chicago area with his three sons.
Michelle Pearlman, M.D. is a board-certified gastroenterologist and obesity medicine specialist. She has a particular focus on nutrition, weight loss, and malnutrition. She uses the “food is medicine” approach with all of her patients. Michelle Pearlman is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases at the University of Miami.
Dr. Pearlman is on a mission to educate the community on the fundamentals of wellness and nutrition and works closely with numerous subspecialties including bariatrics, hepatology, endocrinology, sleep medicine, sports medicine, oncology and dietetics to provide comprehensive care to patients with nutritional issues whether it be malnutrition or obesity.
Dr. Pearlman has helped organize numerous nutrition-related seminars at the medical center, undergraduate campus and throughout the University of Miami community to improve access to care and improve nutrition education to students, staff, and the community at large and has been featured in numerous TV, newspaper and radio appearances including WIOD radio news, The Miami Herald, Good Housekeeping, Florida Trends Magazine, NBC and The CW Inside South Florida.
Dr. Amishi Jha, PhD is Director of Contemplative Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami. Prior to her current post, she was an Assistant Professor at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her B.S in Biological Psychology from the University of Michigan, her Ph.D in Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience) from the University of California–Davis, and her post-doctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University in functional neuroimaging.
With grants from the Department of Defense and several private foundations, she leads research on the neural bases of attention and the effects of mindfulness-based training programs on cognition, emotion, resilience, and performance in education, corporate, elite sports, first-responder, and military contexts.
In addition to her own published body of research, her work has been featured in many outlets including TED.com, NPR, and Mindful Magazine. In addition, she has been invited to present her work to NATO, the UK Parliament, the Pentagon, and at the World Economic Forum. In her book, Peak Mind, she shares her discoveries on how attention can be trained for optimal performance and well-being.
Dr. Duncan French has over 20 years’ experience working with elite professional and Olympic athletes. Prior to joining the UFC, French was the Director of Performance Science at the University of Notre Dame. From 2005 – 2015, French was a Technical Lead for Strength and Conditioning at the English Institute of Sport. He has worked three Olympic cycles as the national lead for strength and conditioning to Great Britain Basketball and more recently Great Britain Taekwondo Olympic programs.
French earned his PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2004 and has authored or co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts. He is a fully accredited strength and conditioning coach with the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association (UKSCA), Australian Strength and Conditioning Association (ASCA), and the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). French is a former Chairman of the UKSCA and received an Honorary Fellowship in 2014 for his services to the strength and conditioning industry.
Arianna got interested in documentary filmmaking because she asks too many questions. This turned out to be an excellent discipline to direct this sort of energy. Arianna most recently directed two films for a new CNN Films shorts series; The Bunker Boom, about a subterranean prepper community in South Dakota, and Super Reviewers, an unusual journey into a surprising sub-culture on the internet. Prior to this, Arianna’s television directing credits include the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series Connected: The Hidden Science of Everything, Emmy-nominated Pandemic: How to prevent an Outbreak, and Edward R. Murrow award-winning Unadopted on PBS.
Arianna has directed and shot Emmy-nominated and Edward R. Murrow award-winning work for The New York Times, Nat Geo, Al Jazeera, and Viceland on issues ranging from child marriage, gang violence, to political conflicts around the world. Her work has taken her to more than fifty countries; directing crews in the sewers beneath London, to a locked down “clean room” at the NASA space center in Houston. She has embedded with female Kurdish soldiers fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq and documented the effects of Rhino breeding in South Africa for National Geographic.
Films she has directed have screened at SXSW, DOCFest, Tribeca, DOC NYC, and PBS, and have been supported by the Sundance Labs, ITVS, IFP, and won a Peabody Award. Arianna was a Director of Photography for many years before pivoting to directing full time.
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Dr. Joseph Uscinski is an American political scientist specializing in the study of conspiracy theories. In 2015, Uscinski organized and convened the first international conference on conspiracy theory research, featuring more than fifty scholars from ten countries. Uscinski was frequently consulted by journalists during the 2016 U.S. election for his commentary on the rise of campaign-fueled conspiracy theories and for his criticism of their use by politicians. He argued that both Trump and Clinton were using conspiracy theories to mobilize sectors of the electorate that did not trust mainstream candidates.
Uscinski's most notable book, American Conspiracy Theories, studies the waxing and waning of conspiracy theorizing over time in the United States. The main hypothesis of the book was that conspiracy theories are for losers. By that, they argue that those who are out of power tend to use conspiracy theories to consolidate resources, focus attention on an enemy, and aim at redemption. The book has been widely reviewed and discussed. Recent survey evidence taken before and after the 2016 election provides positive evidence for the conspiracy theories are for losers theory. More controversially, Uscinski argues that Republicans and Democrats are equally taken to conspiracy theorizing, and that Americans may not be engaging in conspiracy theorizing more than in previous decades.
Michael McFaul is a leading expert on Russia, American foreign policy, and democratic development around the world. A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, McFaul is currently a professor of political science at Stanford University, the director of Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House, and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation.
He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller, “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.” His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations between China, Russia, and the United States, and the relationship between democracy and development. As background, he received his BA and MA from Stanford and D. Phil from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Rachel Yehuda is Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and the Director of the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research. She is also Director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Yehuda is a recognized leader in the field of traumatic stress studies. She has authored more than 450 published papers, chapters, and books in the field of traumatic stress and the neurobiology of PTSD. Her current interests include the study of risk and resilience factors, psychological and biological predictors of treatment response in PTSD, genetic and epigenetic studies of PTSD, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma and PTSD. She has an active federally-funded clinical and research program.
Dr. Yehuda's research on cortisol and brain function has revolutionized the understanding and treatment of PTSD worldwide and has been awarded the renowned Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry Guest Professorship. Dr. Yehuda has also been elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Yehuda received her PhD from UMass Amherst and completed her postdoctoral training Yale University.
Kenny Broad has participated in extreme scientific and filmmaking expeditions on every continent to gather information and samples that shed light on little-known environmental and cultural subjects. Broad and the late Wes Skiles received the National Geographic Explorer of the Year award in 2011. He regularly collaborates with ecologists, climatologists, hydrologists, psychologists, and a range of other strange ‘-ologists’ and has published dozens of scientific articles on topics ranging from risk perception to venomous snakes to natural resource management. Broad is a licensed U.S. Coast Guard captain, a commercial helicopter pilot, and he holds multiple diving ratings. He is currently a Professor at the University of Miami where he directs the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. He is also co-director of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1999. Broad was elected a Fellow National of the Explorers Club in 2009 and was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2006.
Deepak is founder of The Chopra Foundation and Chopra Global, as well as Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at UCSD and senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is author of over 90 books translated into 43 languages, including New York Times bestsellers. Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation and personal transformation revolution. TIME magazine has described him as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.” Larry King has described his work as “some of the most important of the decade.” The Wall Street Journal has declared his books “must reads for your career”.
His books have been awarded the prestigious Nautilus Award and Quill Award. Two of his books have been recognized on “The Books of The Century Bestsellers List”. He is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and contributes to Oprah.com, Intent.com, and Huffington Post. He has been recognized as one of “The 100 Most Influential People in Health and Fitness “, the #17 “most influential thinker in the world” and #1 in Medicine. As background, Dr. Chopra is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Dr. Kirtman is internationally known for using complex computer models to bring unprecedented detail to climate change measurement. He uses atmosphere-ocean general circulation models to study the predictability and variability of the earth’s climate system. His wide-ranging research aims to understand and quantify the limits of climate predictability from days to decades. Professor Kirtman serves as an advisor to the United Nations, has enjoyed a leadership role in the World Climate Research Program, and has chaired the international Working Group on Seasonal Interannual Prediction.
He has received numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and the Office of Naval Research. He also leads the North American Multi-Model Ensemble Prediction Experiment. Professor Kirtman is the author of over 130 peer reviewed papers focused on understanding and predicting climate variability on time scales from days to decades.
Emma Gullstrand is an internationally recognized diving champion. She is from Sweden originally and currently an undergraduate student at The University of Miami. She has competed in the World Aquatics Championships as well as the European Diving Championships. In 2021 she was selected to participate in the Tokyo Olympics representing her home country of Sweden. She competes in 10m platform, 1m springboard, 3m springboard, jump event, mixed synchronized diving 3m, synchronized diving 3m and team event.
Rich Diviney is a retired Navy SEAL commander, with a career spanning more than twenty years and more than thirteen completed overseas deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. As the officer in charge of training a specialized command with tremendous credibility as a leader of people, Diviney spearheaded the creation of a directorate that fused physical, mental, and emotional disciplines. He led his small team to create the first ever “Mind Gym” that helped special operators train their brains to perform faster, longer, and better in all environments—especially high-stress ones. Rich is motivated by the idea of discovery, allowing others to realize their potential and witnessing them accelerate towards it. Since retirement in early 2017, Rich has worked as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant with the Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute and Simon Sinek Inc.
He is the author of a bestselling book - THE ATTRIBUTES - 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance, where he breaks down the real reasons why people and high performing teams and/or organizations succeed in times of stress, challenge, and uncertainty.
Dr. Maria Alcaide is Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami and Director of Infectious Diseases Research. She is a renowned expert in vaccine development and has taken center stage in light of the COVID pandemic and race for a vaccine, being interviewed on local, regional, and national news. She is currently leading UM as the main site for the Moderna vaccine clinical trial, one of the most promising potential vaccines to date.
As Director of the Miami Transplant Institute, chief of liver, intestinal, and multivisceral transplant, and Professor of Surgery at The University of Miami, Dr. Vianna is an internationally recognized pioneer and global leader in transplant surgery. Dr. Vianna completed his surgical training and PhD in Brazil, before doing two transplant fellowships at The University of Miami. Author of nearly 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles, Dr. Vianna was inducted into Brazil’s National Academy of Medicine, one of the oldest and most exclusive medical academies in the world.
The Miami Transplant Institute is a unique affiliation between Jackson Health System and The University of Miami. Over its 51 year history, the Miami Transplant Institute has become the largest and most comprehensive transplant program in the United States. It remains the only center in Florida that provides every kind of solid-organ transplant and is consistently breaking new barriers in areas like multi-organ transplant and paired donations.
Mr. Cabott handles multiple elite NFL players, including soon-to-be home town hero Tua Tagovailoa, Jerry Jeudy, Aaron Jones, Ronald Jones, as well as reigning NFL MVP and super bowl champion Pat Mahomes who just signed the largest contract in professional sports history.
According to James Beard Award-winning Chef Michael Schwartz, the philosophy is simple: The secret to good food is good food. Beloved by locals and visitors to Miami since 2007, Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink set the bar for neighborhood dining with its menu based on simple preparations of seasonal ingredients and the atmosphere to match. TGHG currently operates 9 restaurants including four locations of its pizzeria brand, Genuine Pizza®/Harry’s Pizzeria®, light and airy ella pop café in the Miami Design District and several branching from its fine dining roots: a second location of flagship Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink in Cleveland at The Van Aken District of Shaker Heights, the quintessential Miami restaurant with waterfront dining and fresh approach to bold Latin American flavor at Amara at Paraiso, Traymore by Michael Schwartz at COMO Metropolitan Miami Beach, and Tigertail + Mary in Coconut Grove, an oasis within the oasis of Miami’s oldest bayside village featuring relaxed American cooking.
Michael Schwartz Catering offers full-service in restaurant and off-site events, from customizable menus to décor and staffing – it’s James Beard Award-winning food and hospitality for memorable occasions. Outside of the restaurant, Schwartz focuses his time supporting the arts and causes such as Share our Strength, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, Slow Food and Wellness in the Schools. His second cookbook, Genuine Pizza: Better Pizza at Home released 2019.
Dr. Gounder is an infectious diseases specialist, epidemiologist, journalist, and filmmaker. She is the host and producer of “In Sickness and in Health”, a podcast on health and social justice. Dr. Gounder has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Reuters, Sports Illustrated, and Bloomberg. She is a frequent expert guest on CNN, MSNBC, HLN, CBS, BBC, MTV, and Oprah. She is best known for her coverage of the Ebola, Zika and opioid abuse epidemics, and is currently making “Dying to Talk”, a documentary about the Ebola epidemic in Africa.
Dr. Gounder has studied TB and HIV extensively. While on faculty at Johns Hopkins, she was a Director for the Gates Foundation-funded Consortium. She later served as Assistant Commissioner and Director of the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr. Gounder was elected as a member of President Biden’s COVID task force.
Dr. Gounder received her BA from Princeton University, her Masters from The Johns Hopkins University, and her MD from the University of Washington. She completed her residency at MGH and her fellowship at Johns Hopkins. She was elected a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2016.
Interview with Dr. David Yermack, Professor and Chairman of the Finance Department at New York University Stern School of Business and Director of the NYU Pollack Center for Law and Business: CRYPTOCURRENCY - The Future or Fad?
Coach Larranaga has been head basketball coach at the University of Miami since 2011. Previously, he served as the head men's basketball coach at American International College, Bowling Green State University, and George Mason University. At George Mason he had 14 consecutive winning seasons and led the Patriots' improbable run to the Final Four in 2006. Larrañaga won several national coach of the year awards in 2013, when Miami won the ACC regular season and ACC tournament. Larranaga has won over 600 games as a head coach.
Nick Theodore is a Professor of Neurosurgery at The Johns Hopkins University. He is known for his work in spinal trauma, robotics, and personalized medicine. He is Director of the Neurosurgical Spine Program and Co-Director of the Carnegie Center for Surgical Innovation at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Theodore graduated from Cornell University, attended medical school at Georgetown University, and completed his neurosurgical residency and fellowship in spinal surgery at the Barrow Neurological Institute. After completing his training in 2001, Dr. Theodore served as Chief of the Division of Neurosurgery at Naval Medical Center San Diego, overseeing the largest neurosurgery complement in the Navy. In 2003, he joined the faculty at the Barrow Neurological Institute and assumed the position of Director of Neurotrauma. In 2009 he became the Chief of the Spine Section at the Barrow Neurological Institute and was appointed the Volker K.H. Sonntag Chair in 2015. In 2016 he became the second Donlin M. Long Professor of Neurosurgery & Orthopaeidcs at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Theodore is also actively involved in the area of preventative medicine within neurosurgery. He has been associated with the ThinkFirst Foundation for several years actively having served as the foundation's Medical Director and President. In 2017, Dr. Theodore was appointed to the Head, Neck and Spine Committee of the NFL.
Jennifer McCaney holds a dual appointment at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. She is the co-executive director of UCLA Biodesign, a new joint interdisciplinary initiative led by UCLA Health, David Geffen School of Medicine and Anderson that promotes leadership and entrepreneurship in health care technology.
McCaney specializes in early-stage company formation and technology development in the health care sector. As the founding director of the MedTech Innovator Accelerator, McCaney has worked extensively with healthcare companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, Baxter, BD, Olympus and others. McCaney is currently the principal investigator of i6 Challenge Grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to catalyze the development of a regional ecosystem for medical technology in Southern California.
A Fulbright Scholar, McCaney completed her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Stanford University. She holds an M.S. and B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT as well as a B.S. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Dr. Ashby is a vascular cardiologist and internist who specializes in clinical cardiology, vascular medicine, and general medicine. He was born and raised in South Florida and is of Caribbean descent. Dr. Ashby attended medical school at Cornell University in New York and studied health policy at Princeton University in New Jersey. He completed his internship and residency at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. He completed his cardiology training at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC, where he was named chief fellow. Dr. Ashby also completed a postdoctoral clinical and research fellowship in vascular medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He started his career as an academic vascular cardiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and professor of Medicine at Columbia University. Dr. Ashby is now CEO of Comprehensive Vascular Care and is a Special Correspondent for MSNBC covering the COVID-19 pandemic and presidential transition.
Congresswoman Shalala is the US Representative for Florida’s 27th congressional district. She served as Secretary for Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. Her academic positions have included being Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin and President of the University of Miami.
Greg Shepard is a 20-year startup veteran and serial entrepreneur with 14 liquidity events under his belt, two of which were sold as part of a $925M transaction that won 4 Private Equity awards for transactions between $250M-$1B. Greg is also a ForbesBooks author and has written over 100 articles published in 25 national and international journals. Mr. Shepard is a TEDX speaker and keynote speaker for universities, associations and conferences worldwide. He is the host of a Forbes Radio show and has been featured as a guest on over 25 popular podcasts as well as numerous network TV and radio shows. Greg founded BOSS Capital Partners, a global syndicate for investing in tech startups worldwide. Greg Co-Founded BOSSStartupScience, a learning center based on Greg’s Business Operating Support System (BOSS), which is an open source methodology developed to empower entrepreneurs while increasing startup success rate.
Reaching the top of Mount Everest - the highest point on the planet at nearly 30,000 feet - is a legendary feat that less than 4,500 people have accomplished in human history. The trek to the summit takes months of physical preparation and weeks of acclimatization to get climbers used to the mountain's oxygen-starved altitudes. Climbing Mount Everest is among the most dangerous pursuits in the world, with a fatality rate of almost 9 percent of climbers who attempt to summit. To date approximately 400 people have died trying to climb the world’s highest mountain, and some 4,500 have summited. Avalanches, cracking ice flows and deadly crevices are just some of the obstacles faced by climbers. The chief impediment, however, is extreme altitude sickness. The “death zone” is above 8,000 metres.
Dr. Brockmeyer is Professor and Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the University of Utah. In his spare time, he scales mountains. Brockmeyer reached a longtime goal in 2005 when he summited Mount Everest. Brockmeyer kept up a regular rock-climbing routine for 10 years before attempting Everest, building his strength and experience at sites near his home in Salt Lake City. On vacations, he visited more challenging regions, such as Alaska or Peru. In total, after a decade of conditioning, 2 years of planning, and 3 months on location, he finally achieved the remarkable goal of reaching the summit and conquering Mount Everest.
Dr. Cutler is currently Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University. Professor Cutler holds secondary appointments at the Kennedy School of Government and the School of Public Health. Professor Cutler was associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 2003-2008.
Professor Cutler's work in health economics has earned him significant academic and public acclaim. Professor Cutler served as National Economic Advisor during the Clinton Administration and has advised the Presidential campaigns of Bill Bradley, John Kerry, and Barack Obama, as well as being Senior Health Care Advisor for the Obama Presidential Campaign. Among other affiliations, Professor Cutler has held positions with the National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences.
Professor Cutler is also a best selling author on the topics of health care and other public policy topics, including “Your Money or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America’s Healthcare System” and “The Quality Cure”. Cutler has been named one of the 30 most powerful people in Modern Healthcare and one of the 50 most influential people in Healthcare Policy. Professor Cutler received an AB from Harvard University and a PhD in Economics from MIT.
LaPook contributes to all CBS News broadcasts and platforms. Since joining CBS News in 2006, he has done more than 1,000 reports, contributing to the “CBS Evening News;” “60 Minutes;” “CBS This Morning;” “CBS Sunday Morning;” “Face the Nation” and Mo Rocca (“Mobituaries”). LaPook has won three Emmy awards for his coverage in 2012 of the national shortage of drugs, for team coverage in 2013 of the Boston Marathon bombings, and in 2019 for “CBS Sunday Morning” Outstanding Program. In 2018, The Alliance for Women in Media awarded him a Gracie Award in the News Feature Series category for two groundbreaking 60 Minutes reports that investigated a sexual abuse scandal involving American elite gymnasts, USA Gymnastics and Aly Raisman. LaPook was also named a George Foster Peabody Award finalist in 2018 for those two 60 Minutes investigative reports on the gymnastics scandal. He has won two Edward R. Murrow Awards for “Best Broadcast” in 2007 and 2013. He also won a 2015 New York Press Club Award for Journalism for “Eye on Ebola” WCBS-AM News Team Special. In 2010 he was recognized in the Webby Awards for his documentary series Doc Dot Com.
Dr. LaPook graduated with honors from Yale University and received his M.D. from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was elected into AOA, the national medical honor society. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine and fellowships in Gastroenterology and Medical Informatics at Presbyterian Hospital, New York City.
Dr. Tector is a leading U.S. liver transplant surgeon with clinical expertise in multivisceral and small bowel transplantation. He completed his undergraduate degree at Indiana University, doctorate degree at Saint Louis University, general surgery training at McGill University, and transplant fellowship at the University of Miami. Dr. Tector has distinguished himself as an externally independent and NIH-funded surgeon-scientist, building nationally recognized xenotransplantation programs at Indiana, then Alabama, and now Miami.
The Miami Transplant Institute is a unique affiliation between Jackson Health System and The University of Miami. Over its 51 year history, the Miami Transplant Institute has become the largest and most comprehensive transplant program in the United States. It remains the only center in Florida that provides every kind of solid-organ transplant and is consistently breaking new barriers in areas like multi-organ transplant and paired donations.
Janine is a graduate of Yale University and Managing Director and Head of Real Estate at Republic, a leading alternative investment platform that serves more than 700,000 active users. With over 20 years of experience in the real estate sector, Yorio has managed over $2 billion in structured real estate investments - from CDOs and mezzanine loans to coliving and short term rental strategies. She is a recognized expert on the unique relationship between real estate investment, design, technology and brand.
Yorio was the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Compound, a real estate investment technology company that was named Inc. Magazine's 50 world-changing startups to watch. While at NorthStar Capital, she worked on hundreds of investments from origination to exit, five of which culminated in IPOs, including 4 publicly-listed REITs. She has served as a judge for the Harvard Real Estate Venture Conference. She has been featured and quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times, and The Atlantic. She has appeared as a guest on Real Vision.
Joseph F. Zahralban was sworn in as the City of Miami’s 19th Fire Chief since the department’s inception in 1898. Chief Zahralban oversees a Class 1 Fire Department comprised of 789 uniformed personnel and 98 civilian employees. The City of Miami has a residential population of approximately 488,011 and a daytime population of approximately one (1) million. The Department of Fire-Rescue has an annual operating budget of $160 million.
He had the distinct honor of leading the Urban Search and Rescue Team on approximately 15 national and international deployments including the earthquake that devastated the island nation of Haiti in January of 2010.
In 2011, he was promoted to Assistant Fire Chief /Emergency Manager where he assumed command of the Office of Emergency Management, which is responsible for coordinating citywide emergency operations, readiness, training, and emergency management-related activities for all City Departments, as well as, directing the Public Information Office and Public Education sections.
In 2013, he was promoted to the rank of Deputy Fire Chief of Administration where he proudly served for three years overseeing the department’s budget as well as the divisions of Emergency Management, Technical Services, Management Services, Emergency Medical Services and Logistics.
Dr. Frenk is the 6th President of UM. He is also Professor of Public Health, Health Sector Policy, and Sociology. Prior to joining the UM, he served as Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Public Health at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Julio was the Minister of Health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006. He was also the founding director-general of the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, executive director at The WHO and senior fellow in the global health program of the Gates Foundation.
Dr. Frenk holds an MD from the National University of Mexico, as well as an MPH/PhD from the University of Michigan. His scholarly production, which includes over 180 articles, has been cited more than 23,000 times. In addition, he has written three best-selling novels. He serves on the board of the United Nations Foundation and the RWJ Foundation and has chaired the board of the Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington. Dr Frenk is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico. He was elected as a member of El Colegio Nacional, one of the most prestigious learned societies of Mexico.
He received the Clinton Global Citizen Award, the Yale University Bouchet Medal, the Welch-Rose Award, and the Columbia University Frank Calderone Prize. He has honorary degrees from Universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, and Mexico.
Jorge Colina was sworn in as the Miami Police Department’s 41st Police Chief on January 26th, 2018. Chief Colina began his career with the Miami Police Department in 1990. Over his subsequent 29 years of service, he has earned more than 100 commendations and numerous awards, including repeated selections as Officer of the Month by the Miami-Dade County Chief’s Association.
He was promoted to the civil service rank of Sergeant in 2004, then to the rank of Lieutenant in 2007. He received his first executive staff appointment in December of 2009, when he was promoted to the rank of NET Commander of the Coconut Grove neighborhood. In 2011, he was promoted to the rank of Major and served as the commanding officer of several sections, including the Tactical Operations Section, Central District, and Internal Affairs. In 2015, Chief Rodolfo Llanes appointed him to the rank of Assistant Chief of Police. He is Miami’s first Chief of Police to have served as an Assistant Chief over all three of the agency’s divisions: Field Operations, Criminal Investigations, and Administration.
The V Foundation for Cancer Research was founded by ESPN and legendary basketball coach Jim Valvano with one goal in mind: to achieve Victory Over Cancer®. Since its formation in 1993, the V Foundation has awarded more than $260 million in cancer research grants nationwide and has grown to become one of the premier supporters of cutting-edge cancer research. Uniquely, due to generous donors, the Foundation has an endowment that covers administrative expenses. Therefore, 100% of direct donations benefit cancer research and programs. This means that not a single penny of donations goes to operating expenses. Period.
The mission of The V Foundation is to fund game-changing research and all-star scientists to accelerate victory over cancer and save lives. Researchers are continually developing better screening tools and learning more about prevention and early detection. Scientists are developing more targeted therapies that keep the whole patient healthier while zeroing in on the disease. While there aren’t cures yet, each breakthrough is one step closer to finding them. Donations make research possible, and it’s why every donation makes a difference.
The V Foundation awards competitive grants through a process vetted by a Scientific Advisory Committee. This committee is comprised of the nation’s top doctors and scientists in cancer research. The V Foundation has awarded grants to more than 154 institutions in 40 states, as well as in Canada.
Cabana graduated from the US Naval Academy with a degree in mathematics. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and served as an A-6 bombardier. Cabana earned the Daughters of the American Revolution award as the top Marine to complete flight training. He graduated with distinction and has logged over 7,000 hours in 50 different kinds of aircraft.
Cabana became an astronaut in 1986. He was assigned to the Johnson Space Center Astronaut Office, serving as lead astronaut in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory; Mission Control Spacecraft Communicator, and chief of NASA's Astronaut Office. A veteran of four spaceflights, Cabana has logged 38 days in space, serving as the pilot on 2 flights and mission commander on the 2 other flights. His fourth flight was the first assembly mission of the International Space Station. Following his retirement as a colonel, Cabana was appointed a member of the Federal Senior Executive Service and ultimately became deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston. In 2008, Cabana was named the 10th Director of the JFK Space Center.
Daniel Weitzner is Founding Director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative, Principal Research Scientist at CSAIL, and teaches Internet public policy in MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. Weitzner’s research pioneered the development of Accountable Systems to enable computational treatment of legal rules. Weitzner was United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy in the White House, where he led initiatives on privacy, cybersecurity, copyright, and digital trade policies promoting the free flow of information. He was responsible for the Obama Administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and the OECD Internet Policymaking Principles.
Weitzner has been a leader in Internet public policy from its inception, making fundamental contributions to the successful fight for strong online free expression protection in the United States Supreme Court, and for laws that control government surveillance of email and web browsing data.
Weitzner has a law degree from Buffalo Law School, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Swarthmore College. His writings have appeared in Science magazine, the Yale Law Review, Communications of the ACM, the Washington Post, Wired Magazine and Social Research. Weitzner is a founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology, led the World Wide Web Consortium’s public policy activities, and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Dan Lambert founded American Top Team in 2001. Their vision was to build a world class training facility where MMA fighters could get all of their training under one roof, similar to the Brazilian Top Team gym previously co-founded by Liborio in Rio de Janeiro. A businessman by trade and Brazilian jiu-jitsu enthusiast, Lambert oversaw American Top Team as it became one of the top MMA training facilities and martial arts academies in the world. Headquartered in Coconut Creek, Florida, American Top Team has produced numerous MMA world champions and highly notable competitors. It is widely considered one of the top MMA facilities in the world, and it won the Best Gym category at the World MMA Awards in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.There are currently over 40 American Top Team affiliates worldwide representing the ATT banner.
Bring Back the U is a Miami-based NIL company focused on helping UM’s football players monetize their name, image, and likeness. Bring Back the U was established with two goals in mind: Helping the University of Miami football program reestablish its tradition of greatness, and Procuring NIL sponsorships for UM football players so that they too can benefit from the billions of dollars generated by college football.
Nicole Stott is a veteran of multiple spaceflights and 104 days living and working in space on both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS). Highlights of her spaceflight missions include 3 Space Shuttle flights and 2 ISS Expeditions, 1 spacewalk, flying the robotic arm for the first track and capture of the free flying Japanese HTV cargo vehicle, installation and first run on the COLBERT treadmill, and ISS maintenance. She was the last ISS crew member to return to Earth on a Space Shuttle.
Nicole's 28 year NASA career started at the Kennedy Space Center where she worked as an engineer. Prior to being selected as an Astronaut, Nicole worked for 2 years at the Johnson Space Center as a Flight Simulation Engineer in the NASA Aircraft Operations Division.
Nicole was selected as an Astronaut in 2000, as one of 17 members of the 18th group of NASA Astronauts. She earned a BS in Aeronautical Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a MS in Engineering Management, from the University of Central Florida.
Nicole Lynn is truly a force of nature and trailblazer in every sense of the word. In 2015, she became the first female agent to represent top NFL agency, PlayersRep. In 2017, PlayersRep was acquired by Young Money APAA Sports Agency, owned by world-renowned rapper, Lil Wayne. In 2019, she became the first black female agent to represent a top 3 NFL draft pick (Quinnen Williams of the New York Jets).
Today, Nicole is one of the youngest female sports agents in the industry, signing her first client at only 26. Her extensive client list includes NFL players with the Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, Washington Redskins, an ESPY nominated Softball star, and a Ballerina from the famous American Ballet Theatre. She has also been awarded 2x Woman of the Year by The Hustle. All these accomplishments are only the beginning for Mrs. Lynn.
One of ESPN’s most respected and longest-tenured personalities, Jeremy Schaap has been with the network since 1994. He is a regular contributor to Nightline and ABC World News Tonight and has been published in Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, Time, Parade, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Schaap has covered most major sports and sporting events in the world, including summer Olympics, winter Olympics, FIFA World Cup, Tour de France, European soccer championship, World Series, Super Bowl, U.S. Open (golf and tennis), Wimbledon, French Open, men’s Final Four, women’s Final Four, New York City marathon, NBA playoffs, World Cup of Hockey, Daytona 500, Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes, college football national championship game, Breeders’ Cup, world championship boxing, Special Olympics World Games, Invictus Games, and X Games.
Schaap is the author of Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History, a New York Times best-seller, and Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics. In 2018, Schaap co-directed 42 to 1, the acclaimed 30 for 30 documentary about Buster Douglas, who in 1990 upset Mike Tyson to win the undisputed heavyweight championship. But it has been Schaap’s reporting on sports issues around the world, especially those at the intersection of sports and society at large, focusing on human rights, for which he is perhaps best known.
Kellon Akeem has blazed his own trail within the entertainment industry. Mr Akeem has a keen ability to enterprise and bring ideas from conception to reality. As CEO of Mansa Productions (www.mproductions.co), a television and film content production company, Kellon has demonstrated excellence in bringing forward profound content and well regarded projects.
A Father’s Love, made its debut during the 2018 American Black Film Festival. Since then, Kellon and Mansa Productions have worked alongside Datari Turner Productions, Scythia Films, Macro and Mandalay Pictures on major feature films: “Percy” and “Nine Days”. In 2020 Mansa went into it's first lead production on the project titled, “A Lot Of Nothing,” which granted the very talented Mo McCrae his directorial debut.
Kellon finds creative ways to cultivate an intersection between compelling content and community engagement. Kellon’s appetite for enterprising does not settle. This master of business development has earned an honorable reputation amongst heavy hitters in the media and entertainment world. This is evidenced by collaborations with the likes of Anthony Mackie, Omar Dorsey, Woody McClain, Jessie T. Usher, Tichina Arnold, T.I. and a successful host of others in the sports, music and entertainment industry.
Michael Buttrick is a member of the US Army 3rd Special Forces Group and Senior Special Forces Medical Sergeant. He is actively engaged in planning and preparation for upcoming deployment to Africa, as well as a Mountain Leader and Sniper team leader for Detachment. He has executed a full spectrum tactical train up with detachment for air, sea, and land operations.
In 2017, Michael won the Special Forces Group Best Warrior Competition. He graduated in the top 10% of Special Forces Qualification Course and earned Distinguished Graduate on Commandant’s List. Michael excelled at Special Forces Qualification Course- Survival School, Small Unit Tactics Instruction, Special Forces Medical Skills, and 6 months of Russian Language Training. He was a Top 20 physical performer in his graduating class, earning follow-on slot to Military Free Fall School and Soldier of the Cycle/Distinguished Honor Graduate.
Michael’s credentials include Top Secret Security Clearance, Special Operations Combat Medic, Special Forces Sniper, Master Mountaineer, Jumpmaster, Airborne, and Military Free Fall. Michael graduated from Yale University with a BA in Political Science and obtained a Masters in International Security Studies from The National Defense University before joining the United States Military.
Mike Hayes is the former Commanding Officer of SEAL Team TWO, leading a two thousand–person Special Operations Task Force in Southeastern Afghanistan. In addition to a twenty-year career as a SEAL, Mike was a White House Fellow, served two years as Director of Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council, and has worked directly with both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Beyond his military and governmental service, Mike is currently the Chief Digital Transformation Officer at VMware. He joined VMware in October 2020, and leads the company’s worldwide business operations and the acceleration of the company’s SaaS transition. Previously, he was SVP and Head of Strategic Operations at Cognizant Technology. Mike also served in Chief of Staff and COO roles at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest and most successful hedge fund. Mike holds an M.A. in Public Policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and received his B.A. from Holy Cross College. His military decorations include the Bronze Star for valor in combat in Iraq, a Bronze Star for Afghanistan, and the Defense Superior Service Medal from the White House. Hayes is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the board of directors of Immuta, a data governance company, and of the National Medal of Honor Museum, and a senior advisor to Inherent Group, an impact investment firm.
Scott Galloway is a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business where he teaches Brand Strategy and Digital Marketing to second-year MBA students and is the author of the Digital IQ Index ®, a global ranking of prestige brands' digital competence. In 2012, Professor Galloway was named "One of the World's 50 Best Business School Professors" (Poets & Quants). Professor Galloway is also the founder of several firms including: L2, subscription business intelligence firm serving prestige brands; Red Envelope, an e-commerce firm (2007, $100mm revs.); and Prophet, a global brand strategy consultancy with 250+ professionals.
Professor Galloway was elected to the World Economic Forum's "Global Leaders of Tomorrow," which recognizes 100 individuals under the age of 40 "whose accomplishments have had impact on a global level." Professor Galloway has served on the board of directors of Eddie Bauer (Nasdaq: EBHI), The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), Gateway Computer, and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. He received a BA from UCLA and an MBA from UC Berkeley.
Scott Becker previously served on the McGuireWoods LLP Board of Partners and served for nearly 15 years as chairman of the firm’s national Healthcare department. McGuireWoods has one of the best regarded healthcare practices in the world.
Scott is the Founder, Publisher, and Chief Content Officer of Beckers Healthcare and Beckers Hospital Review and its related events and publications. Scott also produces the Becker Group Business News, the Becker Private Equity Podcast, and the Becker Business Podcast.
Mr Becker is a Harvard Law School Graduate and a University of Illinois undergraduate business school graduate in Finance and Accounting. He is also the author of four books and a CPA. He represents hospitals and health systems, healthcare companies, surgery center chains, large practices and private equity funds. He practices exclusively in the healthcare regulatory and transactional area. He provides counsel on healthcare transactional and regulatory matters to hospitals, health systems, hospital chains, ambulatory surgery centers, ambulatory surgery center chains, private equity funds and lenders, and healthcare industry entrepreneurs.
There’s a reason why Mecole Hardman’s nickname is ‘The Jet’; blink once and you’ll miss him, blink twice and he’ll be celebrating in the end zone. Mecole was an All-American in High School and recruited to play at the University of Georgia. By his sophomore year, Mecole took off with full speed, racking up all-purpose yards at every turn. He finished 2017 with 1,255 AP yards and six total touchdowns, enroute to helping Georgia win the SEC Title and reach the National Championship Game. In the National Championship game, Mecole was responsible for two of Georgia’s touchdowns; an 80-yard catch and run and a one-yard run in. As a Junior, Mecole was named an ESPN First Team All-American, leading to his early entry into the NFL draft where the Kansas City Chiefs drafted him in the second round as the fifth overall wide receiver selected.
As a rookie, Mecole ended up finishing the 2019 regular season with over 1,400 AP yards and seven total touchdowns leading to a Pro Bowl selection and spot on the Second Team All-Pro, the only rookie to have both honors. Mecole and the Chiefs capped off their glorious season by capturing the Lombardi Trophy in a win over the San Francisco 49ers, the second in franchise history and first in over 50 years.
Going into his third season in the NFL, Mecole is a big part of the Chiefs offense while still leaving opposing defensive backs in his dust trail.
Mabel Valdivia is Executive Director at Fonkoze USA, the entity that oversees fund development and donor education for the broader Fonkoze family. A dedicated fundraising professional, she has twenty years of international and domestic non-profit experience and a deep commitment to international development issues that specifically impact women including micro-finance, agriculture, and health. Mabel’s desire to make an impact in the world is fueled by her own experiences as a child refugee. Mabel has a Master’s in Public Policy from American University and is currently pursuing her PhD.
Fonkoze was created 27 years ago to bring financial inclusion and development services to Haiti's poor - providing them a viable way to lift themselves out of poverty. Today, we are a family of 3 organizations - Fonkoze Financial Services (SFF), Fonkoze Foundation and Fonkoze USA - that work together to empower Haitians, primarily women, to lift their families out of poverty. Fonkoze knows that poverty's many challenges are interconnected, and the solutions are as well. Our financial services and accompanying development programs are built to address the various levels and complexities of poverty in order to help our clients break the inter-generational cycle of poverty.
Jaclyn is a concierge sports nutritionist who works with the active population through professional athletes to optimize performance, body composition and metabolic health. Her practice, Athleats Nutrition. is operated with the combined philosophy of both performance nutrition and functional medicine. She believes each individual requires their own tailored plan and approach.
Jaclyn has worked with over 375 NFL Draft Prep athletes and 80 NFL vets along with the top coaches. Her work with the NFL Players Association’s PAIR program educates NFL players about best nutrition practices for recovery. She also works with UFC, NBA, ATP, WBA, PGA golfers, cyclists, CrossFit athletes and NBA Draft prep.
As a competitive athlete herself, Jaclyn understands the nutritional and time demands that athletes face. She believes that choosing healthy nutrition is a lifestyle enhancement, and leads to longevity in everything we do.
Jaclyn is a Certified Nutrition Specialist, a Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist in both Florida and New York State, a NASM-certified personal trainer and a USAW-L1 weightlifting coach. Jaclyn holds a Masters of Science in Human Nutrition from The University of Bridgeport. She is a recipient of the 2020 Atlanta Women in Sports Trailblazer Award, her work can be found in Muscle & Fitness, Men’s Fitness, Shape, Fitness Magazine and CBS Sports.
Chip LaMarca serves the coastal communities in the Florida State House of Representatives representing District 93. He has earned a reputation for being a citizens’ advocate. He attended Boston University, Broward College, and FAU. In 2010, he became Broward County Mayor. Following that he served as the Chair of the Finance, Tax and Administration committee for the Florida Association of Counties. On a national level, LaMarca was selected to Chair the Finance, Pension and Intergovernmental Affairs committee for the National Association of Counties and serves as a member of the Board of Directors. In 2018 he was elected to the Florida State House of Representatives in District 93.
Recently the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing NCAA athlete compensation, called the Name, Image, and Likeness policy. Chip Lamarca played a major roll in pushing this monumental legislation into effect.
Julio Morales is a nationally recognized personal trainer and founder of Strength Nation Miami. Through years of experience and various high caliber certifications, he has fine-tuned his ability to help clients with physical and mental strength, general conditioning, post injury rehabilitation and nutrition coaching. By offering a holistic approach to fitness, Julio focuses not only building exercise programs but on lifestyle and habit adjustment.
Certifications : ISSA, StrongFirst Elite instructor, Pn L1, USAW, ViPR, FMS L1, and Animal Flow.
Specialties include: Strength and conditioning, post rehab, boxing, PowerLifting, nutrition coaching and habit adjustment. Julio is an avid indoor and outdoor rock climber, BJJ competitor, Powerlifting competitor, wakeboarder, boxer, and snowboarder.
Daniella Levine Cava was elected Miami-Dade County’s first-ever woman Mayor in November 2020. She enters the Mayor's office following a nearly 40-year career as a relentless advocate for South Florida families. As Miami-Dade County's Mayor, she oversees a metropolitan government with more than 28,000 employees serving nearly 3 million residents, managing an annual budget of approximately $9 billion. A social worker, lawyer, and community activist, she was first elected in 2014, and re-elected in August 2018, to serve as the Miami-Dade County Commissioner.
As Commissioner, she invested in Miami-Dade small businesses and expanded economic opportunity, protected the environment and our water, increased the County police force for underserved areas, advocated for an expanded, reliable public transportation system, worked to create affordable housing and revitalize neighborhoods, and helped make local government more accountable and transparent.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began, she has advocated for a more effective public health response. As the new Mayor, she is working to create a unified pandemic response strategy that protects Miami-Dade.
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Dr. Zee oversees an interdisciplinary program in sleep and circadian rhythm research, with findings that have paved the way for innovative approaches to improve sleep and circadian health. Zee is the founder of the first circadian medicine clinic in the USA, where innovative treatments are available for patients with circadian rhythm disorders.
A central theme of her research program is understand the role of circadian-sleep interactions on the expression and development of cardiometabolic and neurologic disorders. Zee's research has focused on the effects of age and neurodegeneration on sleep and circadian rhythms and pathophysiology of circadian sleep-wake disorders.
Zee also has authored more than 300 peer reviewed original articles, reviews and chapters on the topics of sleep, circadian rhythms, and sleep/wake disorders. She has also trained over 50 pre-doctoral and post-doctoral students and has mentored numerous faculty members. Zee is a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, and a member of the American Neurological Association. She is past president of the sleep research Society, past president of the Sleep Research Society Foundation, and past chair of the NIH Sleep Disorders Research Advisory Board. She is the recipient of the American Academy of Neurology Sleep Science Award and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Achievement Award.
Dr. Nimer is the Director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami, Florida. He is also a world renowned hematologist, molecular biologist, and bone marrow transplant physician. Dr. Nimer was at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York for nearly 20 years, where he held the Alfred P. Sloan Chair and served as Head of the Division of Hematologic Oncology, Vice Chairman for Faculty Development, and Chief of the Hematology Service. He also served as a member of Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, an Attending Physician at Memorial Hospital, and a Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at Cornell University.
Dr. Nimer has conducted extensive clinical and basic science research into the treatment and genetic basis of adult leukemia and bone marrow failure states. He has authored over 200 scientific publications and has received numerous awards for his research, including the prestigious Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award. Dr. Nimer graduated from MIT and received his MD from the University of Chicago. He completed training in Internal Medicine and Hematology/Oncology at UCLA, and joined the faculty there before moving to Memorial Sloan-Kettering in 1993.
Desert Horse-Grant is a world leader in facilitating the translation of discoveries from the lab to the clinical environment, being recently named by Modern Healthcare as one of the year's Top 25 Innovators. She launched the UCLA Health Innovation Challenge, a seed funding program that recognizes and scales innovative therapeutic, digital and device solutions as well as patient experience and performance excellence efforts. In 2019, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce announced Desert and colleagues recipients of a prestigious national i6 Challenge grant to support Regional Innovation Strategies. She and her team’s pioneering work to develop Oncoscope, a novel biotool on the analysis and visualization of linked molecular and clinical cancer data, was recognized with a social impact award by GitHub and published in Nature Genetics in 2018.
Robert Spetzler, MD, is a world-renowned neurosurgeon who is a pioneer and legend in the field. He has been honored by professional societies, including the American College of Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. In 1994, Dr. Spetzler was chosen to be the Honored Guest of Congress of Neurological Surgeons. At age 49, he was the youngest recipient of this prestigious honor.
Dr. Spetzler was born in Stierhoefstetten, Germany, and moved to the United States at the age of 11. He received his B.S. from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and his doctorate of medicine from Northwestern Medical School in Chicago. His postgraduate training was completed at Wesley Memorial Hospital–Northwestern in Chicago. He completed a residency in neurosurgery at the University of California – San Francisco
In 1983 Dr. Spetzler left his position as associate professor of neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland to assume a position as Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Barrow Neurological Institute at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. He served as President and CEO of Barrow from 1986 to 2017. He is also emeritus chair of neurosurgery at the Phoenix campus of The University of Arizona College of Medicine. Dr. Spetzler has published more than 300 articles and 180 book chapters in the neuroscience literature. He has co-edited a number of neurosurgical textbooks, including the Color Atlas of Microneurosurgery.
Dr. Born is a retired Brigadier General with 30 years of service in the United States Air Force. Prior to coming to Harvard she served two terms as the Dean of the Faculty at the United States Air Force Academy where she was also the Professor and Head of the Leadership Department. Previously, Dana served as an Exchange Officer with the Royal Australian Air Force, Assistant Director for the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Chief of the Personnel Issues Team for the Air Force, Aide and Speech Writer to the Secretary of the Air Force, and Squadron Commander for 11th Mission Support Squadron in Operation Enduring Freedom.
A graduate with distinction of the United States Air Force Academy, Dr. Born received Penn State University’s Alumni Fellow Award and Distinguished Alumni Award. Born is the recipient of the Air Force’s Zuckert Award for Outstanding Management Achievement, Air Force Association’s Vandenberg Award for outstanding contributions to Aerospace education, Air Force’s Distinguished Service Medal, and Legion of Merit and Defense Meritorious Service Medal. She has also been honored with the Harvard Kennedy School Annual Dean's Teaching Awards as well as the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Innovation in Teaching Award. Dr. Born is a Distinguished Moral Leadership Fellow.
Dr. David Nolan is Chair and Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science of the University of Miami. He is an expert on hurricanes, tropical meteorology, computer modeling of weather phenomena, and tornadoes. Nolan teaches courses on Atmospheric Dynamics, the General Circulation of the Atmosphere, and Vortex Dynamics. His graduate students and post-docs use both computer simulations and atmospheric data to better understand physical processes in the atmosphere. His students have worked closely with scientists at the NOAA/AOML laboratory and the National Hurricane Center.
Dr. Nolan obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard University. Before coming to the University of Miami in 2002, he held research positions at UC Berkeley, Colorado State, and Princeton University. The majority of his research has been on the dynamics of hurricanes, with emphasis on their formation and intensification. Through his collaborations with NOAA, Nolan has been fortunate to fly into the centers of three different hurricanes. He has also investigated the dynamics of convection in the tropics and the fluid dynamics of tornadoes.
Sal Pace is Chairman of the Board for the National Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) — the nation’s largest cannabis policy reform organization. Sal is a recognized leader in cannabis reform and represented Colorado’s 46th District from 2008 to 2012, during which he served as House Minority Leader. He also served as Pueblo County Commissioner from 2013 to 2018. Pace is widely recognized as one of the nation’s most knowledgeable individuals on the subject of marijuana policy.During his time in the General Assembly, Pace played a leading role in developing Colorado’s medical marijuana model, earning him recognition as the face of regulation from news media. He served on several policy and legislative interim committees focused on cannabis, and he founded a national organization of local elected officials called Leaders For Reform. As a county commissioner, Pace led efforts to create the Institute of Cannabis Research at Colorado State University and establish the first college scholarship program funded by cannabis tax revenue. Pace serves on the board of the Institute of Cannabis Research. He is also an advisory board member for HeadCount's Cannabis Voter Project. As MPP chair, Pace handles critical cannabis policy, criminal justice reform, and racial and social justice.
Entering his 20th season with the Miami HEAT, and third as Vice President/Executive Director of the Miami HEAT Charitable Fund, Steve Stowe oversees the fundraising arm of the team, while working alongside the players and coaches to support their local philanthropic endeavors, including the Corporate Education Community Outreach Ticket Program and Pat Riley’s military appreciation initiative, Home Strong. Additionally, he acts as a liaison between the board of directors and the rest of the organization.
Stowe also organizes the annual Miami HEAT Family Festival and the annual Team Charity Gala and Concert, which have featured private performances from artists such as Kool & The Gang, Mary J. Blige, Earth, Wind & Fire, Vanilla Ice, Toni Braxton, Boyz II Men, The Temptations and The Four Tops, Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Comedian Gary Owen, The Commodores and Michael McDonald. As a result of these efforts and other special events, over $20 million has been raised for local non-profit beneficiaries since the inception of the HEAT’s Charitable Fund.
Manuela Testolini has a deep, impact-driven history in the philanthropic space. Manuela believes that kids have the power to change the world, and created In a Perfect World to help provide them with the tools to do so. Under her leadership, In A Perfect World has created programs that provide education, mentoring and artistic expression to undeserved and at-risk youth around the world in places including Mali, Malawi, Senegal, Haiti, Nicaragua, Nepal, among others, and also in the U.S. from Los Angeles to Washington, DC and beyond, directly impacting more than 38,000 children worldwide. In addition to In A Perfect World’s work of building schools, providing grants to inner city classrooms in need, and helping to facilitate youth-driven moments of service, Manuela has created a unique Youth Ambassador Program in which she trains young people to be philanthropists and community leaders themselves.
Manuela has been involved with several nonprofit organizations and philanthropic projects including Love4One Another, Free Arts Minnesota, and the Young Women’s Empowerment Network. From this work, experience, and passion, In A Perfect World was born, and has since been widely recognized with honors including the Award of Service from United Communities Against Poverty, the GuideStar Platinum Seal Award, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s Fearless Leader Award, and a recipient of the Muhammad Ali Voice of Humanity honor.
Interestingly, Manuela is also the former wife of rock legend Prince.
Edward Miguel is the Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics and Faculty Director of the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned degrees in Economics and Mathematics from MIT, received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow, and has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and Stanford University. Ted's main research focus is African economic development. He has published over 90 articles and chapters and his work has been cited over 30,000 times.
Miguel is a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, is on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science, has served as Associate Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, is a recipient of the Alfred Sloan Fellowship, winner of the Kenneth Arrow Prize for Best Paper in Health Economics, and a Berkeley Hellman Fellow. Professor Miguel was elected as a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a recipient of the UC Berkeley Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award, the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, the Best Graduate Adviser Award in the Berkeley Economics Department, and has served on over 110 completed doctoral dissertation committees. Ted cofounded the Center for Effective Global Action, the Working Group in African Political Economy, and the Pacific Development Conference. Miguel has written three books that have been translated into eleven languages and featured in Foreign Affairs, Forbes, and the New York Times.
Manny Diaz is in his 2nd year as Head Football Coach of the Miami Hurricanes. Beforehand he was the team’s defensive coordinator from 2016-2018, where he catapulted the Hurricanes’ Mo defense to elite status. Coach Diaz has an impressive resume during nearly two decades as a defensive specialist coaching several collegiate programs, including Florida State, NC State, Middle Tennessee, Mississippi State, Texas, and Louisiana Tech. He has coached in 18 bowl games, amassing a 13-5 record in bowls, and has coached numerous All-American, All-Conference, and NFL players.
As one of the nation’s elite coaches, Manny Diaz is committed to bringing back “THE U” and returning the Hurricanes into the top echelon of collegiate football programs and championship contention.
Glioblastoma is the most aggressive type of brain tumor. It is non-genetic, rapidly forming, and the causes of it are unclear. The current treatment options are composed of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy - however are ineffective for long-term survival. The median survival of a person diagnosed with glioblastoma is about 15 months, and without treatment, the number drops to 3-6 months.
The Glioblastoma Research Organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research organization founded to create a locus for all things Glioblastoma. With a worldwide approach, the Glioblastoma Research Organization partners with world-renown clinics across the USA and Europe to support the research development of treatment and innovative therapies for glioblastoma. Having a global network range allows us to not only connect those seeking information regarding glioblastoma with new treatments/trials, but also to provide a community of support for those in need.
The Glioblastoma Research Organization raises awareness and funds for new global, cutting-edge research to find a cure for glioblastoma. The purpose of the Glioblastoma Research Organization is to provide financial support to doctors and researchers around the world, that are working on developing cutting-edge technologies and clinical trials through research, to increase the rate of survival in patients, and find a cure for this disease. The funds raised will be donated to our partners annually.
Dr. Rice is a virologist who is known for the development of effective treatments for hepatitis C virus (HCV). His work to generate a version of HCV that enabled the development of antiviral drugs capable of reducing HCV to undetectable levels, essentially curing chronic infection. For this breakthrough, Rice was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine.
Rice attended UC Davis for college and earned his graduate degree at Cal Tech, where he focused his research on RNA viruses. He deduced the genome of the virus that causes yellow fever and helped develop a vaccine. He also helped establish the flavivirus family which includes West Nile fever and Dengue fever. Rice then joined the faculty at the Washington University, where he shifted his focus to the development of a vaccine for hepatitis C. He generated a culturable version of the virus, allowing him to provide a description of the complete HCV genome and demonstrate the infectious nature of the virus. In 2001 Rice moved to Rockefeller University, where he discovered multiple proteins required for HCV entry into liver cells. In addition, he designed assays to test for drugs capable of blocking HCV replication, which led to new therapeutic agents for hepatitis C. The first of these drugs was approved in 2013 by the FDA.
Rice was a recipient of the 2015 Robert Koch Prize and the 2016 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. He was an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.
Mayor Gimenez is a Cuban American and former fire fighter. He was chief of the Miami Fire Department before entering politics. Carlos Gimenez has been Mayor of Miami-Dade County since 2011, running a government of more than 28,000 employees and an $8.9 billion budget. Mayor Gimenez is currently running for United States Congress in the November 2020 election.
Cassandra Gaston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. She is an expert in atmospheric chemistry, specifically, in aerosols, traces gases, and their interactions.
Cassandra has lectured on topics such as atmospheric instrumentation, aerosols, and mass spectrometry. She has mentored undergraduate and graduate students on the use of particle sizing instrumentation and mass spectrometry for the sampling of gases and particles. Cassandra has guided students both in the laboratory and in the field resulting in first and co-author publications for those students, including undergraduate students.
Bryan became nationally known as the man who “talked South Florida through” Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which lead to his work on NBC and as the CBS News Hurricane Analyst from 1996 to 2008. In appreciation for his work before, during, and after Hurricane Andrew, Bryan was publicly recognized with designations of Bryan Norcross Days in Miami, Miami Beach, and Fort Lauderdale, among other cities. In addition, he’s the recipient of an Emmy Award from the southeast chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the DuPont and Peabody awards.
After working on emergency management communications with America’s Emergency Network, Bryan joined The Weather Channel as Senior Hurricane Specialist in 2010. In 2018, Bryan returned to WPLG in Miami as Hurricane Specialist. Bryan was profiled in the New York Times following his long hours of coverage of Hurricane Sandy on The Weather Channel. The Times article includes a quote describing Bryan as “the most trusted hurricane human on the planet.”
Brent Gleeson is an acclaimed speaker on topics ranging from leadership and building high performance teams to culture, resilience, and organizational transformation. Upon leaving SEAL Team 5, Brent turned his discipline and battlefield lessons to the world of business, as Founder and CEO of TakingPoint Leadership, a progressive leadership and management consulting firm with a focus on business transformation and building high-performance cultures. With degrees in finance and economics from SMU, certificates in English and History from Oxford University, and an MBA from UCSD, Gleeson’s extensive experience is both academic and real-world in nature. Gleeson has won awards for business leadership and was named one of the “Top 10 CEOs” in Entrepreneur Magazine for his exemplary approach to building high-performance teams in business.
He is the bestselling author of 2 books - Embrace the Suck and TakingPoint. Between his experiences in the SEAL Teams and building award winning organizations that have topped the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, Brent has become a business transformation expert.
Sergey Young is a longevity investor and visionary on a mission to extend healthy lifespans of one billion people. To do that, Sergey founded the Longevity Vision Fund to accelerate life extension technological breakthroughs and to make longevity affordable and accessible to all. Sergey is on the Board of Directors of the American Federation of Aging Research and is a co-sponsor of the AGE REVERSAL XPrize Design. Once ultimately launched, this XPRIZE aims to dramatically delay the biological aging process through widely available interventions that extend the human life and health span.
Sergey Young has been featured as a top longevity expert and contributor on CNN, BBC, Fox News, and Forbes. As the author of books such as The Science and Technology of Growing Young and the mastermind behind the online life extension platform SergeyYoung.com, Sergey is passionate about sharing news from the exciting world of longevity. Sergey’s investor experience spans over 20 years, which includes managing a $2 billion private equity fund.
Immersed in sports his entire life as his great grandfather founded Anheuser-Busch and his grandfather owned the St. Louis Cardinals. After graduating with a double-major in Real Estate Finance and Sports Management from Southern Methodist University, Adie spent the early years of his career primarily focusing on sports marketing where he was able to set himself apart from others in the industry due to his forward and creative thinking. Adie created unprecedented wealth for his clients by securing not only large endorsements, but equity ownership in companies that continue to grow into national powerhouses. Adie formed APAA Sports Group because he understood the value of having all of the necessary services that clients demand under one agency, something he saw that many other companies failed to address.
A member of the Presidential Cabinet, Dr. Carson first made a name for himself as a pioneer in neurosurgery. He became Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins by the age of 33. Before retiring from medicine in 2013, his numerous accomplishments included successful separation of conjoined twins, performing the first successful neurosurgical procedure on a fetus inside the womb, performing the first completely successful separation of type-2 vertical craniopagus twins, and revitalizing hemispherectomy techniques for controlling seizures. Dr. Carson has over 60 honorary doctorate degrees, has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was inducted into the prestigious National Academy of Medicine.
Alberto Carvalho has been Superintendent of Miami-Dade Public Schools since 2008. As director of the 4th largest school district in the USA, Mr. Carvalho has been awarded Florida Superintendent of the Year and National Superintendent of the Year multiple times.