Connected Communities: Presenters

Ray Baxter

Raymond Baxter, PhD
Baxter is the former senior vice president, community benefit, research and health policy for Kaiser Permanente and is a CDC Foundation board member. Previously he headed the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and The Lewin Group.

Jeff Bryant

Jeffrey Bryant, MS, MSS
Bryant serves as director of CDC’s Division of Emergency Operations, Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, where he directs the agency’s emergency preparedness and response activities. He joined CDC in 2009 after serving with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the United States Air Force.

Dr. Bechara Choucair Bechara Choucair, MD
Choucair is senior vice president and chief community health officer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Hospitals—known as Kaiser Permanente. Previously, he served as senior vice president, Safety Net Transformation and Community Health at Trinity Health and commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health.
Molly Coye Molly Coye, MD, MPH
Coye is executive in residence at AVIA. She is a national expert in health innovation and technology. Her career includes social entrepreneur in residence at the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation, chief innovation officer for UCLA Health, founder and CEO of the Health Technology Center, and leadership roles in public health, including commissioner of health for New Jersey.
Charity Dean Charity Dean, MD, MPH
Dean serves as the public health officer for Santa Barbara County. T. There, she leads health policy formation on emerging issues such as communicable disease and disaster preparedness. Dean has served in a number of regional and statewide leadership positions, such as president of the Central Coast Medical Association and the Board of Directors for the California Conference of Local Health Officers.
Dr. Este Geraghty Este Geraghty, MD, MS, MPH, GISP
Geraghty is the chief medical officer and health solutions director at Esri. She was previously the deputy director of the Center for Health Statistics and Informatics with the California Department of Public Health. There she engaged in statewide initiatives in meaningful use, health information exchange, open data and interoperability.
Pete Giencke Pete Giencke
Gienke, a product manager at Google, has contributed to various social good and public safety-related efforts in both an engineering and product manager capacity, including those on the Crisis Response, Google Earth, and Google Ocean teams. On the Crisis Response team, he has led a number of initiatives focused on products for improved preparedness and response outcomes for natural disasters and man-made events, including Google Public Alerts and Google SOS.
Daniel Homsey Daniel Homsey
Homsey is the director of the Neighborhood Empowerment Network (NEN) for the City Administrator’s Office of the City and County of San Francisco. He has spent the last 25 years as a communications professional in both the private and public sectors. After working in the tech sector, Homsey joined the City of San Francisco in 2004, and in January 2008 became director of the NEN.
Nicole Hu Nicole Hu
Hu serves as chief technology officer and co-founder of One Concern. The company’s mission is to save lives and livelihoods before, during and after natural disasters. In 2016, Forbes named her one of the world’s top innovators in its “30 Under 30” edition. Prior to One Concern, Hu was one of the first AI software developers for India’s Amazon competitor, Flipkart.
Dr. Anthony Iton Anthony Iton, MD, JD, MPH
Iton is senior vice president of healthy communities for The California Endowment. Previously Iton served as the director and county health officer for the Alameda County Public Health Department, where he launched an innovative plan to improve the health and lifespan of low-income communities.
Matt James-new Matt James
James is a CDC Foundation board member. He is also senior counselor at the social cause communications firm GMMB, and is a special projects advisor at Freedman consulting. Prior to that, he was a visiting scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.James also served as president and CEO of Next Generation, where he promoted solutions to the risk of climate change and the threat of diminished prospects for children and families.
Chris Kosmos Christine Kosmos, RN, BSN, MS
Kosmos is director of CDC’s Division of State and Local Readiness, Office of Public Preparedness and Response. Before joining CDC in 2009, Kosmos served as a trauma nurse specialist, an emergency room director and Chicago’s deputy commissioner of Public Health Emergency Preparedness.
Paul Kuehnert Paul Kuehnert, DNP, RN, FAAP
Kuehnert is associate vice president–program for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). For the past 25 years, Kuehnert has led both governmental and community-based organizations to help people lead healthier lives. Prior to RWJF, Kuehnert was the county health officer and executive director for health in Kane County, Illinois.
Mark LeBeau Mark LeBeau, PhD, MS
LeBeau is chief executive officer of the California Rural Indian Health Board, Inc. (CRIHB) and a citizen of the Pit River Nation. He joined CRIHB in 1999 and has served in numerous capacities, including public health programs manager, director of the traditional Indian health program and health policy analyst.
Judy Monroe, MD Judy Monroe, MD
Monroe is president and CEO of the CDC Foundation. Monroe’s professional focus has centered on the intersection of primary care and public health. Prior to the CDC Foundation, she served for six years with CDC as director of the Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support. Before CDC, she served as the state health commissioner for Indiana.
Mary Pittman Mary Pittman, DrPH
Pittman is chief executive officer and president of the Public Health Institute. She is a nationally recognized leader in improving community health, addressing health inequities and promoting prevention and quality of care. Previously, she was president and CEO of the California Association of Public Hospitals and a director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Dr. Steve Redd

Stephen Redd, MD (RADM, USPHS)
Redd serves as the acting principal deputy director for CDC and lead of the agency’s proposed Community of Practice for Service. Redd has investigated outbreaks such as Legionnaires’ disease, developed strategies to control malaria and worked to eliminate measles in the United States. He was most recently director of CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. He served as incident commander for the H1N1 pandemic response.

Dr. Anne Shuchat Anne Schuchat, MD (RADM, USPHS)
Schuchat is CDC’s acting director and acting administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Schuchat was previously CDC’s principal deputy director since 2015 and she also led CDC as acting director from January to July 2017. Her key roles in CDC emergency responses include serving as chief health officer for CDC’s 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza response; leading the CDC team responding to the SARS outbreak in Beijing in 2003; and supporting the Washington, D.C., field team during the 2001 bioterrorist anthrax response. She began her public health career in 1988 when she came to CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer.
Dr. Mark Smolinski

Mark Smolinski, MD, MPH
Smolinski is president of Ending Pandemics. Prior to his work at Ending Pandemics, he was chief medical officer and director, Global Health Threats at the Skoll Global Threats Fund. Before that role, Smolinski developed the Predict and Prevent Initiative at Google.org. Earlier in his career, Mark served as the sixth Luther Terry Fellow in Washington, D.C., in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General and as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer with CDC.

Lucian Tarnowski

Lucian Tarnowski
Tarnowski is the founder and CEO of BraveNew.com. Tarnowski is passionate about using online communities to disrupt the way people learn and collaborate. He has a decade of experience in designing and powering online communities that connect diverse stakeholders around a shared purpose and has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Learn more about the Connected Communities event.