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Morning Panel

Lunch Panel

Speaker Bios:

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Matthew McFarland, RPh, PhD, 
VP, Commercialization and Industry Relations at Nationwide Children’s Hospital
He works closely with Nationwide Children’s faculty and staff to identify intellectual property with commercial potential and to facilitate the transfer of new technologies to outside partners, ultimately for the benefit and enhancement of pediatric care. He has a diverse background in technology transfer, technology valuation and licensing, academic research and pharmacy practice.

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Ray Bajaj
Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer at Cardinal Health
Ray Bajaj leads Fuse, the commercial technology hub and key Information Technology functions. at Cardinal Health, In his role, Ray is responsible for Fuse, IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Enterprise Transformation Services. Before joining Cardinal Health, Ray was head of The Garage, an innovation hub for Capital One, and led architecture, digital transformation and shared services for the organization. He also spent time as chief architect for Global Commercial & Investment Banking at Bank of America, where he provided executive leadership for the implementation of all technology, streamlined business processes and led the technology integration of Bank of America with Merrill Lynch.

Brent Stutz
Senior VP/General Manager, Outcomes at Cardinal Health
With a deep understanding of the health care industry’s complexity, along with extensive expertise across IT and operations, Brent Stutz serves as the Senior Vice President & General Manager of Outcomes™, a digital ecosystem connecting pharmacists, payers and pharmaceutical companies to mitigate the challenges of medication non-adherence. Through its open architecture Connect platform, Outcomes delivers digital health solutions for personalized medication therapy management, digital patient engagement, and telepharmacy that support a network of 23 million patients and 60,000+ pharmacy sites nationwide. Prior to leading the Outcomes™ business, Brent’s collaborative and forward-thinking leadership led the creation of Fuse, a Cardinal Health innovation technology lab. Fuse houses the design, development and delivery of technology-enabled services and software to help health care providers improve the safety and efficiency of patient care.

DJ Nag, PhD
Chief Partnership Officer at Ventech Solutions
DJ leads strategic partnerships with universities, research hospitals, global research organizations and commercial entities to collaborate on technologies and innovations and is responsible for the acquisition and licensing of intellectual property. He is credited for creating more than 70 startups and successfully licensing hundreds of technologies. DJ was previously Director of Ocean Tomo as well as Vice President at ICAP Ocean Tomo leading patent transaction markets. He served on the Board of AUTM from 2012 until 2014, focused on technology transfer and intellectual property and on the board of Licensing Executive Society’s Standards Development Organization. DJ was recognized as one of the top IP strategists by IAM in 2019. He is a Professor of Practice at Rutgers University and visiting professor at Shizuoka University.

Dennis Tkach, PhD
Chief Operating Officer at Canton & Company
With 15+ years as a research scientist in the biomedical field, and then a market research/ program expert for health IT and provider organizations, Dennis brings a unique blend of scientific rigor and business savvy to his role. This powerful combination drives his ability to unearth vital information,
give it meaning in the context of the market, and translate it to a winning strategy. Over the past two decades, Dennis has led successful, multi-year research projects for the US Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. His work has been recognized in multiple peer-reviewed journals and with a US patent. Building on that foundation, Dennis shifted to focus on business strategy, helping companies identify market trends and competitive intelligence, and using that information to guide their sales and marketing efforts. The result has been marked improvements in sales cycles, client experience ratings, and overall market positions. His work has also informed and improved product roadmaps and product commercialization efforts.

Ravi Sachdev
Partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice
Mr. Sachdev played a key role in the Firm’s investments in agilon health, naviHealth, TRANZACT, and Covetrus. Previously, he served as a managing director and co-head of healthcare services at J.P. Morgan, advising senior healthcare company executives on strategic initiatives, M&A, and capital markets. In that role, Mr. Sachdev advised on multiple transactions including the sale of Medco to Express Scripts, Vanguard to Tenet, Trizetto to Cognizant, and the IPOs of HealthEquity, SCA, Premier, and IMS Health. He serves on the board of the Healthcare Private Equity Association.

Bill Wulf, M.D.
CEO at Central Ohio Primary Care (COPC)
Dr. Wulf graduated from The Medical College of Ohio in 1985 and is board certified in Internal Medicine. In 1996, he became one of the founding members of COPC and was named Corporate Medical Director in 2007.​ Dr. Wulf’s clinical interests are preventive care, population management and maintaining a continuum of care for our COPC patients. 

Eric Mattson
Partner at Excellere Partners
Mr. Mattson has more than 30 years of international merger & acquisition, strategic consulting and senior operations experience. Currently, as a Partner with Excellere Partners, a healthcare-centric private equity fund, Mr. Mattson is responsible for identifying new investment opportunities and implementing value creation strategies for the firm’s platform investments.  Prior to joining Excellere, he was a corporate development and operating executive with Express Scrips/Medco, United BioSource Corporation and HealthSTAR Communications.  Mr. Mattson is currently on the board at PharcelShield, LLC, a specialty pharmacy predictive analytics and statistical modeling services business.  He was previously on the board of Two Labs Pharma Services, which provides a broad array of outsourced commercialization and market access services to pharmaceutical manufacturers

Thomas J. Ferkovic, R.Ph., MS
CEO at Medic Management Group LLC
Originally a pharmacist and health care management professional by training, Tom joined SS&G from the practice management firm of Telesis of Ohio, where he opened and grew the company to 123 employees and 185 primary care physicians. Prior to Telesis, he served as the vice president of St. Luke’s Medical Center in Cleveland, where he was responsible for strategic planning, managed care contracting, and
physician relations, which led to the start of St. Luke’s Integrated Medical System (PHO) and Outreach Professional Systems. In 1999, Tom and SS&G entered into the joint venture to form Medic Management Group, LLC. (Formerly known as SS&G Healthcare.) While the focus at the time was outsourced practice management services for small to mid-sized physician groups, he saw additional opportunities on the horizon. Today, Medic Management Group, LLC. has more than 150 employees who provide a variety of services, including outsourced physician practice management, compliance plan development, strategic planning, physician compensation consulting, contract negotiations, and accounts receivable management, practice valuation. Medic Management Group, LLC. services clients in 26 states and works with over 1,500 physicians in their client practices.

Tim Coan
Founder & CEO at ALN Medical Management
Tim is one of the founders of ALN and has served as its Chief Executive Officer since inception in 2000. He has over 30 years’ experience in strategy, business development and change management. He has worked extensively in healthcare and with physicians in multiple contexts throughout his career. Prior to ALN, he was the founder of Aslex, Inc., a healthcare strategy consulting company. Before that, he was a Senior Manager in Andersen Consulting’s (now Accenture) Change Management practice. He received a master’s degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Tulsa and his bachelor’s in psychology and sociology from Southwest Baptist University. Tim is a frequent speaker and writes ALN’s weekly blog on strategic issues facing independent physicians.

Isaac Dole
CEO at Birchwood Healthcare Partners
Isaac Dole has spent the majority of his career in the post-acute healthcare industry.  He started in brokerage within the National Senior Housing Group at Marcus and Millichap.  From there, he moved to Managing Director of Acquisitions at Aviv REIT (now Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI)) where he helped grow the portfolio from 175 communities when he started to 325 communities at the time of his departure.  The company went public in 2013 and eventually sold to Omega in 2015.  In 2014, he started Birchwood Healthcare Partners, which owns and operates senior housing communities, nursing homes and ancillary company businesses like hospice, home health and a nurse practitioner business.  Isaac has completed approximately a billion dollars of post-acute healthcare transactions throughout his career.  Isaac received a BA in Economics from Tufts University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. 

Joe Munhall
Managing Director of syndicated credit at White Oak Healthcare Partners
Mr. Munhall leads the firm’s efforts to partner with banks and provide additional options to White Oak’s regional bankers for the structuring and sale of debt placements, and participations with White Oak’s balance sheet. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Munhall served as a Managing Director of Syndicated Credit at ORIX Real Estate Capital, as well as previously holding a similar role at Berkeley Point Capital.  Prior to starting the Syndications team at Berkeley and ORIX, Mr. Munhall had more than 20 years of commercial banking experience in seniors housing, commercial real estate and middle market banking. Mr. Munhall earned both a BA and Hon. PhD at Wheeling Jesuit University.

Ray Shealy
Founder & CEO at Margaux Capital
As a CEO, director, investor and advisor, Ray is adept at helping companies grow exponentially by focusing on strategy, innovation, and execution. His experience covers the many facets required to enable high growth organizations to succeed, including raising capital, building technology, managing sales, marketing, operations, and positioning companies for scalable growth. He is a specialist in helping high growth healthcare and tech companies unlock the value of their assets through disciplined, innovative management. Currently, as Cofounder at Noxsano, Ray is working with a small team of organic chemists to bring a novel, patented wound healing device to market.  Previously, as the President and CEO of SafeWhite Inc., Ray led the company in bringing to market a unique, patented bio-compatible coating technology to disrupt the $11B teeth whitening industry.  Ray also currently serves as the Chairman for TicketFire and is an active angel investor with over 30 investments in Central Ohio tech companies, including UpDox, ECycle and many others. Prior to that, Ray served as the GM at McKesson’s RelayHealth unit after they acquired HTP Inc., an Inc. 500 and Healthcare Informatics Top 100 IT company, in 2008 where Ray served as President and CEO.  Ray currently serves on the board of Noxsano, SafeWhite, TicketFire, The Ohio State Innovation Foundation and The Ohio State University Technology Commercialization Office. 

Michael Ferkovic
Senior Manager – Transaction Advisory Services at BDO
Mike advises corporate and private equity clients providing comprehensive buy-side and sell-side financial due diligence services in the healthcare, restaurant, manufacturing & distribution, professional services, technology, and retail industries.

Christopher Luckett
Senior Manager – Health Care Consulting Services at Arnett Carbis Toothman LLP
Prior to joining ACT, Chris spent eleven years at Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of West Virginia. He was involved in implementing processes and reimbursement within all contracts. He has an excellent understanding of Managed Care Contracting and Reimbursement, as he helped manage over 70 Acute/Critical Access/LTAC hospitals in West Virginia. Additionally, he worked at Nationwide Children’s Hospital successfully helping them increase their contractual reimbursement terms within all service areas. Chris developed strong relationships with key external payors which helped provide strategic opportunities for Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Akhil Saklecha, MD
Managing Director, Ventures of Cleveland Clinic Ventures
He leads investments into startup companies for one of the world’s top healthcare systems. He
currently sits on the boards of Cardionomic, Cleveland Diagnostics, Enhale Medical, Enspire DBS, Mitria Medical, Navigate Cardiac Structures, Neurotherapia, and Zehna Therapeutics. Prior to joining Cleveland Clinic Ventures, Akhil was a Partner at Artiman Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm with over $1.2 billion under management. While at Artiman, he led investments in early-stage start-up companies and served on the boards of Cellmax Life, Oncostem Diagnostics, Slive, ApplyBoard, DateMySchool, and HomeUnion. In addition to his Board of Director roles, he also served as CEO of Slive, an early stage diagnostics company. Prior to joining Artiman, Akhil served in administrative roles at Aultman Hospital in Ohio as Medical Director of the hospital’s regional transfer program and Chairman of the Emergency Department and Level II Trauma Center. He was also CEO of Canton Aultman Emergency Physicians, a professional services firm that provides physicians, mid-level providers, and coding expertise to multiple hospitals and urgent care centers. In this same time period, Akhil participated at the local, state, and national levels of governing institutions within emergency medicine, healthcare quality, information technology, managed care, and emergency medical services. Akhil is Board-certified in Emergency Medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. He continues to practice emergency medicine at Cleveland Clinic on a part-time basis where he remains connected to clinical care, patients, and physicians.

Manoj Kumar, JD
SVP-Wellnow Urgent Care and Founder Hometown Urgent Care
Entrepreneurial executive and advisor building and transforming industry leading businesses in healthcare and technology. Founded Hometown Urgent Care and grew it to become the largest on-demand company in Ohio. Recently Hometown Urgent Care was acquired by Wellnow Urgent Care which is backed by Aspen Dental Group. Manoj has created multiple successful exits of scalable business in healthcare and retail. He is a business turnaround expert with successful transformations of loss making businesses into sustainably profitable. He has deep expertise in creating create scalable, sustainable, innovative and profitable business models with focus on healthcare and consumer driven businesses. He is passionate to build and scale healthcare solutions which advance population health by engaging and empowering consumers, personalizes healthcare with technology and innovation and lower cost of care with transparency and outcome driven healthcare solutions. Manoj serves/served on advisory boards of Capital University Law school, Dayton Children’s hospital, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Wright State University, Start-up companies besides charitable organizations.

Dave Opalek
Chief Investment Officer at Scioto Properties
Dave has over 20 years of real estate finance experience with an extensive background in the healthcare and affordable sectors.  Prior to joining Scioto Properties, Mr. Opalek ran the healthcare real estate division at Lawrence, Evans & Co., LLC, a boutique healthcare investment banking firm.  He founded and managed the Columbus office of Love Funding, an FHA Multifamily and Seniors housing lender.  Prior to that he spent 10 years originating loans and managing relationships in the Mortgage Banking services division at Red Capital Group where he closed over $2 billion in FHA and agency financing transactions.  Prior to his tenure at Red Capital Group, Mr. Opalek worked for Bank One in their Corporate Trust Department where he focused on multifamily housing bonds. In addition to his extensive mortgage banking experience, Mr. Opalek has been instrumental in developing new financing structures for the capital markets.  Some of his notable accomplishments include the first cash collateralized multifamily housing bonds that fundamentally changed the way that FHA 4% LIHTC are funded and the first Build America Bond collateralized with and FHA loan in the wake of the housing crisis.  These innovative structures have saved borrowers millions in financing costs. 

Kate Hickner
Member at Brennan Manna Diamond (BMD)
Kate is a healthcare attorney who specializes in transactional matters and compliance with federal and state healthcare regulations.  Her years of experience advising clients on a wide range of healthcare matters affords her the depth of knowledge necessary to help her clients stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing, highly complex industry. Kate is licensed in New York, Ohio and Michigan. 

Frank Carsonie
Partner at Benesch Healthcare+
Frank Carsonie is Chair of the Benesch Healthcare+ Practice Group and a member of the Corporate & Securities Practice Group. He is the Columbus Office Partner-in-Charge as well as a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. Frank is also experienced in advising clients in health care and other regulated industries on transactions including, reorganizations, mergers and acquisitions, recapitalizations, divestitures, strategic alliances, joint ventures, and capital financings including private equity and venture capital funding. Further, Frank advises clients on business organization, corporate governance, negotiation, drafting and enforcement of contracts, reimbursement and compensation structures, complex compliance functions and responses including HIPAA, and general business counseling.

Navin Goyal M.D.
CEO at LOUD Capital 
Navin serves as CEO and drives the company vision on how venture capital can be a vehicle toward entrepreneurship, education, and investment in businesses that have a positive impact. He emphasizes his physician ethics of treating people equally and well. Navin brings his leadership abilities with optimism, passion, and is always seeking win-win scenarios.

Alex Brown
Member at Dickinson Wright PLLC
Alex Brown is a member of Dickinson Wright in its Columbus office and practices business transactional law, with an emphasis on advising high-growth venture capital backed companies as outside general counsel. Alex has experience representing healthcare technology and medical cannabis companies in formation, capital raising, IP protection and commercialization, strategic alliance and joint ventures, bolt-on acquisitions, and exits. Alex is also a limited partner in local and national VC funds and serves as counsel to several funds, working on capital raising, securities compliance, and structuring investments. Alex was Best Lawyers in America® Central Ohio “Lawyer of the Year” in 2020 for business organizations.

Patrick Wathen
Senior Vice President at equity
Patrick supports several key teams and functions at Equity.  He drives investment strategy for Equity and oversees asset management of the current portfolio of +/- $500MM in assets.  As co-founder and managing partner of Equity Velocity Funds (EVF) he works directly with investor partners and internal teams to deliver superior risk adjusted returns.  These two roles are closely tied together and represent a true differentiator for Equity’s partners with the integration of financial and physical asset management.  On the advisory side, he founded and oversees a team that provides strategic growth analysis, site selection, and portfolio management services for location-based healthcare users nationwide.  This team has been nationally recognized for their impact on both retail and healthcare markets and has completed hundreds of transactions across 40+ states.  He’s extremely passionate about his team at Equity & EVF and achieving client and partner goals.

Steve Kennedy, Jr.
Executive Managing Director at VIUM Capital
Steve is a principal in VIUM Capital co-managing the firm’s strategic direction in providing capital funding for the seniors housing and healthcare sectors. Prior to founding VIUM Capital, Steve spent 18 years at Lancaster Pollard as an investment banker and member of the firm’s Executive Committee. As Senior Managing Director, he led the firm’s production in the central United States, overseeing a team of eight bankers. He also managed the firm’s relationship with leaders in Washington, DC. Steve originated and managed seniors housing and healthcare transactions totaling over $2.5 billion. Steve has a degree in both Economics and Political Science from Denison University and an MBA from The Ohio State University.

Parag Rathi
Principal at River Cities Capital
River Cities is a healthcare growth fund with focus on Health care services, med tech and HCIT and is actively investing out of its $200M sixth fund. Parag has been with River Cities for over 13 years and currently focuses on Healthcare Services investments while also supporting the medtech practice. He is a board member for Endodontics Practice Partners, TaskEasy, a board observer at Canvas Solutions and works closely with portfolio companies Bardy Diagnostics, Bolder Surgical, Catalyst Orthoscience, DialogTech and Reputation. Prior to pursuing his masters at the University of Cincinnati, he was a manager at ICICI Bank (India), where he was responsible for providing working capital and senior debt facilities to small and medium size enterprises. ICICI is the largest private sector bank in India. He received his undergraduate in accounting from Mumbai University, India and also holds a Chartered Accountant degree (India’s equivalent to the CPA). He received a full scholarship from University of Cincinnati to obtain his MBA and was awarded the Best Business Plan in a year-long competition during his studies. In June 2010, he passed the CFA level III exam. In 2019, Parag was recognized as one of Cincinnati’s “40 Under 40” by the Cincinnati Business Courier.

Gregory R. Erhard, Jr., MHA, CMPE
Greg graduated cum laude from Westminster College with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He went on to receive his Master of Health Administration degree from The Pennsylvania State University. Following his masters program, he completed an administrative fellowship at Ohio Valley General Hospital in Pittsburgh. Greg moved to Chicago and took a sales position with Morrisey Associates, a startup healthcare technology and consulting company. Greg worked with academic medical centers and health systems across the country including Kaiser Permanent  California, UCLA Medical Center, Stanford Health Care, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. After seven years with Morrisey, Greg returned to Pittsburgh and Ohio Valley General Hospital assuming the role of Vice President for Physician Services. He has spent the last 15 years with Preferred Primary Care Physicians, serving as Executive Director and now CEO. Outside of his healthcare work, Greg serves as Chairman of the Supervisory Committee of Clearview Federal Credit Union and is active with Riverdale Presbyterian Church. Greg lives in Moon Township, Pennsylvania with his wife, three children, and a couple cats.

Chris Comer, CLCS
Client Executive / Business Bodyguard at Hylant
Chris serves as a risk management expert and “Business Bodyguard” at Hylant, a premier insurance brokerage specializing in property & casualty risk in the Healthcare, Technology, & Real Estate spaces. Chris leads a team with decades of experience implementing premium insurance solutions for a wide array of clients. Chris & his team have established themselves as the “experts in the room” and have found success through relentless service and creative solutions to tricky risks. His team also collaborates closely with experts in M&A Transaction Risk, Cyber Risk, Environmental Risk, and Professional Risk.

More to be announced soon!