Tracy Wareing Evans is the President and CEO of the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), a bi-partisan, non-profit, membership organization representing state and local human service agencies through their top-level leadership. She spearheads the Association’s national Pathways agenda focused on strategically advancing the well-being and health of families and communities. Wareing Evans has a long history in high-level policy development and public administration. She served as a senior advisor to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and, before moving to Washington D.C. in 2009, as the Director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, an integrated human service agency. She has also served as policy adviser for human services under then Arizona Gov. Napolitano and as director of the state’s child welfare division. Wareing Evans began her career as a litigator. Wareing Evans has served on more than 20 boards and advisory committees over the course of her career, including several national appointments.

Georges Benjamin is known as one of the nation’s most influential physician leaders because he speaks passionately and eloquently about the health issues having the most impact on our nation today. From his firsthand experience as a physician, he knows what happens when preventive care is not available and when the healthy choice is not the easy choice. As executive director of APHA since 2002, he is leading the Association’s push to make America the healthiest nation in one generation.
He came to APHA from his position as secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Benjamin became secretary of health in Maryland in April 1999, following four years as its deputy secretary for public health services. As secretary, Benjamin oversaw the expansion and improvement of the state’s Medicaid program.
At APHA, Benjamin also serves as publisher of the nonprofit's monthly publication, The Nation's Health, the association's official newspaper, and the American Journal of Public Health, the profession’s premier scientific publication. He is the author of more than 100 scientific articles and book chapters. His recent book The Quest for Health Reform: A Satirical History is an exposé of the nearly 100-year quest to ensure quality affordable health coverage for all through the use of political cartoons.
Benjamin is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (Formally the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine and also serves on the boards for many organizations including Research!America, the Reagan-Udall Foundation and the University of Maryland Medical System. In 2008, 2014 and 2016 he was named one of the top 25 minority executives in health care by Modern Healthcare Magazine, in addition to being voted among the 100 most influential people in health care from 2007-2016.

Lisa Alecxih directs two Centers at The Lewin Group – the Center for Learning and Diffusion and the Center for Aging and Disability Policy. As a nationally recognized expert in long term care financing and service delivery, she brings extensive research experience with systems change related to supportive services for older adults and individuals with disabilities and helps the federal and state governments transform their long term support systems to be both consumer-focused and cost-effective through research and technical assistance. As the Director of Lewin’s Center for Learning and Diffusion, Ms. Alecxih oversees the execution of Lewin’s 14 Learning and Diffusion (L&D) contracts that support various innovative delivery and payment transformation by providing a forum for project directors and managers to share best practices and innovations, the development and sharing of standard operating procedures, and quality assurance oversight.
Ms. Alecxih is a member of the American Society on Aging, the Gerontological Society of America, and the American Public Health Association. She regularly presents about past trends in long term care, federal, state and provider responses to these trends, and the implications for the future, particularly as the Baby Boom generation ages.

AIHS is a designed Area Agency on Aging (AAA) and Aging & Disability Resource Center (ADRC) providing planning, access and support services for older adults, individuals with disabilities and their family caregivers. Benton Wolf is also the President & CEO of Preferred Community Health Partners, LLC, a subsidiary of Aging & In-Home Services dedicated to creating integrated care partnerships with health care. Benton Wolfe is currently Chairperson of the Indiana Aging Alliance LLC, an arm of the Indiana Area Agency on Aging Association and has been instrumental in both securing and executing statewide contracts with managed care organizations.
Benton Wolfe’s current professional focus is on developing the organizational capacity and health IT platform required to position her own agency and the aging network to successfully secure contracts with managed care and other medical payers. She is committed to attaining quality standards for long term services and supports and believes that the aging network is perfectly poised to be the national leader, and integrated care partner, to effectively address the social determinants of health for complex patients to improve health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.

For the past seven years, Richard J. Berry has served as the Mayor of Albuquerque – the 32nd largest city in America and the largest city in New Mexico.
Prior to serving as Mayor, Berry was elected twice as a State Representative to the New Mexico State Legislature and owned a successful Albuquerque construction company for decades that conducted business throughout the Southwest United States.
On his watch, Albuquerque was ranked second Best Run City in the nation with a population of over 500,000. Mayor Berry has reduced the size of city government and held budget growth to below inflation each year – all while maintaining a high level of service to taxpayers and city residents. Also under the Mayor’s leadership, Albuquerque was recently named as the 6th most technologically advanced city in America.
Mayor Berry was recently recognized as one of the Most Inspirational People in America by the Washington Post, largely due to the success of a program called “There’s a Better Way,” which takes a new approach to addressing panhandling by providing the homeless with opportunities to work for the City and connect them to resources and help.

Director Costantino’s emphases will be on driving payment and delivery transformation to more value based and integrative care models across multiple payers of services. He will be directly involved in driving the state innovation model grant program toward implementable payment reform and delivery system reform. He will also be involved in establishing a health care cost benchmark for the State.
As Commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access (2015-2017) he provided leadership and strategy for many of Vermont's expansive Health Care Reform initiatives to increase access, improve quality, and contain health care costs for all Vermonters, including the federally funded SIM grant, Vermont Health Care Innovation Project (VHCIP), Vermont’s Blueprint for Health and the Development of an All Payer Model as well as serving as the Medicaid Director.
As Secretary of the Rhode Island Executive Office of Health & Human Services (2011-2015), Steven M. Costantino applied his extensive experience in government and a variety of fields relating to health and human services to improve the quality of life of Rhode Island residents. His commitment was to institute innovative reforms benefiting those relying on the programs and services provided by the EOHHS, from infants to senior citizens.

Deputy Chief Mitch Cunningham has been a police officer for over 31 years with the Montgomery County, Maryland Department of Police and now with the Wilmington (North Carolina) Police Department since 2012. He has been assigned to patrol, plainclothes street crimes units, undercover narcotics investigations and detailed to the United States Secret Service Metro Alien Task Force.
Selected as Deputy Chief for the Wilmington Police Department in August of 2012, he retired from Montgomery County Department of Police to command the Investigative Bureau where he created the Special Investigations Division and the Gang Unit. He is now Bureau Chief for the Patrol Bureau. He has established the Peer Support Team and founded the Send a Cop to College initiative which raises money to help police employees professionalize by furthering their education. In 2016 he was named a finalist for the Healthcare Heroes for his work on opioid addiction services and related matters.
He teaches around the country, internationally and for the FBI on law enforcement related topics. In 2011 he graduated from the FBI National Academy, Session 245.

John Davis was appointed to his current position as Executive Director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services by Governor Phil Bryant in January 2016. John is no stranger to Human Services having over 25 years of experience in various leadership positions within the agency. He has served on the local, regional and state level as a County Director, State Operations Director, Director of Economic Assistance, Governor’s Policy Advisor as well as the previous four years in the role of Deputy Administrator. John has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration as well as a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Southern Mississippi. In addition, he has a Masters of Science in Leadership from Belhaven University where he continues to serve as an adjunct professor in his spare time. He is a native Mississippian who has said the opportunity to serve others is truly a gift.

The Alliance is a strategic action network of social sector organizations that has a national reach in tens of thousands of communities across the U.S.
Susan N. Dreyfus is president and CEO of the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, a strategic action network of social sector organizations that has national reach in thousands of communities across America. Prior to joining the Alliance in 2012, Dreyfus was secretary for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. She served as a member of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet, and had responsibility for Medicaid, aging and long-term care, child welfare, behavioral health care, and other human services. Before her work in Washington state, Dreyfus served as senior vice president and COO for the Alliance. Dreyfus is chair of Leadership 18, a coalition of CEOs from the largest and most respected nonprofit organizations in America, and serves on the governing boards of the American Public Human Services Association, Generations United, the National Human Services Assembly, and the International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers. Dreyfus was named to The NonProfit Times’ Power and Influence Top 50 lists in 2015 and 2017.

In 2011 Dr. John Dreyzehner joined Governor Bill Haslam’s cabinet as 13th Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Health. With more than 25 years of service in clinical and public health leadership at the federal, state and local level, he has been privileged to lead a statewide team of highly talented and dedicated professionals who share a commitment to working together collaboratively to protect and improve the health and prosperity of people in Tennessee.
Operationalizing a department-wide primary prevention and performance excellence framework now called "The TDH way", Dreyzehner and his team have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Vision award.
During his tenure with TDH, he has focused on team building and collaboration to create and strengthen relationships and build a stronger infrastructure for public health across Tennessee. Motivating his team to achieve performance excellence, the department has focused prevention of communicable disease and the upstream deterrence of the "Big 4" health challenges of our time: physical inactivity, excessive caloric intake, tobacco and nicotine use, and other substance use disorders. Compassionate, effective and efficient service to residents in all 95 counties of the state is not a goal, but the standard of performance he has set for the department.

Dakota County is the third most populated county in Minnesota. Within Community Services, Kelly has oversight of social services, public health, community corrections, income maintenance, child support, veteran services, and 4-H/extension programs. Through the Social Determinants of Health framework, Kelly has been working passionately over the past years toward moving their organization and community of human serving providers into a fully integrated service delivery model of care using their Community Services Value Curve & Self-Sufficiency Matrix. Kelly is currently serving as the on the Executive Board for APHSA as well as the chair for the APHSA National Council of Locals Human Service Administrators. Kelly passionately believes that we, as a collective body of caring leaders, can and will bend the curve on generational poverty in our country. Kelly’s call for action is “If not now, then when? If not us, than who?"

Raquel Hatter, Ed. D., is deputy director of the Human Services Program at The Kresge Foundation, which supports the advancement of human services organizations to accelerate social and economic mobility for people with low income. She has spent the past 25 years supporting adults, children and families through a variety of roles.
Most recently, Raquel served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services where she identified ways to improve the outcomes for individuals and families across various support systems including child support, TANF, SNAP and vocational rehabilitation. . Under her guidance, the department adopted a two-generational approach to poverty which addresses the needs of children and parents simultaneously.
Raquel draws on her experiences as both a clinician and an administrator to be a leader and advocate for the human services field. She also brings expertise in public policy, transformational organizational change and management to both her role at Kresge and to the many boards, committees and task forces focused on Human Services on which she serves.
She has received numerous accolades for her work including the 2016 American Public Human Services Association State Member Award for Transforming Human Services and the 2014 Spirit of Crazy Horse Award from Reclaiming Youth International for her service to children, youth and families.
Raquel earned a bachelor of science in clinical community psychology at the University of Michigan, a masters in social work at Eastern Michigan University and earned a doctorate of education in children, youth and family studies from Nova Southeastern University.

Hannah Katch is a Medicaid expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Prior to joining the Center she served as an administrator for California’s Medicaid program, where she oversaw the health programs for nine million Californians, including the Medicaid managed care, long term care, and pediatric programs. She previously served as a senior policy advisor to U.S. Senator Franken (D-MN), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

Colonel (ret) Bradford H. Lee, MD, JD, MBA retired from the U.S. Air Force after a nearly 30-year career. During his Air Force career, he held several positions, including department chairman at a medical center, chief of the medical staff, CEO of both bedded and non-bedded facilities, and corporate medical director overseeing medical practice at 65 different medical facilities both in the U.S. and overseas. Prior to joining REMSA in 2013, he served as Nevada State Health Officer where he was the primary public health medical advisor to two governors. Dr. Lee holds faculty appointments to several institutions including, University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine and Touro Medical School in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dr. Lee received a baccalaureate degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy, his MD from Howard University, College of Medicine, a JD from the University of Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, and an MBA in executive management from Golden Gate University. He also is an alumnus of the Public Health Program at Harvard University Kennedy School, as well as, the National Public Health Leadership Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

James is responsible for the management of Milwaukee County's CDBG, HOME, Section 8, Continuum of Care Homeless Programs, and Special Needs Housing programs. He is the author of Milwaukee County's Plan to End Chronic Homelessness leading to a 40 percent reduction in overall homelessness and a 78 percent reduction in chronic homelessness in less than two years. James has 20 years experience working in the housing and community health field with a focus on the development of homeless programs and permanent supportive housing. He is a member of the Milwaukee Continuum of Care Executive Board, the City of Milwaukee Housing Trust Fund Board, and the Milwaukee Opioid Task Force. He was the recipient of the Leader of the Future Award from the Public Policy Forum. James possesses a Master's Degree from Marquette University in Public Service.

Mark Poloncarz was sworn in as Erie County Executive in 2012. In this role, he opened the Erie County Health Mall, a collaboration of various health partners to provide essential medical, dental, behavioral health and education services to under-served county residents. Executive Poloncarz has also released “Initiatives for a Stronger Community,” his health and human services plan for Erie County, and “Initiatives for a Smart Economy,” which represents his administration’s approach to a comprehensive, innovative approach to economic development. At the beginning of 2016 Executive Poloncarz ordered the creation of the Erie County Opioid Epidemic Task Force, which joined together local treatment agencies, physicians, first responders, and local experts to prepare a comprehensive plan to address the opioid epidemic. Executive Poloncarz served on the joint National Association of Counties-League of Cities Task Force which issued a major report of recommendations which has become a national model.

Phyllis J. Randall was elected as Chair of the Board of Supervisors in November of 2015. Chair Randall represents the county on the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, the Dulles Area Transportation Association, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, and the Route 28 Transportation Improvement District Commission.
Chair Randall has a long history of public service both locally and on the state level. At the state level, Governor Tim Kaine appointed her to be the citizen representative on Virginia’s Fair Housing Board in 2009. Governor Bob McDonnell retained her position on the Fair Housing Board where she eventually served as Chair. In March of 2014, Randall was appointed by Governor Terry McAuliffe to the Virginia State Board of Corrections, where she currently serves as Chair.
As the Loudoun Chair, she oversees one of the fastest growing counties in the Commonwealth and the United States. Up to 70% of the world's internet traffic passes through Loudoun County on a daily basis with data centers occupying more than 9 million square feet in the county.
Her election was historic as she became the first African American Woman in the history of the Commonwealth to ever be elected to Chair a County Board of Supervisors.
By profession, Chair Randall is a mental health therapist working with substance abusing offenders in a local Adult Detention Center; a position she enjoyed for over fifteen years. Her emphasis areas are substance abuse and offender services.
She and her husband Thaddeus, (T.W.) are the parents of two sons, Ashon and Aaron.

Matt Salo was named Executive Director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD) in February 2011. The newly formed association represents all 56 of the nation’s state and territorial Medicaid Directors, and provides them with a strong unified voice in national discussions as well as a locus for technical assistance and best practices.
Matt formerly spent 12 years at the National Governors Association, where he worked on the Governors’ health care and human services reform agendas, and spent the 5 years prior to that as a health policy analyst working for the state Medicaid Directors as part of the American Public Human Services Association.
Matt also spent two years as a substitute teacher in the public school system in Alexandria, Virginia, and holds a BA in Eastern Religious Studies from the University of Virginia.

County Executive Steve Schuh was elected in 2014 on a five point platform to make Anne Arundel County the best place to live, work, and start a business in Maryland. His plan includes reducing taxes and fees; working with the school board to build smaller, neighborhood schools; improving public safety; reforming county government to make it more efficient and cost-effective; and improving our citizen’s quality of life.
Steve was raised in Crofton, is a graduate of Severn School in Severna Park, and served in the House of Delegates for eight years representing District 31. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and government from Dartmouth College and master’s degrees in business and in education from Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University. Steve is also a graduate of the Leadership Anne Arundel Flagship Program.
Steve has been in business for over 30 years. He is a former Managing Director of Alex. Brown & Sons and Credit Suisse. He is a founder of Mid-States Management Group, which develops and operates restaurants that employ over 1000 people in the region.
Steve serves on the boards of Directors of United Way of Central Maryland, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Metropolitan Council and the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore.
He is the father of two grown children, Brittany and George, and is married to Dania Blair Schuh.

Since 2013, Dr. Umair A. Shah has served as Executive Director and Local Health Authority for Harris County Public Health (HCPH) – the county public health agency for the nation’s 3rd largest county with 4.5 million people.
Dr. Shah earned his B.A. (philosophy) from Vanderbilt University; his M.D. from the University of Toledo Health Science Center; and completed Internal Medicine Residency, Primary Care/General Medicine Fellowship, and M.P.H. (management), at the University of Texas Health Science Center. He also completed an international health policy internship at World Health Organization headquarters in Switzerland.
Upon completing training, Dr. Shah began a distinguished career as an emergency department physician at Houston’s Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. He started his public health work as Chief Medical Officer at Galveston County’s Health District before joining HCPH to oversee its clinical health system and infectious disease portfolio. Under his leadership, HCPH has won numerous national awards including as a recipient of the Local Health Department of the Year award from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) in 2016.
Dr. Shah currently holds numerous leadership positions with respected entities like the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention; Trust for America’s Health; Network for Public Health Law; and Texas Medical Association. He is currently President of NACCHO (and its Texas affiliate) representing the nation’s 3,000 health departments.
Over his career, Dr. Shah has been a clinician, an innovator, an educator, and a leader in public health.

Matt is the Chief Strategic Integration Officer at MedStar Mobile Healthcare, the exclusive emergency and non-emergency EMS/MIH provider for Fort Worth and 14 other cities in North Texas, the recipient of the EMS World/NAEMT 2013 Paid EMS system of the Year and the only agency to be named an EMS10 Innovator by JEMS Magazine.
Matt has helped guide the development and implementation of several innovative programs with healthcare partners that have transformed MedStar fully as a Mobile Integrated Healthcare (MIH) provider, including high utilizer, CHF readmission reduction, observational admission reduction, hospice revocation avoidance, 9-1-1 nurse triage programs and a partnership with home health agency. He is also the co-author of the book “Mobile Integrated Healthcare – Approach to Implementation” published by Jones and Bartlett Publishing.
He has 37 years’ experience in EMS and holds a Master’s Degree in Health Service Administration with a Graduate Certificate in Health Care Data Management. Matt is a frequent speaker at national conferences and has done consulting in numerous EMS issues, specializing in mobile integrated healthcare, high performance EMS system operations, public/media relations, public policy, costing strategies and EMS research.