Staff Writer

Ron Paulus

Former CEO, Mission Health

Ronald A. Paulus, MD, is President and CEO of RAPMD Strategic Advisors. He is also an Executive in Residence at General Catalyst and the immediate past President and CEO of Mission Health (www.Mission-Health.org), a $1.9 billion integrated health system serving all of western North Carolina. Mission Health includes 6 hospitals, and insurance company (Healthy State), a post-acute company (CarePartners) and nearly 1,000 employed providers.

Mission Health is the only health system ever designated as one of the nation’s Top 15 Health Systems in six of seven years by IBM/Watson Health (2012-2015; 2017-2018) . Mission was acquired by HCA Healthcare in February, 2019.

Before joining Mission Health System, Dr. Paulus was Executive Vice President, Clinical Operations and Chief Innovation Officer at Geisinger Health System (www.Geisinger.org), where he managed Geisinger’s hospitals and its more than 800 physician group practice. At Geisinger, he also was responsible for ensuring system-wide innovation.

Prior to joining Geisinger, Dr. Paulus was co-founder, President and later CEO of CareScience, Inc. (previously NASDAQ: CARE), now part of Premier healthcare informatics (https://www.premierinc.com/transforming-healthcare/healthcare-performance-improvement/) with the software in use in nearly 1,000 hospitals and health systems nationwide. CareScience offered a web-based analytics platform to support health systems’ quality and efficiency improvement work.

Dr. Paulus received his MD degree from The School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and his MBA, concentration in healthcare management, and BS in Economics from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has published and speaks regularly on the topics of health care quality and efficiency, using analytics to transform care delivery, innovation, physician leadership, and new models of care. In 2014, Dr. Paulus was voted one of Modern Healthcare’s Top 50 Most Influential Physician Executives and Leaders, and was among the Top 20 on that list. 

Dr. David Agus

Founding Director and CEO, Lawrence J. Ellison
Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC

Dr. Agus is a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering and the CEO and founding director of USC’s Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine. He is one of the world’s leading physicians specializing in treating patients with advanced forms of cancer, is the co-founder of several personalized medicine companies and has served in leadership roles at the World Economic Forum. Over the years he has treated a number of high-profile patients, including Steve Jobs and Lance Armstrong. Dr. Agus holds degrees from Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

George S. Barrett

Former Chairman and CEO, Cardinal Health, Inc.

George held the role of chairman and CEO for the majority of his tenure, from August 2009 to the end of 2017, serving as executive chairman until November 2018. Under his leadership, Cardinal Health grew to rank 15th on the Fortune 500 with annual revenue of more than $130 billion and 50,000 employees in 60 countries. During his tenure, the company received a number of accolades, including Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies, Forbes America’s Best Employers, The Wall Street Journal’s Drucker Institute’s Top Companies for Corporate Social Responsibility, National Association for Female Executives’ Top Companies for Executive Women, Chief Executive Magazine’s Top Companies for Talent Development, and a host of awards for its public health and philanthropic activities.   Barrett earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University and a Master of Business Administration from New York University.  He holds an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Long Island University’s Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the Columbus College of Art & Design. Additional bio information can be found here.

John Kuelper

Investment Director, Ascension Ventures

John Kuelper joined Ascension Ventures in 2014 as a Kauffman Fellow. John is Founder and President of Qualia Holdings LLC, a platform for systems biology and therapeutic ventures. He has advised or worked for several investment firms (Adams Street Partners, Sterling Partners, Abundant Venture Partners), medical technology companies (Stereotaxis, Orpheden Therapeutics), and non-profits (The Kresge Foundation, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association). John began his career as a medical researcher studying computational neuroscience and medical robotics and has over fifteen years of experience as a commercial software developer. John earned JD and MBA degrees from the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Kellogg School of Management where he graduated with honors and was elected Beta Gamma Sigma (top 10% of class). He earned a BA in cognitive neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis, graduating magna cum laude. In 2014 he was elected to the Kauffman Fellows Society. In his spare time, John enjoys hiking and camping with his two dogs and listening to live music.

Chris Olsen

Partner, Drive Capital

A native of Cincinnati, Chris built his career investing in emerging technology and healthcare companies. Prior to co-founding Drive Capital, Chris was at Sequoia Capital for six years where he led and managed the firm’s growth investing practice. His investments include LitePoint (Teradyne), Klarna, Weebly, Electronic Arts (EA – NASDAQ), GSI Commerce (EBay) and eMeter (Siemens). Before Sequoia, Chris was an investor with Technology Crossover Ventures. Chris briefly dropped out of Yale to compete on the professional squash circuit, where he quickly learned he was better suited to work with entrepreneurs.

Billy Deitch

Principal, Healthcare, Oak HC/FT

Billy joined Oak HC/FT as a Principal in 2018. Prior to joining Oak HC/FT, Billy was with Francisco Partners, a technology-focused private equity firm, where he helped lead investments and served on the boards of several companies across healthcare, fintech, and application software. Billy was previously with TPG Growth, the early stage investment platform of TPG Capital, where he focused on investments in healthcare, software, financial services, and consumer products. Billy began his career in the Media & Communications investment banking group at UBS and also worked with the lending platform Funding Circle during the early stages of its US operations. Billy graduated cum laude from Yale University with a BA in History and earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Sean Lane

CEO

Sean is a lifelong technologist who grew up in a small, rural town in Ohio and started his career in the U.S. intelligence community, holding leadership positions in the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency. Sean served five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was awarded the Defense Meritorious Service Medal and Bronze Star Medal for his service. After government service, Sean started his life as an entrepreneur, and has founded several technology companies dealing with big data, advanced analytics, entity resolution, and most recently, artificial intelligence. Sean has raised over $70M in venture capital, and is now a leading expert in applying AI in healthcare. He is a graduate of Miami University with an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service from the University of Rio Grande, and was previously named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year.