2021 Speakers

Kortney Cruz

As Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Medicare at Independence Blue Cross, Kortney is a long-time leader accountable for marketing Medicare products and services to the communities we serve, and helping those communities enroll into the Medicare coverage they need. She is directly responsible for acquisition and member retention marketing, product development, sales operations and sales management at Independence in the Medicare area. Her goal is to deliver innovative and value driven communications, and she is passionate about enriching the connection between Independence Blue Cross and our membership.

Heather Rollins

Heather Rollins is the Department Vice President of Individual and Small Group Sales at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City (Blue KC). In her current role, Heather oversees all sales and strategic operations for Blue KC’s individual and small group offerings, including Individual Under 65, Medicare and Small Group Under 50 plans. In this role she manages Blue KC’s current plan portfolios and guides efforts to retain and grow existing business.

Heather has dedicated over a decade of her career to Blue KC. Starting in 2004 as a Customer Service Representative, Heather steadily contributed to the sales department and its growth. Her previous responsibilities include oversight of the company’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) Individual Sales department and overall implementation of ACA programming at Blue KC.

Heather was selected as a 2018 Black Achiever in Business and Industry by the Black Achievers Society of Kansas City. Heather is an active member of the Raytown Educational Foundation, a non- profit which promotes and enhances educational excellence in the community. She’s also a member of the Soroptimist International foundation, a global women’s organization whose members volunteer to improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls through programs designed to inspire social and economic empowerment. Heather also serves as a mentor with Mother’s Refuge, a program that provides a safe home for young mothers and their babies.

Heather holds a Master of Business Administration from Rockhurst University. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Finance and Financial Management Services from the Trulaske College of Business at University of Missouri.

Archie Dey

Archie Dey is a Director of Consumer Insights at SCAN Health Plan. Archie leads the strategy development and design of initiatives in the areas of Customer Experience and Consumer Analytics. He is passionate about healthcare specially focusing on keeping Senior Healthy and Independent. Prior to SCAN, Archie has been a management consultant specializing in Strategy and Operations for the Healthcare Industry in the last 15 years. Archie has worked with National Payers and Providers in the areas of consumer digital strategy, target operating model, analytics strategy and large program implementations

Jennifer Rossbach

Hailing from the Motor City, Jennifer Rossbach has 20+ years of marketing experience in automotive, financial industries and, most recently, health care, as the Strategic Marketer on Medicare with Health Alliance Plan or HAP, a regional health plan in Michigan. Our approach to the market is making HAP a trusted resource for healthcare; and through an omnichannel approach, we connect with consumers to simplify a complicated subject.

When Jennifer isn’t thinking about Medicare, she volunteers her time with the Royal Oak DDA Board as well as the PTA. When she isn’t in the crush of AEP, Jennifer enjoys knitting. Jennifer is married to Eric, a creative director and has two sons. She enjoys summers on the Great Lakes and is a huge sports fan rooting for her Detroit teams and the University of Michigan, her alma mater.

Brianna Collins

Brianna Collins is the Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at Clover Health where she is responsible for the end-to-end digital marketing funnel, including measurement strategy, performance, optimizations, and resource allocation. Prior to Clover, she spent six years at marketing and communications agencies where she oversaw the strategy and execution of impactful marketing projects for a variety of clients. Most recently, Collins was Director of Digital Services at The Wright Touch, an integrated marketing firm where she led the digital arm of the company, spearheading projects, developing business, and crafting digital and technology-driven strategies. Collins earned a B.J. in Multimedia Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lindsay Roseman

Lindsay Roseman is the Manager of Content and Social Media at Clover Health, where she oversees content and social media strategy and execution—from educational blog posts and video PSAs to long-term social media campaign planning and community-building engagement. After cutting her content chops in magazine journalism, Lindsay moved into the agency world creating large-scale content marketing programs for brands, before going in house to create campaign-driven content for disruptive direct-to-consumer healthcare brands SmileDirectClub and Eargo. Roseman earned a B.J. in Magazine Journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Michael S. Adelberg

Mike Adelberg leads the Healthcare Strategy Practice at Faegre Drinker Consulting. He has 25 years progressive healthcare industry and government experience in Medicare, Medicaid and commercial health insurance. Mike spent fifteen years at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), including concurrently serving as the director of the Insurance Programs Group and the acting director of the Exchange Policy and Operations Group in the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) where he oversaw most of the functions of the federally-run health insurance exchanges; serving as the Director of Medicare Advantage Operations, where he supervised the annual cycle for review and award of Medicare Advantage bids and contracts, developed CMS’s operational policy, and led the monitoring of Medicare Advantage contractors; and serving as the associate regional administrator for Medicare operations (Chicago Region) and the director of education and assistance programs. Mike gained private sector experience as vice president of product development and government affairs for the Universal American Corporation, a multi-state health insurer which operated Medicare Advantage and Medicaid health plans (subsequently acquired by Wellcare).

He has also led or co-led health policy studies published in Health Affairs and The American Journal of Managed Care. Mike speaks and publishes frequently on healthcare topics and has served on numerous advisory committees. He’s been quoted in the Washington Post, New York Times, Modern Healthcare, NPR, and other leading media. In his spare time, Mike is an author. He’s written three novels, a history book, several scholarly journal articles, and over sixty book reviews.

Naomi Irvin

Naomi Irvin is a California native who relocated to North Carolina in 2006. She earned her undergraduate degree and MBA with a Marketing Certificate from East Carolina University (ECU). With over a decade of health insurance experience, Naomi currently leads a team of Compliance Consultants within the Sales, Marketing and Communications division of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. Her focus is balancing business objectives with compliance requirements.

Bruce Bonello

Bruce Bonello is the Director of Medicare Sales for Excellus BCBS. He oversees all Direct Pay sales channels, including Telesales. His role is to ensure an exceptional sales & retention customer experience, through development of strategic and tactical business plans, to ensure membership and retention goals are exceeded for all sales channels. Prior to his current role- he spent the last 6+ years building the Inside Sales team, at Excellus, for both the Individual and Medicare Markets. Prior to joining Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, in 2015, Bruce served as Regional Director of Sales Operations for United Health Group. Bruce is a graduate of Rollins College where he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.

Gary Melis, RPh

Gary Melis is a Clinical Pharmacist for the past six years at Network Health, a local health insurance provider in Northeast and Southeast Wisconsin. He is currently one of two pharmacists involved making MTM calls in-house. His responsibilities also involve NCQA, pharmacy appeals, P&T Committee, Member and Provider relations.

Gary’s also has experience as pharmacy manager for a national long term care company, pharmacy manager for retail pharmacy chain, and Pharmacy Director for a National Health Care provider. He has also been a pharmacy instructor at local medical college family practice clinic.

Todd Rau

Todd Rau is the Director of Medicare for Indiana University Health Plans and leads the Medicare Advantage line of business for the past 5 years. IU Health Plans is an extension of Indiana University Health, Indiana’s only hospital system to be nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report for 20 consecutive years.

Rau has 29 years of experience in insurance and began his career as a broker, focusing on commercial group, individual and Medicare health sales. In 2007 he became the Regional Sales Manager for Anthem BCBS individual broker sales, and quickly transitioned to the role of Broker Sales Director for Medicare Products.

While at IU Health Plans, Rau introduced the first $0 premium plans and multiple supplemental benefit additions. A Greenwood, Indiana native, he received his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University.

Daniel Weaver

Daniel Weaver is an established leader with extensive experience developing and implementing intervention strategies to improve Medicare Stars performance. With demonstrated success with innovative intervention programs, Daniel's team has consistently delivered market-leading performance and forward-thinking engagement with providers and members.

Bill Jensen

Mr. Jensen is Vice President for Independent Care Health Plan (iCare) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Independent Care is a licensed Wisconsin insurer serving special needs individuals through a Medicaid SSI MCO, a Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plan (MA-SNP) and a Fully-Integrated Dual Eligible SNP (FIDESNP).

Mr. Jensen is responsible for all of iCare's sales, marketing, public relations and new business development activities. Mr. Jensen reports to iCare's President and CEO. Previously, Mr. Jensen was Corporate Strategy and Compliance Officer for Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin, a staff-model HMO consistently ranked among NCQA's top ten nationally. Throughout his career, Mr. Jensen has developed many commercial and government-sponsored managed care products. Mr. Jensen began his career in advertising, working on national brands such

as Famous Footwear, Mercury Marine and Miller-Coors. Mr. Jensen holds an MBA in marketing and a BA in journalism from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He participates in workgroups and studies sponsored by the National Health Policy Group's SNP Alliance, the Center for Health Care Strategies, the National Quality Forum and the National Committee on Quality Assurance.

Thomas Sass

Thomas Sass joined BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York in 2012 and is the company’s director, consumer markets.

Possessing nearly 20 years of product management experience, Sass is responsible for overseeing the sales strategy and execution of an insurance portfolio that includes Medicare Advantage and Medigap, Individual (on and off-exchange), Federal Employee Program (FEP), and New York State Health Insurance Program (NYSHIP) products. In his tenure with BlueCross BlueShield, Sass has also overseen small employer group account management and Medicaid Managed Care.

Previously, Sass worked as an engineer, global product manager, and entrepreneur in various industries including, building and construction, printing, and nanotechnology. He received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and master's degree in business administration from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Saeed Aminzadeh

Saeed founded Decision Point with the mission of improving health plan clinical, financial and operational performance through informed, data-driven predictions on strategic decisions. He has more than 25 years of health information technology experience, with a track record of developing innovative approaches to solve complex business problems. He has held key senior management positions at Eliza Corporation, Ingenix (currently Optum), IHCIS and ProVentive, where led high-performing teams focused creative uses of technology for practical problem-solving. Saeed is a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University with a BA in Economics.

Josh Hoover

Josh Hoover, CEBS, is the West Coast Regional Sales Leader at Amplifon Hearing Health Care. One of his primary areas of focus is helping health plans transition their hearing coverage from manufacturer-driven “check-the-box” plans to plans that address hearing loss comorbidities and drive member satisfaction. Before joining Amplifon, Josh spent seven years at EPIC Hearing Healthcare, now United Hearing Benefits, as Director of Sales. He earned a BA degree in marketing management from the University of St. Thomas and his Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) designation from the Wharton School of Business. A resident of the Minneapolis area, Josh currently serves as Vice President of the Twin Cities Chapter of the International Society of Certified Employee Benefit Specialists (ISCEBS).

Melissa Smith

Melissa Smith is the Executive Vice President of Consulting and Professional Services at HealthMine, bringing over 25 years of experience in Star Ratings, strategy, sales, and marketing for health plans, providers, pharmacy benefit managers, and industry vendors. Melissa has extensive experience developing strategic and tactical solutions to meet client needs and a strong background of building productive partnerships across internal teams and with external vendors to improve performance on clinical, medication, patient survey, and administrative quality measures.

Most recently, Melissa was Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing, Strategy and Stars at Gorman Health Group. She is a well-known thought leader and healthcare strategist with proven success developing enterprise-wide solutions to improve Star Ratings, quality performance, health outcomes, and the member experience. Melissa’s team helps clients improve performance within quality ratings systems, evaluate market dynamics and opportunities, optimize distribution channels, and support our clients’ strategic planning needs.

Prior to Gorman Health Group, Melissa served in a leadership capacity at Cigna-HealthSpring. Before working in Medicare Advantage and quality ratings systems, Melissa was an Associate Director at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Melissa received her degree from Purdue University and began her career at KPMG, LLP. Melissa’s unique background of business process, regulatory compliance, and healthcare quality offers our clients unique access to healthcare strategy, quality performance, revenue optimization, and more.

Kent Holdcroft

Kent Holdcroft is the Executive Vice President of Growth at HealthMine, bringing to the team over 15 years of operational, consulting, and business development experience with healthcare technology vendors. Most recently, Kent was Executive Vice President at AdhereHealth, leading business development, strategy partnerships, and product strategy. Prior to AdhereHealth, Kent served in a leadership capacity at AIM Healthcare (now part of Optum) as a key contributor to Optum’s growth strategy and expanding into new markets, and delivering solutions to providers, managed care, and government entities. Kent received his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Miami University and master’s in Counseling from the University of Toledo. In his free time, Kent serves on the Board of Directors at BrightStone, Inc., and as a Stephen Minister.

Lauren Flynn Kelly

Lauren Flynn Kelly is a managing editor with AIS Health, an MMIT company, where she has been covering health business issues ranging from drug benefits and specialty pharmacy to managed Medicare and Medicaid for more than 15 years. She served as editor of AIS Health’s Drug Benefit News (the predecessor to RADAR on Drug Benefits) from 2004 to 2005 and again from 2011 to 2016, and now manages RADAR on Medicare Advantage (formerly Medicare Advantage News). Lauren graduated from Vassar College with a B.A. in English.

Sohail Malik

Sohail is a business professional with 19 years of experience in digitalization and client communication with a special focus on Healthcare solutions.

Currently, working as Vice President with Messagepoint, overseeing the Messagepoint Healthcare offering to ensure that it supports the complex and ever-changing needs of Health plans to scale & grow to meet the market needs.

Sohail has over 15+ years’ experience in CCM and SaaS/ Cloud-based digital transformation of highly regulated industries through business process optimization & technology acquisitions. Sohail has worked with some of the largest National Healthcare organizations, Blues and smaller community plans to bring digitalization and process automation for client communications and helped them scale & grow their business. Sohail is focused on collaboration and a partnership- driven mentality to deliver success at the intersection of people, processes, and technology.

Beth Burke

Beth Burke is the Director of Product Management at ConnectureDRX. Beth has been with ConnectureDRX over 10 years and has vast experience in developing product strategy, roadmap, and launching innovative solutions for the Medicare and commercial markets. She has prior experience as a software consultant and account executive. Beth enjoys cooking, gardening, sports and taking adventures with her husband and two boys.

Amanda Woodman

Amanda Woodman is responsible for business development and health plan sales. Formerly head of Solutions Enablement, Amanda has extensive experience in broker adoption and customer retention. Amanda has been with ConnectureDRX since 2016, initially supporting all healthcare insurance solutions prior to the company’s Medicare-only focus. She graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is passionate about art and all things creative.

Henry W. Osowski

Hank Osowski, a Founding Member of Strategic Health Group, is an experienced health care executive and strategist who has provided leadership to commercial, Medicare and Medicaid health plans for more than 30 years. He currently is the Managing Director of Strategic Health Group, a new boutique strategic and financial advisory firm dedicated to bringing seasoned leadership to enable health care organizations to succeed in a challenging and changing environment. He is an expert in Medicare Advantage and Medicaid long-term care strategies.

Formerly, as Senior Vice President Corporate Development, he was a key member of the senior leadership team that the company from a near death experience to an exceptionally strong financial position. He led SCAN Group's efforts to expand into seven additional California counties. Hank also led SCAN's entry into Arizona and served as the initial President of SCAN Health Plan Arizona and SCAN Long Term Care. The service area expansions represent approximately a quarter of SCAN's membership and added nearly $450 million to SCAN's revenue. He also led the organization's strategic planning efforts and initiated an innovation development regimen to seek improvements in care coordination practices and future care outcome protocols. Prior to SCAN, Hank served as a Principal in a national health care consulting organization providing a range of strategic, financial and development services for health plans, physician groups and hospitals.

He began his California career as a member of the senior management team responsible for the turnaround and financial survival of Blue Cross of California. In this capacity, Hank led the financial turnaround of the Individual and Small Group Division and provided leadership to the organization's strategic planning efforts. Earlier he served as Vice President International Operations for American Family Life Assurance Corporation where he directed the activities of the company's Canadian and European operations. In this role he directed the development of start-up operations in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, as well as the financial turnaround of the company's Canadian operations. Earlier, Hank also served as Director of Insurance Consulting Services for Coopers and Lybrand, a predecessor to PriceWaterhouse Coopers. Throughout his career, he has been a frequent speaker on critical issues and challenges facing the Medicare and Medicaid programs. In 2011, Hank spoke to the Managed Medicaid Congress about principles for structuring effective long term care programs, to the Medicare Market Innovations conference about opportunities for strengthening a plan's five star quality rating and offered his strategic projections for the future of Medicare. He also spoke to a diverse health care and technology audience at the Healthcare Unbound conference about leveraging the power of technology to improve the quality of health outcomes and care interventions.

Bianca Carr

Bianca’s Thought Leadership specialties include:

• Healthcare Incentives
• Medicare & Medicaid Member Engagement Strategies
• Healthcare Reward Provider Best Practices
• Third Party, Government, Wellness, and Health Plan Rewards

Mike Cantrell, RPh, Esq

Mike Cantrell is a registered pharmacist and licensed attorney. He is known for his broad view of the U.S. health care system and for successfully driving retail pharmacy performance. During his 30+ years in the industry, Mike has served in a number of executive leadership roles with Fortune 500 companies. He has expertise in pharmacy operations, managed care, regulatory oversight, pharmacy mail order and central fill operations, community pharmacy marketing and procurement, specialty pharmacy, and state and federal legislative affairs and government relations. Presently, Mike is Senior Operations Consultant, following his tenure as Senior Director of Regional Operations for Omnicell. He has Oversight of project management, quality assurance, product delivery, and functional monitoring, and customer support of the product portfolio. Before joining Omnicell, Mike served as the Senior Vice President Retail Health at Shopko, where he oversaw the functional areas of pharmacy, optical, and over-the-counter categories, taking pharmacy gross profit and immunization volumes to new highs.

Prior to Shopko, Mike was the Vice President of Pharmacy at Delhaize America, where he introduced a number of initiatives that consolidated and streamlined various compliance initiatives and propelled pharmacy gross profit to an all-time high. Before returning to the retail sector of pharmacy, Mike spent almost four years at AmerisourceBergen, where he held several executive positions: Group Vice President of Managed Networks, managing the largest PSAO in the country; Group Vice President of Business Development, overseeing the Good Neighbor Pharmacy franchise, consisting of approximately 3,700 pharmacies; and Vice President of Central Fill Business Development.

Mike spent the bulk of his career at Longs Drug Stores, which was acquired by CVS in 2008. At Longs, Mike held a number of positions, including Vice President Professional Services, ChiefPrivacy Official, and as a board member of Longs’ wholly owned PBM subsidiary, RxAmerica. He also spent five years as one of Longs’ corporate attorneys.

Leah Smith

Leah is the VP of Strategy and Digital at Anderson. She has 18 years’ experience working with some of the smartest, most creative people in marketing. Her role is to inspire clients and colleagues about the tangible ways to acquire and retain the right customer. Her most recent strategic achievements are getting her 6-year-old, Luke, off the iPad and convincing him frozen yogurt IS ice- cream.

Reva Sheehan

With more than 15 years’ industry experience ranging from long term care and compound pharmacy management to health plan quality and operations, Reva excels in engaging internal and external stakeholders to improve processes for optimal outcomes while keeping the member’s experience at the heart of every conversation.

Maggie Brown

Maggie Brown has over 30 years of leadership experience in healthcare and insurance marketplace. Maggie transitioned from health plan management roles to implementing core business solutions for numerous health plans around the country. With the enactment of HIPAA, the Balanced Budget Act, and the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 she focused on how to ensure a health plan could implement key technology solutions, meeting the needs of their members, while being compliant in a rapidly changing regulatory environment. Maggie has led implementations for government programs at both new and established managed care companies. Maggie holds a Doctor of Religious Arts degree with a major in Pastoral Psychology.

Kim Ingram

As HealthEdge’s Chief Nursing Officer, Kim is responsible for providing clinical expertise and care coordination leadership to the organization. She has spent more than 28 years building execution- focused pathways for success through technology-driven innovation in the healthcare delivery system. Kim is distinguished for her forward thinking and her ability to achieve transformational change working with key executives and stakeholders in complex organizations. Prior to joining HealthEdge, Kim served as Senior Vice President of Clinical Solutions at Click4Care, where she was responsible for product strategy and for leading several key customer implementations. Prior to Click4Care, Kim also held leadership roles at organizations including Cambia Health Solutions. Kim is a graduate of Lewis Clark State College, and a Registered Nurse.

David Meyer

David Meyer is a government programs executive with expertise in outcomes and data science in the healthcare industry. Mr. Meyer is the Senior Vice President of Health Outcomes & Informatics at NationsBenefits. In this newly created role, Mr. Meyer oversees the Research and Data Services team. Another key area of focus is on driving prospective and retrospective investigation into quality outcomes and customer engagement across the company’s distinct benefit management programs. He is also spearheading the integration of outcomes-focused data analytics and decision making into the company’s enterprise operations. Mr. Meyer brings to NationsBenefits more than 20 years of leadership experience in healthcare and government programs operations, quality, and data science. He is a frequently invited speaker at healthcare conferences and summits focused on health services, quality, and operations.

Mr. Meyer graduated from Atlantic Union College with dual bachelor’s degrees in English Literature and Biology, and he did graduate work in Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Loma Linda University.