Staff
Susan G. Bornstein, MD, MPH is an OBGYN by training. She became so frustrated with the issues that her patients were having with cost and access to care that she returned to the University of Michigan for a Master’s in Public Health.
Susan has a comprehensive understanding of the healthcare delivery system, having cared for patients across a variety of practice settings, including running her own office for nearly 20 years. She has negotiated and tussled with insurance companies from the employer, provider, and patient perspectives, and is well aware of how frustrating, maddening, expensive, inefficient, and inequitable this process is. She is devoted to bridging the gap between the overwhelming evidence in favor of universal healthcare in the U.S., including a tax-based financing system proportional to means, and the public’s embrace and support of this concept. In service of this goal, she founded The Asclepius Initiative, where she enthusiastically serves as CEO and staff.
In her spare time, Susan enjoys running, reading, hiking, and baking (hence the running and hiking). She is at perpetual risk of becoming a crazy cat lady.
Laci is a communications professional with decades of experience in journalism and nonprofit communications. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Services Management and a Master of Arts in Communications.
Laci spent 16 years as a television news producer for stations in her hometown of Amarillo, Texas and Louisville, including more than10 years at WHAS11, before trading the newsroom for the nonprofit sector. Prior to joining TAI, she spent nearly 9 years as Communications Specialist for an addiction recovery center in Louisville. Her specialty is storytelling.
Laci was born and raised in Amarillo before moving to Louisville in 2003. She expected to only stay for a couple of years, but 20 years later, she still calls Louisville home. Laci’s favorite things are notebooks, pens, reading, and the World Series Champion Texas Rangers. Her cat Sephora keeps Laci company as she works to help the TAI team educate Kentuckians about their choices when it comes to health care coverage.
Board Members
Steve Barger has over 45 years of experience in providing health care benefits for working families. He has held numerous leadership positions including President and Chair of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, Chair of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and director of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Steve is licensed in Health, Life, Property and Casualty.
Dr. Craig Blakely, Dean of the School of Public Health and Information Sciences at the University of Louisville, has a long history of federal and state funded research, a great deal of which has been data driven efforts to influence policy. His early exposure began at Michigan State University in the late 1970’s, where he earned a doctoral degree in Ecological Psychology, based social change. .
He then spent his initial post-doctoral study years at a policy research shop in Michigan that initiated a study of a prenatal care pilot program in Michigan, funded at $1M by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan that culminated in legislative change making prenatal care a basic health service in the state. He then relocated to the Stanford Research Institute where he managed components of several national studies of the Reagan block grant in education (ECIA Chapters 1 and 2). Following his relocation to Texas A&M in 1987, he built the Public Policy Research Institute and spent two years as a visiting scholar at SAMHSA. He returned to Texas A&M where he helped establish the new school of public health, first as a department head, later as Associate Dean for Research and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and finally as Dean.…
Tina has brought the full depth of her education and life experience to her job as State Representative. With Tina’s PhD in Education and Social Change; a Master of Arts in Teaching; a Master of Business Administration; and a Bachelor of Science in Management.
Tina, a proud Mom of three children, including Brandon, who was diagnosed with autism at age two, has a chance to work for all of our children. Tina’s experience shaped her belief that the government and private sector must work together to ensure that everyone can access affordable health care.
Tina’s 29 years as a manager and head coach with Kentucky Gymnastics Academy, preparing hundreds of young athletes to develop the physical skills and winning attitude that earned trophies in the gym and success in the classroom and the workforce has given her a foundational understand of what our children need to be successful.
Tina is a certified special education teacher who works with students who have learning and behavioral disorders such as autism. A fierce advocate for her students and their families, she ensures parents have the information and resources they need to raise their kids. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Jefferson County Teachers Association as well as on the Board of the National Alliance for Mental Illness Kentucky.…
John B. Chessare, MD, MPH, is the President and CEO of GBMC HealthCare, in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Chessare has been actively involved in designing and managing systems of care in academic medical centers and in community hospitals. A pediatrician, he is a graduate of Boston College, the University of Rome School of Medicine, and the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He completed his Pediatrics residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and his fellowship in Academic General Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Chessare is recognized nationally for his work in utilizing operations management to improve patient flow and drive out waste in the acute care hospital, and for designing safer and more reliable medication delivery systems. His present work is in transforming his organization to be better able to deliver higher value by creating better health, better care and lower cost with more joy for those providing the care. In November of 2020, under Dr. Chessare’ s leadership, the GBMC HealthCare System achieved the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the highest level of recognition for performance excellence in the United States. He is enthusiastic about working towards a single payor system for the United States to cover all Americans and reduce the burden of health care costs.
Lindsay Della, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the University of Louisville in the Department of Communication where she provides expertise in strategic communication to positively affect health and wellbeing. She teaches courses in research methods, health communication, and integrated communication campaign development. As a health communication and social marketing specialist, her research focuses on analyzing and understanding the nuances of campaign design for well-defined audiences with the goal of benefiting communities and society.
Prior to her current appointment, Lindsay was a Fellow at the Oak Ridge Institute for Research and Education (2007), as well as the National Center for Health Marketing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA (2006). She also spent several years working for a market research consultancy where much of her time was focused on servicing government and nonprofit clients in public health and social service.
Lindsay earned her doctorate in Health Promotion and Behavior from the College of Public Health at the University of Georgia. She also holds a M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communication from Northwestern University and a B.S. in Marketing Management and a B.A. in Communication Studies from Virginia Tech.
When not working, you might find Lindsay enjoying a swim at a local community pool.
Shireen Deobhakta serves as a Senior Social Science Researcher for REACH Evaluation. She provides expertise in Behavioral Science approaches, which use a mixture of Psychology and Economics to nudge behaviors and solve problems in order to improve service delivery.
Shireen received her doctorate in Urban and Public Affairs from the University of Louisville, her Masters of Business Administration from Ohio State University, and her Bachelor of Arts from Ohio Wesleyan University. Shireen is a strong believer in applied research, which led her to the decision to choose practice over academia.
More recently, Shireen worked at the Mayor’s office as a Research and Evaluation Consultant. In that capacity, she was responsible for embedding evidence-based practices within government and applying Behavioral Science approaches to improve service delivery. Her main area of focus was on Louisville’s violence prevention efforts and embedding an evaluation component to the city’s adoption of the Cure Violence Model. Shireen also evaluated Louisville’s prisoner re-entry programs.
As an avid lover of animals, Shireen loves spending time with her dog, Rousseau. She also enjoys painting and spending time with family and friends.
With more than 20 years of experience in the diversity field, Mr. Lee Gill is a nationally recognized leader with both university and private practice experience and currently serves as the University of Louisville’s Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and inclusion.
Prior to joining the UofL team he served as Clemson University’s Chief Diversity Officer and Special Assistant to the President. While at Clemson, he is credited with building a sustainable infrastructure to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts into the campus culture, and with creating programs that support and address the challenges facing women, Black and Hispanic students, and the LGBTQ community. He created the Clemson University Men of Color National Summit, which brings together more than 2,000 students, educators, business professionals, government officials and community leaders from around the country to explore issues and share best practices to increase high school and college graduation rates.
Gill also served for eight years as Associate Vice President for Inclusion and Equity and Chief Diversity Officer at The University of Akron. And before joining Akron was the Chief Executive Officer of Stratus Group Consultants Inc., a firm providing diversity audits, training and organizational assessments.
Prior to that role, he held the position of Dean of the Institute for Diversity and Leadership at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor, Michigan.…
Michael Gruenthal, MD, PhD is a neuroscientist, epileptologist and academic medicine administrator. He served as the Mason C and Mary D Rudd Chair of Neurology at the University of Louisville from 2001 to 2006, as the Bender Family Chair of Neurology and Director of the Neurosciences Institute at Albany Medical College from 2006 to 2018, and as Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at Albany Medical College from 2015 to 2018. He received a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis and an MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed post-doctoral training in Neuropharmacology at Duke University Medical Center and in Epilepsy/Electroencephalography at the University of Louisville. At Albany he oversaw the acquisition of community practices, expansion of ambulatory and urgent care services, and participation in alternative models of care (CPC+, MACRA/MIPS). In his clinical and administrative roles, he gained extensive firsthand experience with the inefficiency, inequity and unsustainability of the healthcare delivery system which fails to meet the needs of many providers and people in need of medical care.
Joni Jenkins was elected Kentucky State Representative, District 44, in 1994 and served through 2022. She served as the Minority Floor Leader from 2019-2022, the first woman in Kentucky to lead a caucus.
During her tenure in the House, she served over 20 years on the Health and Welfare committee. Jenkins chaired the Budget Subcommittee on Health and Family Services from 2015-16.
Jenkins’ legislative priorities were violence against women, child welfare, and substance use disorder issues.
Currently, Jenkins is the Senior Advisor to Congressman Morgan McGarvey in his Louisville District Office.
She holds a BA in Communications from the University of Kentucky.
Meredith Lambe has over 20 years experience working in the non-profit industry. She has worked in various fundraising and leadership positions for non-profit organizations in Louisville, KY and New Albany, IN along with serving on various boards. She currently serves as the President for Being for Others Health and Wellness Foundation, a startup private grantmaking foundation serving eight counties in southwest Indiana.
Meredith earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from the University of Kentucky and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Louisville. In addition, she earned a certificate from the National Center for Paralegal Training.
She enjoys any opportunity to work with others and strategically analyze ways to broaden and enhance an organization’s footprint to have a significant impact on its community members. When not focused on relationship building or fundraising, she enjoys traveling with her family, taking care of her dogs and cats, hiking, biking, gardening, and reading.
Bill Londrigan is the president of the KY State AFL-CIO
Kevin A. Pearce, MD, MPH is a tenured professor in the UK College of Medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine, where he served as Department Chair and Associate Dean for Rural and Community Health from 2011 to 2017. He has been a board-certified Family Medicine physician since 1986, and a full-time academic physician since 1990, when he earned his MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Pearce’s interests in healthcare delivery reform stemmed from his clinical practice experiences and his leadership in the Kentucky Academy of Family Physicians, and have been strengthened by his experiences in training healthcare professionals, his studies of primary care workforce shortages in Kentucky, and his health-services research engaging safety-net clinics. He lives with his wife, Eileen, and their dog, in Versailles, Ky. They see their adult son and daughter regularly, even though “the kids” have moved away.
Jeff Zakem, MHSA, brings more than 20 years of experience: designing education to help individuals develop and improve through behavior change; developing people through education, engagement, and motivation; and delivering communication that builds buy-in, encourages stories, and inspires action. Recently, Jeff has shifted career focus and is now collaborating to define the vision and structure of a new office of community health equity and engagement at a 9-hospital system in the Chicago and Chicago metropolitan area.