Vanessa M. Benavides
Vanessa M. Benavides, Senior Vice President and Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, has been elected to the board of directors of the CDC Foundation.
At Kaiser Permanente, Ms. Benavides is responsible for planning, oversight and coordination of activities to drive effective compliance with regulatory requirements and Kaiser Permanente policies. In collaboration with leadership across the organization, she leads the development of strategies to embed compliance and ethics into the core design and operations of the organization, and to foster a culture of trust and ensure all staff are consistently delivering Kaiser Permanente’s mission of providing high-quality affordable health care services that improve the health of the communities they serve.
Ms. Benavides joined Kaiser Permanente in November 2015. Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, she was Chief Compliance Officer for Tenet Healthcare, where she managed ethics and compliance programs across all Tenet-owned entities, including acute-care hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, outpatient centers, physician practices, commercial and government health plans, and Conifer Health Solutions, Tenet’s health management services subsidiary. She also served as senior regulatory counsel during her 10-year tenure.
Before joining Tenet, she served as legal counsel for Caremark Rx and was in private practice with the law firm Locke Lord, LLP, where she specialized in health care, employee benefits and corporate law.
Ms. Benavides serves on the national board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign and is the Co-Chair of the board. Ms. Benavides is also a member of the board of directors of The Trevor Project, the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth.
Contact: Amy Tolchinsky
Phone: 404.523.3486
Email: atolchinsky@cdcfoundation.org
Edward B. Burger, PhD
Last December, St. David’s Foundation CEO Earl Maxwell announced plans to retire at the end of 2019, pending the recruitment of a new CEO. The foundation has announced that Edward B. Burger, PhD will become President and CEO of St. David’s Foundation. Dr. Burger is currently president of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, as well as a professor of mathematics and will join the foundation in January 2020.
An educational leader on thinking, innovation, and creativity, Dr. Burger has been the president of Southwestern and a full professor of mathematics since 2013. Previously, he was the Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, having initially joined the Williams faculty in 1990. He has delivered over 700 addresses worldwide at venues including Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins as well as at the Smithsonian Institution, Microsoft Corporation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the New York Public Library, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of over 70 research articles, books, and video series. His latest book, Making Up Your Mind: Thinking Effectively Through Creative Puzzle-Solving, was on several of Amazon’s Hot New Releases lists.
In 2006, Reader’s Digest listed Burger in its annual “100 Best of America” as America’s Best Math Teacher. In 2010, he was named by Baylor University the winner of the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching—the largest prize in higher education teaching across all disciplines in the English speaking world. In 2012, Microsoft Worldwide Education selected him as one of their “Global Heroes in Education.” In 2013, Dr. Burger was inducted as an inaugural Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Contact: Kristy Ozmun
Phone: 512.344.2030
Email: kozmun@hahnpublic.com
Cheryl Smith Fisher
The Health Foundation for Western and Central New York announced that Cheryl Smith Fisher has been named Chair of the foundation’s board of trustees. Ms. Fisher joined the board in 2014 and was elected vice chair in 2018.
Ms. Fisher is counsel to the Buffalo-based law firm Magavern Magavern Grimm LLP, where she practices in the areas of employment law and professional responsibility and is Chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York. She formerly served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of New York.
Ms. Fisher has chaired the boards of Lord of Life Child and Adult Day Care Center and CMH Counseling and serves on the Board of Resurrection Village. A past chair of the board of directors of Child and Family Services of Erie County, Inc., in 2000, she received that board’s John N. Walsh Jr. Board Appreciation Award for commitment to strengthening family life in western New York.
Ms. Fisher is a Past Chair of the Committee on Character and Fitness, Eighth Judicial District and was formerly co-chair of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics. She has served as Vice President of the New York State Bar Association and a member of the Executive Committee and House of Delegates. She is also a member of the Women’s Bar Association. Ms. Fisher has been a presenter at many Continuing Legal Education programs in the areas of Ethics, Not-for-Profit Law, Commercial, and Employment Law.
Email: info@hfwncy.org
Sarah Lyman
Alliance Healthcare Foundation announced that Sarah Lyman has been hired as Executive Director to lead the organization in its mission to advance health and wellness for those in need through collaborative funding, convening, and advocacy. With nearly a decade of experience catalyzing results in health philanthropy, Ms. Lyman brings unique leadership to the intersection of population health, systems change, and collaboration in order to advance health equity.
Prior to joining Alliance, Ms. Lyman served as the Executive Vice President for Empire Health Foundation (EHF) in eastern Washington State, which oversees $70 million per year in funding. She is passionate about finding solutions to complex social issues and creating sustainable positive impact. While at EHF, she was instrumental in designing and building the organization from its inception into a thriving agent for community change, leveraging and managing resources over 18 times its annual endowed grantmaking.
She was also a key leader in the effort to launch Family Impact Network, the first network administrator in Washington to implement performance-based contracting in the child welfare system. In 2017, Ms. Lyman established Washington State’s first Program Administrator for the $100 million Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment and served as the organization’s inaugural Executive Director.
Notable honors include the Council on Foundations and HUD Secretary’s Award for Public Philanthropic Partnership, and a first-place award for small businesses in “Best Places to Work” by the Journal of Business. In 2014, Ms. Lyman was selected as one of Terrance Keenan Institute’s Emerging Leaders in Health Philanthropy through Grantmakers In Health.
Ms. Lyman has served on a variety of boards including Volunteers of America, Spokane Teaching Health Center (for which she also served as interim Executive Director), the Washington State Public Health Association and Partnering for Progress, among others.
Contact: Carl Nettleton
Phone: 858.353.5489
Email: carl@nettstrategies.com
Ansje Miller
Ansje Miller began as the new Executive Director of Health and Environmental Funders Network (HEFN) on October 14, 2019. Ms. Miller is an experienced and passionate policy advocate and campaign organizer in the fields of environmental health and environmental justice. Most recently she served as Director of Policy and Partnerships for the Center for Environmental Health. Ms. Miller is known in the field as a strategic thinker, consensus-builder, and an incredible ambassador; and she has shared an inspiring vision for HEFN as it enters its third decade.
Contact: Cindy Glass
Phone: 301.565.0500
Email: cglass@hefn.org