Lisa Brenner, PhD, ABPP

Director
VA Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC)

Lisa A. Brenner, Ph.D., is a Board-Certified Rehabilitation Psychologist, a Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R), Psychiatry, and Neurology at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, and the Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC). She is also Vice Chair of Research for the Department of PM&R. Dr. Brenner is a Past President of Division 22 (Rehabilitation Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (APA) and an APA Fellow. She serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation. Her primary area of research interest is traumatic brain injury, co-morbid psychiatric disorders, and negative psychiatric outcomes, including suicide. Dr. Brenner has over 200 peer-reviewed publications, participates on national advisory boards, and has recently co-authored a book titled: Suicide Prevention After Neurodisability: An Evidence-Informed Approach.

Shannon Finn Connell, PhD

CEO
David R. Metcalf Invisible Wounds Foundation

Shannon Finn Connell, Ph.D., is an executive coach, author, organizational change leader and philanthropist. An active-duty U.S. Navy SEAL parent, Shannon serves as an advisor to the Navy SEAL community where she leads advocacy initiatives for special operations warriors transitioning from active-duty military service to civilian life.

A former executive with SYSCO, Shell Oil and Procter & Gamble, Shannon worked internationally in China and Latin America before combining her corporate experiences and academic pursuits. She obtained her Ph.D. in organizational development, researching design thinking as a problem-solving methodology in global organizational change initiatives. While maintaining leadership positions in business, she was appointed adjunct professor of management in the MBA program at Rice University.

Shannon serves on the University of Cincinnati College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Advisory Board to design academic and career opportunities for marginalized students and was named 2022 Philanthropist of the Year for her work. A member of Forbes Coaches Council and certified Gallup Strengths-Based executive coach, Shannon’s organizational change work is rooted in positive psychology. She holds an MBA from North Central College and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from University of Cincinnati.

Kristen Dams-O’Connor, PhD

Jack Nash Professor, Vice Chair of Research
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Kristen Dams-O’Connor, Ph.D. is Jack Nash Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) in New York, NY. She serves as Director of the Brain Injury Research Center (BIRC) of Mount Sinai and is a Professor of Neurology at ISMMS. Her multidisciplinary research program aims to identify mechanisms, risk, and protective factors to improve long-term outcomes in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and repetitive head trauma sustained through sports participation, military service, and intimate partner violence. She leads the Late Effects of TBI (LETBI) project, a longitudinal prospective TBI brain donor program that aims to characterize the clinical phenotype and postmortem pathological signatures of post-traumatic neurodegeneration and its associations with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), AD-related dementias (ADRDs), traumatic encephalopathy syndrome (TES), and underlying neuropathological processes. Her team uses modern psychometric and statistical techniques to measure individual differences in trajectories of change over time among survivors of TBI. One goal of this work is to improve diagnosis of secondary post-traumatic conditions during life so they can be treated. She is Project Director of the New York Traumatic Brain Injury Model System of care, one of 16 centers of excellence for TBI research and clinical care in the United States. Her research is supported by federal grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, Department of Defense, Centers for Disease Control, and Patient Reported Outcomes Research Institute.

Dave DeMarco, PhD

Board Member
Cohen Veterans Bioscience

Dr. Dave DeMarco is a senior advisor to C-suite leaders in the Life Sciences and Healthcare industries. He serves as Chief Strategy Officer for Material Health Strategies and works with c-suite executives on growth strategies and team performance in both the for-profit and non-for-profit industries. He previously served as Chair of the Board of the American Diabetes Association, led Ernst & Young’s (EY’s) Northeast Life Sciences practice and was the Deputy Leader of the US Healthcare Practice.

With over 25 years of leadership experience, Dave advises, coaches and shares insights on strategy and transformation, commercial operations, hHealthcare policy, governance, public-private-partnerships, and entrepreneurial growth.

While serving on the board of the American Diabetes Association, he led Board initiatives involving: CEO succession, Principal Officer succession, Board Development, Policy creation, strategic plan implementation and technology partnerships.

Dave has held key executive positions, including: Global Aesthetic Franchise Leader, Sanofi Aventis; US Health Deputy Leader, Northeast Region Life Sciences Practice Leader and Johnson & Johnson Global Client Services Partner, EY; Research Scientist, Internal Venture Leader, Amoco Chemical; and cofounder, Idea Connection Systems.

Dave worked closely with the Aventis NA leadership team to develop post-merger integration growth strategies and launch key blockbuster products aimed at, and succeeding in, doubling the size of the business in four years. As a senior partner in EY’s Global Life Sciences team, Dave piloted a new P&L accountable, go-to-market model, growing the Northeast practice at 30% CAGR, resulting in a $400 million business. In his service to Johnson & Johnson, he partnered with J&J leadership in developing Janssen Healthcare Innovation, charged with creating future business units. Dave led the transformation of EY’s US Health practice, resulting in a $750 million business. As a member of the Sanofi Aventis NA Dermatology leadership team, Dave developed the global aesthetic franchise strategy and served as the commercial head for Europe. For this turnaround project, he created a plan to triple EBITDA, implement new global pricing policies and double customer acquisition.

Dave received his B.S. from Grove City College and Ph.D. in chemistry from Purdue University.

Jam Ghajar, MD, PhD, FACS

President
Brain Trauma Foundation

Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery
Stanford University School of Medicine

Jamshid Ghajar MD, PhD, FACS, is a board certified neurosurgeon, Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, Director of the Stanford Concussion and Brain Performance Center and President of the Brain Trauma Foundation in New York City and Palo Alto.

He completed the MD/PhD program at Cornell University Medical College. During his residency training in neurosurgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital, he invented and patented several neurosurgical devices that are currently used worldwide. After residency, he joined the faculty at the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and was a founder of the Brain Trauma Foundation (BTF) in 1986. The mission of the BTF is to improve the outcome of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). He joined the neurosurgery faculty at Stanford in February 2014.

Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa, PhD, FACRM

Senior Health Scientist
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa, PhD, FACRM is a Senior Health Scientist on the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Team, in the Division of Injury Prevention (DIP), at NCIPC. As a health scientist, her role on the TBI team is to devise research projects and products to better understand trends in TBI in the U.S. and to improve health outcomes for individuals living with a TBI. She is project lead on the Report to Congress on the Management of Traumatic Brain Injury in Children, and a scientific collaborator for changing the culture in youth sports, clinical decision support, and return to school projects in the division.

Dr. Haarbauer-Krupa has over 30 years of experience and has authored over 100 publications and presentations in the area of TBI, with specialties in rehabilitation and pediatric populations. She currently holds an adjunct position in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University’s School of Medicine.

Magali Haas, MD, PhD

CEO and President
Cohen Veterans Bioscience

Dr. Haas is Chair, CEO and President of Cohen Veterans Bioscience, a non-profit brain research organization based in New York City whose mission is to fast-track diagnostics and therapeutics to advance precision brain health. Magali has over 15 years of pharmaceutical executive experience, predominantly at Johnson & Johnson, where she assumed broad end-to-end development leadership roles in early & late stage neuroscience clinical development, translational medicine, diagnostics and integrative solutions. To pioneer new approaches for precision therapeutics for brain health, she founded Orion Bionetworks in 2012, which was transformed to Cohen Veterans Bioscience in 2015, while also serving as founding Chief Science and Technology Officer for One Mind for Research. She serves on several advisory boards including Alto Neurosciences, Partnership for Assessment and Accreditation of Scientific Practice, VirtualBrainCloud, Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics and IMEC for nanoelectronics.  Magali earned her BS in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in biomedical engineering from Rutgers University, and her MD and PhD in neuroscience with distinction from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Dallas Hack, MD, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired)

Veterans Science Strategy Advisor (Consulting)
Cohen Veterans Bioscience

Dr. Dallas Hack M.D. served as the Director of the US Army Combat Casualty Care Research Program and Chair of the Joint Program Committee for Combat Casualty Care from 2008 to 2014 and as the Senior Medical Advisor to the Principal Assistant for Research and Technology, US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command from 2014 to 2015. He coordinated more than 70% of the DoD trauma research to improve battlefield trauma care of those injured in combat. During this time, the Department of Defense funded more Traumatic Brain Injury research than any organization because of the increasing awareness of the massive burden of Traumatic Brain Injury in the military. He has held numerous military medical leadership positions including Chief of Clinical Services at Fort Knox, KY, Commander of the NATO Headquarters Healthcare Facility, and Command Surgeon at the strategic level during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. COL(R) Hack received numerous military awards including the Bronze Star, two Legion of Merit awards, and seven Meritorious Service Medals and was inducted as a Distinguished Member of the Military Order of Medical Merit. He has a BA from Andrews University, a MPH from Johns Hopkins University, a MD from Loma Linda University, a MSS from the US Army War College, and a CPE from the Certifying Commission in Medical Management. He was recognized as the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year by Loma Linda University in May 2015. After retiring from military service, Dr. Hack has consulted with numerous organizations to advance research in Brain Health and transition the progress to improved clinical practice.

Frank Larkin

Chair, Veterans Advisory Council
Cohen Veterans Bioscience

Frank Larkin was formerly the United States Senate Sergeant at Arms (SAA). As chief law enforcement and executive officer of the Senate, the SAA enforces rules of the Senate; provides a range of technical and administrative services to Senators in their Washington, DC, and state offices; and maintains security in the Capitol and Senate office buildings.

Frank was a member of the Senior Executive Service, recently serving as both the Acting Director and the Vice Director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) within the Department of Defense. He previously served as JIEDDO’s Director for the Counter IED Operations-Intelligence Integration Center. JIEDDO’s mission was to focus all Department of Defense actions in support of the combatant commanders’ efforts to defeat improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as weapons of strategic influence. Frank’s focus was in support of our deployed warfighters and special operations forces around the globe and the integration of a “whole of government” disruption effort targeting extremist networks that employ IEDs.

Frank served for more than two decades in the United States Secret Service (USSS), beginning in 1984 as a Special Agent assigned to the Philadelphia and Washington Field Offices, before assignment to the Presidential Protective Division. He was assigned to the Office of Congressional Affairs for a two-year fellowship on Capitol Hill, serving a year each with the Senate and House Appropriations Committees. Frank entered the USSS supervisory ranks as Assistant to the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office, where he led financial, electronic, and organized crimes investigations. Following the events of 9/11, he returned to Washington, DC, as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Division, supervising White House security operations. As Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Technical Security Division, Frank was responsible for tactical countermeasures programs. In 2004, he was promoted to the Senior Executive Service, assuming the position of Deputy Assistant Director for Protective Research and Chief Technology Officer.

Following his USSS career, Frank was Director, Program Management & Leadership, for the Raytheon Company, and more recently, worked at Lockheed Martin’s Defense & Intelligence Solutions, responsible for providing operations and intelligence analysis support to the intelligence community.

A veteran of the US Navy, Frank has a significant military and law enforcement special operations background, serving as a special warfare operator in the Navy SEALs. After his Navy service, he was a uniformed patrol officer with the Norristown (PA) Police Department, a homicide detective with the Montgomery County (PA) District Attorney’s Office, and a Maryland State Trooper-Flight Paramedic.

Frank holds a BA degree in criminal justice and an MS degree in public administration from Villanova University. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the US Secret Service award for valor, the Department of the Army’s Exceptional Civilian Service award, and the Superior Civilian Service award.

Kathy Lee, MS, CRNP, ANP-BC

Director, Casualty Management Policy and Programs
U.S. Department of Defense Warfighter Brain Health Program

Ms. Lee currently serves as the Director of Casualty Management Policy & Programs and is the lead for the US DoD Warfighter Brain Health program supporting the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Readiness Policy and Oversight. She brings considerable clinical, educational and research experience in the field of neuroscience and neurotrauma to include more than 200 regional, national and international presentations and more than 30 peer-reviewed publications. Ms. Lee has served in a variety of leadership, advisory and operational roles in the US Department of the Army and US Department of Defense for over 15 years; including the Assistant Chief of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC), Deputy Director for the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury; Deputy Director for the Clinical and Educational Affairs Office for DVBIC and the manager of the Office of Clinical Standards at DVBIC. Prior to working in Washington DC, Ms Lee worked in 2 academic/level I trauma centers as a nurse practitioner/clinical care coordinator at the University of Louisville Hospital; and clinical research coordinator in the Division of Neurosurgery at the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals/Virginia Commonwealth University. Ms. Lee holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in nursing from Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as a Bachelor of Science in family and child development from Virginia Tech University. She has earned the following certification: Adult Nurse Practitioner (ANP) through the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

Jamie M. Metcalf

Honorary Board Member
David R. Metcalf Invisible Wounds Foundation

The daughter of Filipino immigrants, Jamie was born in Illinois. Her mother was a nurse at Michael Reese Hospital and her father worked in accounting for General Motors, later earning his MBA from Benedictine University. Her parents followed their passions to become successful entrepreneurs – Jamie’s father established a landscaping company while her mother, a florist, opened Manuel Floral Creations Garden – and instilled in Jamie the value of serving others. 

In 2012, Jamie married the love of her life, David R. Metcalf. Their son, Franklin, was born four years later. Upon David’s death in 2019, Jamie recognized the importance of sharing her husband’s story with the hope of helping other families and has dedicated her life’s work to assisting veterans and active-duty military in Naval Special Warfare and special operations forces. Jamie is on the Naperville Responds For Veterans Board of Directors and is an active advocate for traumatic injury and warrior suicide to help others impacted by invisible wounds.  

Jamie has served on the Filipino Association of South DuPage Board of Directors where she continues to support the local Filipino community. Since childhood, she has been singing the U.S. and Filipino National Anthems at Filipino Association events. Jamie is a former operations manager for Starwood Hotels, serving W and Sheraton brands, and group sales coordinator for Westin. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business information systems from Remington College and University of Phoenix.

Danish Munir

Founding Partner
GrayMatter Capital

Danish Munir is a healthcare entrepreneur and investor, and currently serves as Founding Partner at GreyMatter Capital, a VC firm dedicated to unlocking breakthrough progress in mental health and wellbeing. They believe we are in the early innings of a dramatic sea change, creating new opportunities and transforming a range of under-served $100B+ markets across behavioral healthcare, neurological disease, and broader consumer mental wellness. Danish also founded, and continues to serve on Investment Committee for Watershed Ventures, a VC firm that harnesses the power of entrepreneurs from non-traditional backgrounds to cause transformative change in industries that matter, including healthcare.

Most recently, Danish served as CTO & Co-founder at Genoa Telepsychiatry and CIO at Optum. Danish and his partners founded 1DocWay in 2011 with a mission of increasing access to behavioral healthcare for the underserved. Over the course of 10 years, Danish and his partners led 1DocWay through incubation, venture financing, an exit /PE recap in 2015 and then another exit to Optum in 2018 as the largest provider of telepsychiatry services in the nation, currently serving over 250k+ Medicaid appointments per year.

Previously Danish worked at Microsoft on improving online safety technologies (phishing, malware, spam and pornography content filtering) and Lehman Brothers (Algorithmic Equity Research and Valuation). He studied Computer Engineering and Finance at UPenn and Wharton respectively.

Danish grew up in Karachi, and considers both Karachi and New York home. His interests include cutting edge developments in mental health and therapeutics, ultimate frisbee and live music. Danish serves on the board of Emgage, and previously on the board of Muppies.

Grace Peng, PhD

Program Director, Mathematical Modeling, Simulation and Analysis
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, NIH

Grace C.Y. Peng, Ph.D. is the Director of Mathematical Modeling, Simulation and Analysis at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). In this capacity she has programmatic oversight of extramural activities in these areas.

Dr. Peng received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University. She performed postdoctoral and faculty research in the department of Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University. In 2000 she became the Clare Boothe Luce professor of biomedical engineering at the Catholic University of America. Her research focused on developing computational models of the vestibular system in control of the head and neck, and analytical tools for studying the oculomotor system in patients with vestibular dysfunction. Since 2002, Dr. Peng has been a Program Director in the NIBIB, overseeing various programs promoting the development of mathematical and statistical modeling and analysis methods; medical simulation tools; and next generation engineering systems for rehabilitation, robotics, neuroengineering, and surgical systems. In 2003, Dr. Peng led the creation of the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group (IMAG), which now consists of program officers from multiple federal agencies of the U.S. government. Since 2004, IMAG has supported funding initiatives targeted to multiscale modeling of biomedical, biological and behavioral systems. Since 2006, IMAG has facilitated the activities of the Multiscale Modeling Consortium of investigators. Dr. Peng also has served in leadership roles in the NIH SPARC (2014-2016), BRAIN Initiative (since 2014), and the Bridge2AI Program (since 2020). Dr. Peng is committed to promoting the development and use of intelligent tools and reusable data and models to accelerate biomedical research and translate scientific knowledge to the clinic and community.

Peter Peumans, PhD

CTO Health
Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC)

Dr. Peumans holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University, and a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Prior to joining imec, Dr. Peumans was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University where his work focused on large area electronics, solar energy conversion and biomedical electronics. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and a Belgian-American Educational Foundation honorary fellowship. He is an imec Senior Fellow and currently leads imec’s health activities in the capacity of CTO Health.

Mary Jo Pugh, PhD, RN

Professor/Career Scientist
University of Utah / VA Salt Lake City

Rachel Ramoni, DMD, ScD

Chief Research and Development Officer
US Department of Veterans Affairs

Dr. Rachel Ramoni leads the approximately $2 billion research program at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, a job she has held since 2017. VA research is embedded within one of the largest integrated healthcare systems in the United States, with active research programs at approximately 100 of the 170 VA medical centers across the country. Rachel often describes this as her dream job, given that her passion is helping large research efforts of any type to achieve impactful, real-world results. This is borne out in the work she did before coming to the VA. For example, she led the team at Harvard Medical School that created SMART-on-FHIR, the data exchange format used by the major electronic health records and Apple HealthKit. Additionally, Rachel established and led the coordinating center for the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, which has the tagline, “solving medical mysteries through team science”. To date, this network of clinicians and researchers has diagnosed over 500 people living with previously mysterious medical conditions. At her current job, Rachel conceived of and is leading the effort to transform VA research from a large number of independently operating sites into an integrated enterprise that can more efficiently deliver on its mission to improve Veterans’ well-being through research.

Douglas Smith, MD

Robert A. Groff Professor Of Teaching And Research In Neurosurgery
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Elisabeth Wilde, PhD

Professor,
University of Utah / VA Salt Lake City

Dr. Elisabeth Wilde is a Health Research Scientist in the US Veterans Affairs Health System (VA Salt Lake City Healthcare System), and is a Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Utah and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation  at Baylor College of Medicine. Her research interests include the use of advanced forms of neuroimaging to enhance diagnosis and prognosis, monitor recovery and neurodegeneration, evaluate the efficacy of therapeutic intervention, understand relations with other biomarkers, and elucidate aspects of neuroplasticity in traumatic brain injury. As a clinical neuropsychologist, she has an interest in brain-behavior relationships involving cognitive, neurological, and functional outcome and clinical trials in traumatic brain injury and associated comorbidities. For the last 20 years, she has worked with patients with traumatic brain injury and concussion across a spectrum of age, severity, and acuity, with particular interests in Veteran and Active Duty Service Members, athletes, and children and adolescents, with concussion or traumatic brain injury.  She has participated in over 40 federally-funded clinical projects in TBI, and has authored over 120 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Wilde is currently the Director of the Neuroimaging Core for the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs co-funded Chronic Effects of Neurotrauma Consortium (CENC) Neuroimaging Core and has been actively involved in the International Common Data Elements (CDE) initiative and co-leads the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics Meta-analysis (ENIGMA) Working Group for TBI.

Tristan Wimmer

Founder
22 Jumps

Since January 2020, Tristan has led his non-profit, 22 Jumps, from ideation to an organization with a bi-coastal reach that has raised $150K+ in small donations across five fundraising events. Tristan is a Senior Analyst in the consumer banking industry, the principal of Morpho Capital, and co-lead for ENRICH: Brain Health After TBI — a four-year Congressionally Directed Medical Study Research Program being led by the Mount Sinai Brain Injury Research Center. Tristan recently earned an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently pursuing a MS in Analytics through Texas A&M University.

Prior to his current ventures, Tristan worked in commercial real estate as a project manager and principal; designed, implemented, and led physical security solutions for the US Department of State; volunteered as a SAR tech and AEMT for Central Arizona Mountain Rescue Association; served as a scout sniper team leader, infantryman, and weapons instructor in 2^nd Battalion 1^st Marines.