Schedule and Speakers: Well-Being in Healthcare Summit

Dr. Josh Bershad is executive vice president of physician services at RWJBarnabas Health and chief medical officer of Rutgers Athletics. In addition, Dr. Bershad teaches in multiple capacities at Rutgers University, including as clinical assistant professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, as adjunct clinical professor at Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, and as visiting lecturer at Rutgers Business School EMBA Program.

He actively practices as a hospitalist at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. Previously, he served in multiple senior executive roles within Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and RWJBarnabas Health system, including senior vice president/chief medical officer and chair of the medical executive committee. He was the organizer and initial president of RWJ Physician Enterprise, a multispecialty physician group.

He serves in multiple governance roles in the for profit and not for profit sectors. Dr. Bershad is a member of the board of directors of Middlesex Water Company (NASDAQ:MSEX) and serves as chair of the compensation committee and as a member of the audit committee. He serves as chairman of the board of directors of Robert Wood Johnson Visiting Nurses and is a member of the board of trustees of the VNA Health Group. Dr. Bershad attended Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and Rutgers Business School where he received his MD and MBA, respectively. 

Chantal Brazeau has over 25 years of experience in the field of health professional well-being. As chief wellness officer for Rutgers Health, she works with school, university, and health system leadership to foster a culture of professional well-being and provide strategic planning and vision for initiatives that support the well-being of multi-professional faculty, providers, and learners in the academic and clinical environments.

She is also the assistant dean for faculty vitality at New Jersey Medical School and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Dr. Brendan G. Carr, chief executive officer, and the Kenneth L. Davis, MD, Distinguished Chair, at Mount Sinai Health System, is a nationally recognized leader in academic medicine and health policy.

Dr. Carr leads as a physician-scientist. He completed his residency in emergency medicine, as well as fellowships in trauma and surgical critical care and in health policy research. In addition to clinical practice, he maintained a decades long funded research portfolio, and served in multiple policy roles within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He is a renowned physician, mentor, and delivery system strategist. His focus is on harnessing expertise and using data in order to build high functioning teams in order to improve health care delivery. 

Dr. Carr is advancing Mount Sinai’s capacity to conduct groundbreaking research, pioneer innovative care, and provide a world-leading education to future health care leaders. He guides Mount Sinai’s strategy, operations, and business development, including the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing, Mount Sinai’s nationally and regionally ranked hospitals, and more than 400 ambulatory locations and physician practices.

Dr. Carr previously held faculty roles at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Thomas Jefferson University’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and graduated from the Temple University School of Medicine.

Suzanne Crincoli’s experience includes hospital and corporate healthcare administration and a clinical career in emergency nursing spanning nearly two decades. Previously, she served as the vice president of clinical quality for a large healthcare organization focused on creating nursing efficiency models to advance nursing practice.

As a nurse scientist, her research focuses on understanding the effect of acute and chronic fatigue on healthcare providers and shift workers, as well as factors influencing differential organizational support for nursing practice within acute care hospitals affecting nurse and patient safety. Her research has shown that nurses who are acutely and chronically fatigued during their work shifts, especially at night, miss high-priority nursing care, such as adequate surveillance and timely medication administration.

Recently, her research has expanded to include all first responders working abnormal shifts. Her body of research seeks to build awareness and interventions to mitigate the risk of occupational fatigue on negative nurse and patient outcomes. In addition, one of the primary aims of her work is to understand the effect of chronotype, which refers to individual preferences regarding sleep and waking times. Chronotype is a behavioral manifestation of underlying circadian rhythms and has been increasingly recognized as significantly contributing to shift work maladaptation, resulting in adverse health and safety outcomes.

Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist and the bestselling author of the paradigm-shifting Emotional Intelligence. Ranked as one of the most influential business thinkers by Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, Goleman has transformed the way the world thinks about intelligence, relationships, leadership, and high performance in business and beyond.

In his presentations, he rejects IQ as the sole measure of one’s abilities and explains that by teaching people to tune in to their emotions with intelligence and expand their circles of caring, we can transform societies and organizations from the inside out and make a positive difference in our world.

In his roles as senior vice chancellor for clinical affairs at Rutgers Health, vice president for health affairs at Rutgers University, and chief academic officer for RWJBarnabas Health, Vicente Gracias leads the growth and ongoing evolution of the Rutgers Health clinical enterprise and graduate health and clinical learning environments.

Dr. Gracias appointed the first chief wellness officer for Rutgers Health, created the Rutgers Health office for promotion of well-being and founded the first mindfulness training program at Rutgers Health. He is certified as a global instructor in mindfulness-based emotional intelligence. He has held numerous national and international conferences on global health, mindfulness, emotional intelligence and consciousness neuroscience.

He works closely with the deans, faculty leaders, and health system partners to encourage collaboration, advance excellence, and provide strategic direction on learning and culture. He is also a professor of surgery at Rutgers.

Dr. Xi (Sisi) Hu is a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy, and a research economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, focusing on labor issues. She specializes in modeling disruption and labor market risks and is passionate about healthcare worker wellbeing.

She’s also a co-founder and the Chief Wellbeing Economist of Atalan, a mission-driven startup using machine learning to predict and prevent healthcare worker burnout and turnover.

Yoona Kang is the director of the Compassion and Well-being Lab and an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Prevention Science at Rutgers University-Camden. Her research focuses on understanding the nature and consequences of compassion. She develops theory-driven, evidence-based compassion interventions designed to optimally grow and spread compassion through social networks. Her recent work explores mobile apps and digital tools for compassion-based intervention, using a microdosing approach to support scalable improvements in well-being.

Dr. Kang takes a multimethod approach that integrates experimental and behavioral paradigms, computational neuroimaging, ecological momentary assessment, social network analysis, and natural language processing. She applies these methods to interconnected dimensions of wellness, including physical activity, sleep, alcohol use, social connection, and loneliness.

She received a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Yale University and served as a postdoctoral fellow and research director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Dr. Keith P. Lewis is professor and chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where he also serves as vice dean. As a senior member of the dean’s leadership team, he has been instrumental in shaping the school’s strategic vision and strengthening partnerships with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) and RWJBarnabas Health.

Dr. Lewis’ distinguished career has been defined by a commitment to patient safety and innovation. He began as a pharmacist, publishing Cancer Chemotherapy Treatment and Care and earning national recognition from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists for his award-winning research. After earning his medical degree at the University of Connecticut, he trained at New England Deaconess and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he completed his fellowship in cardiac and liver transplantation anesthesia.

Since 2018, Dr. Lewis has overseen all anesthesiology services at RWJUH, directing clinical, research, and educational activities. He is widely recognized as a visionary leader and efficiency expert and is the author of OK to Proceed: What Every Health Care Provider Should Know About Patient Safety, a book advancing strategies to eliminate medical errors.

Beyond clinical leadership, Dr. Lewis founded The KindOR Care movement, embedding kindness as a core value in healthcare delivery. His dedication has been recognized with the prestigious Rutgers Gateway Award for Service to Employees, honoring his efforts to foster a supportive workplace and inspire meaningful cultural change.

Dr. Mazzarelli currently serves as co-president and CEO of Cooper University Health Care. Cooper is a $2.5B Academic Health System with over 130 ambulatory locations and a 1200+ physician multi-specialty practice plan representing over 95 different specialties that is the faculty practice plan for Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.
 
Dr. Mazzarelli received his medical degree from Rutgers - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, his law degree from University of Pennsylvania Law School and his master's in bioethics from University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He trained in emergency medicine at Cooper University Hospital, where he also served as chief resident and medical director. 
 
Dr. Mazzarelli continues to practice emergency medicine and is the co-author of two best-selling books Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence that Caring Makes a Difference, and Wonder Drug: 7 Scientifically Proven Ways That Serving Others Is the Best Medicine for Yourself.

Dr. Tina Shah is a pulmonary and critical care physician and candidate for US Congress for New Jersey's 7th District. She is a national expert in workforce burnout, AI, and health policy, and recently was the chief clinical officer of Abridge, an ambient AI company valued at 5.3B. She has served in three White House Administrations, as the National Director of Wellbeing in the US Dept. of Veterans Affairs, and as Senior Advisor to the US Surgeon General where she created nation’s strategy to address the great resignation and burnout in healthcare.

Tina has been been featured at the National Academy of Medicine, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Harvard and CBS and NBC news. She received her MD from Thomas Jefferson University, her MPH from Harvard, and practices at RWJBH Rahway and Newark Beth Israel. Tina's favorite activities include pondering a society where going to work helps us thrive, playing volleyball, and changing hearts and minds.

As the associate vice president for student health and wellness at Rutgers Health, Noa'a Shimoni works closely with the student health services across Rutgers. She is passionate about student well-being and leads multiple projects to build student mental health resources across the university. Her work centers on advancing a wellness community and utilizing informatics to prioritize student population health.

As the senior director for the promotion of well-being at Rutgers Health, Reka Somodi works collaboratively to provide vision and strategic planning for programs that foster community well-being across Rutgers Health. Through her prior academic and clinical experience, she has developed a passion for student, clinician, and community wellness.