2020 Speakers

1 - Dr. Deirdre Letson-Christofalo Photo Profile

Deirdre Letson-Christofalo Head of Human Capital Management Division, NJII

Dr. Deirdre Letson-Christofalo is Vice President of the Human Capital Division. She was previously the dean of the School of Business and the Center for Innovation & Professional Studies at Felician University and prior to that she served as the vice president of Adult, Corporate and Online Education at Centenary University, where she led the design and implementation of online degree programs serving approximately 900 adult students.

Maintaining Career Relevancy During the Robot Revolution

We are standing at an intersection of humanity and technology. As more and more work can be performed through advanced technologies and robotics, humans must develop very specific skills in order to continue to have a role in tomorrow’s workplace. This talk will explore the specific skills needed to ensure resiliency in an era of disruption and artificial intelligence. Dr. Letson-Christofalo will share her thoughts on what those skills are and the most efficient and effective ways to acquire them.

3 - Dan Seewald Third Photo Profile

Dan Seewald Deliberate Innovation - Founder & CEO

Dan Seewald is the CEO of Deliberate Innovation. Deliberate Innovation is a corporate innovation advisory and facilitation firm. Dan is also the former Head of Pfizer’s World Wide Innovation group where he architected and led the Dare to Try program, one of the Fortune 100’s leading corporate innovation programs.

Dan is a keynote speaker and author in the field of corporate innovation and a contributing writer for several journals. He is a trained moderator, creative problem solving (CPS) facilitator, Design Thinking (DT) coach and a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). And when he is not working, Dan is a wrestling and soccer coach.

Running Out of Time to Innovate

Three generations of my family have had Parkinson’s Disease. There is a high probability that the next several generations will also suffer this same neuro-degenerative disease. That is, unless we can accelerate the development of the next big breakthrough.

As the former head of innovation at one of the largest pharmaceuticals, I had the opportunity to work with researchers trying to develop the next big breakthroughs. My discovery is that our scientists, while doing amazing bench research, are sometime reluctant to go outside their trusted expert circles. I believe there’s an opportunity to activate networks of “citizen scientists” to help the crack the most difficult problems. By crowdsourcing insights and scientific inspirations from these hidden networks, we can accelerate scientific breakthroughs.

1 - Jennifer D’Angelo Photo Profile

Jennifer D'Angelo Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Healthcare Division, NJII

Jennifer oversees the entire healthcare division, which manages federal and state grant programs focused on improving healthcare delivery. The division also runs the New Jersey Health Information Network (NJHIN) on behalf of the New Jersey Department of Health and includes Healthcare Innovation Solutions (HCIS) — the Healthcare Division’s for-profit subsidiary — which helps thousands of physicians across the country navigate the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Merit-Based Incentive Payment Program (MIPS). Jennifer has more than two decades of experience in the healthcare field, and most recently served as senior vice president and chief information officer at Bergen New Bridge Medical Center in Paramus, NJ, where she led cybersecurity, HIPAA security and privacy, Information Services, Clinical Informatics and Telecommunications.

At the Intersection of Data and Technology Lies the Key to Analyzing the Impact of COVID-19

The  COVID-19 pandemic has driven developers to build applications that leverage new and existing technologies in innovative ways to conquer the challenge of controlling the spread of the disease and ensuring the healthcare industry is prepared to test and treat its patients. As always, the dependency is on the data. This discussion explores the important intersections of data and technology in contact tracing, testing, treatment, resource planning and more.

1 - Ken Goodwin Photo Profile

Kenneth A. Goodwin Jr. Jeanensis Capital Markets - Senior Managing Principal & President

Ken is a globally dynamic executive with 20+ years of banking and capital markets experience, widely sought after for impacted results on digital transformation, big data, innovation and technology and risk management. He is a 10 to Know Global Game Changer, U.S. White House Business Council/Forward member, Aspen Institute Nakasone and Mike and Maureen Mansfield Fellow and speaker on Blockchain, FinTech, RegTech, AI, U.S. and Japan central banking and risk management.

How Digital Transformation will create a Borderless Trade System

In today’s global economy, trade can run up against a variety of challenges: weak source tracking & analytics, absent small business finance lending, and a lack of regulatory transparency. As we look to the future, the digital world promises a resolution, providing AI, Data Analytics, Logistic Intelligence, and Blockchain, which will pave the way for a borderless trade system, and offer tangible solutions enhancing cross border trade transactions. Ken Goodwin will explain how supply chain, trade finance, manufacturing, payments and settlements are currently held back, and explain why the quickly-developing digital world is our future.

1 - LeShannon Wright Photo Profile

LeShannon Wright Turning Tulips - Founder & CEO

LeShannon Wright is a NJIT MBA student, from New Jersey. She is the founder and CEO of Turning Tulips, a company she created with a mission of Making Periods Pretty. After nearly two decades of suffering from endometriosis and later adenomyosis, LeShannon received a hysterectomy at the age of 31. She vowed to use her voice to make a difference in the menstrual health of young girls and women. Now she shares her powerful stories, tips, and support to help guide females everywhere. LeShannon hopes that Turning Tulips will light the way so that no one suffers to the magnitude that she had.

“The Origami of Pain”

This talk is to discuss how people can turn their pain into power, and ultimately find their purpose. When you’re at the intersection of pain you must choose power above all to find your true purpose. Like roads intersecting, think of pain as the red light and your power as the green light. I stood at the largest crossroad of my life when I had to receive a hysterectomy at the age of 31, after decades of suffering from endometriosis. My company, Turning Tulips was created, to help other females suffer less while Making Periods Pretty!

1 - Linda Schwimmer Photo Profile

Linda Schwimmer New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute - President and CEO

In her role, Linda drives policies that advance health care safety, access and affordability. She is committed to change that improves health care for every person in New Jersey. Under Linda’s leadership, the Institute focuses on collaboration and innovation to accelerate policies that make health more person-centered, transparent, and equitable. Linda sits on the board of the Leapfrog Group and the National Quality Forum (NQF). She also served as a co-chair for Governor Phil Murphy’s transition team on health. Before joining the Quality Institute, Linda was Director of Strategic Relations & External Affairs at Horizon Healthcare Innovations, a subsidiary of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Data Analytics Help Us Pinpoint Opportunities to Improve Community Health & Wellness

The vision of a world where people from all communities receive safe, equitable, and affordable health care and live their healthiest lives is finally within reach. We know we can achieve this goal because we can now access and analyze data that tells us exactly where we need to focus our resources. Listen as Linda Schwimmer uses real world examples to demonstrate how data analytics can be applied to shed light on at-risk populations and guide providers, payers and public officials to collaborative solutions that address the most pressing challenges faced by specific groups within a community.

1 - Louis Wells Photo Profile

Louis Wells NJIT Faculty - Senior Lecturer, Theatre Arts and Technology & Director, The Center for Applied Improvisation and Theater

Artistic Coordinator for the Rutgers-Newark/NJIT Theater Arts and Technology Program. Currently developing a research center for applied improvisation at NJIT. A theater director with interest in technology driven productions as well as American Realism. An acting teacher specializing in improvisation, Meisner, motion capture and animation students. I’ve worked in higher education for over 15 years. Skilled in Improvisation, Interactive Media, and theatre. A Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) focused in Directing and Theatrical Production from The Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick.

Improvisation: A Laboratory of Human Empathy

Improvisation is a very satisfying form to reach young people. At NJIT we treat improv like a laboratory of empathy and human interaction. Some of our STEM students need help connecting. Connecting to each other, synthesizing ideas, dealing with questions with messy answers. Learning improvisation improves empathy, creativity, and builds resilience to failure.

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Namas Chandra NJIT Faculty - Distinguished Professor - Bio-Medical Engineering

Dr. Namas Chandra is a Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Director of the Center for Injury Bio- Mechanics, Materials and Medicine (CIBM3) and co-Director of the Institute for Brain and Neuroscience Research (IBNR) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA. He is a Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). His Center focuses on experimental and computational aspects of blast induced traumatic brain injury (TBI). He has published over 132 journal articles including about 42 on TBI. He has supervised about 56 graduate students and post docs.

There is Nothing Mild About Mild TBI: You Can Do Something About It

About 5.3 million Americans live with traumatic brain injury (TBI) costing $76.5 billion annually. TBI can be caused by a blow to the head, wound from a gunshot or being around an explosion. Around 83 percent of TBI are mild, the so-called concussion. Mild TBI can persist for years, affect the quality of life for the patient and the family, and prove to be serious or fatal if repeated multiple times. Our work on blast TBI shows that permanent damage to the delicate brain occurs at very low threshold of forces. We should be aware of and avoid at all costs any head injury, especially in children and elderly.