Colloquium in Healthcare Leadership: Thursday Evening Series

Howard P. Forman, MD, MBA, is a Professor of Diagnostic Radiology (and faculty director for Finance),  Public Health (Health Policy), Economics and Management. Professor Forman directs the Health Care management program in the Yale School of Public Health and teaches healthcare economics in the Yale College Economics Department. He is the faculty founder and director of the MD/MBA program as well as the faculty director of the healthcare focus area in the School of Management’s MBA for Executives program. He is the co-founder and special advisor to the Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership program. He co-hosts the Health & Veritas podcast with Dr. Harlan Krumholz.

As a practicing emergency/trauma radiologist, he is actively involved in patient care and issues related to financial administration, healthcare compliance, and contracting. His research has been focused on improving imaging services delivery through better access to information. He has worked as a health policy fellow in the U.S. Senate, on Medicare legislation.

During the COVID Pandemic, Professor Forman has actively tracked outbreaks at local, national, and international levels; expounding on mitigation strategies and engaging to dispel misinformation through social and print media. He has been a frequent guest commentator and expert on national video and audio platforms.

Dr. Mandy Cohen was the 20th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is currently a national advisor at Manatt Health. Dr. Cohen is lauded for her masterful leadership in times of crisis, her skillful executive management of large, complex health organizations and her strategic and authentic communication with the public. Prior to leading the CDC, Dr. Cohen was Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services where she led the state through the COVID crisis and transformation of the North Carolina Medicaid program. She was also Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Staff at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the Obama Administration. 

Dr. Cohen was included on the TIMES 100 Health list as a Titan in Health, awarded Tar Heel of the Year by the News and Observer and named one of the Top 25 Women Leaders in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare. Dr. Cohen received her medical degree from the Yale School of Medicine; master’s in public health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and trained in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. She resides in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, Sam and two daughters, ages 11 and 13.

Alex Urry currently serves as Senior Policy Advisor to Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), where he oversees the Leader’s health care, agriculture, nutrition, and budget portfolios. Prior to this role, he worked for Speaker Nancy Pelosi for nearly 4 years as an advisor on policy related to health, veterans, and nutrition. He has directly negotiated components of and contributed to the following legislative initiatives: Fiscal Responsibility Act, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, Honoring Our PACT Act, Build Back Better, American Rescue Plan, the FY21, FY22, FY23, FY24 and FY25 Appropriations Bills, CARES Act, Keeping Kids Fed Act and No Surprises Act. He is a former Winston Fellow and Scholar. He also holds an MPH in Health Care Management from the Yale School of Public Health and a BA in Biochemistry from Occidental College.

Joseph R. Betancourt, M.D., M.P.H., is the president of the Commonwealth Fund. A national leader in health care policy, equity, quality, and community health, Betancourt formerly served as the senior vice president for Equity and Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and as founding director of the Disparities Solutions Center. He has devoted his career to improving the quality and value of health care for diverse populations. 

Betancourt has served on committees that have provided advice to all agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration, among others. He has also provided guidance to private industry, and at the state and local level, including a term on the Boston Board of Health. 

His roles in governance have included serving on the Board of Trinity Health, Neighborhood Health Plan, and the Massachusetts Health and Hospitals Association. Betancourt is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a board-certified internist, providing primary care to a large Spanish-speaking and minority patient panel. He earned his M.D. from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and completed an internal medicine residency at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center. Following his residency, he was a member of one of the first classes in the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Policy at Harvard University, where he earned an M.P.H. in health policy and management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

An author of nearly 90 peer-reviewed articles, Betancourt has served on several Institute of Medicine committees, including the committee that produced the seminal report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. 

Betancourt is an Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellow and recipient of the Sumner M. Redstone Endowed Chair in Health Equity at MGH. In 2023, he was named one of Modern Healthcare’s “Top 50 Clinical Healthcare Executives in the United States” and in 2024 named one of the “Top 100 Most Influential People in Health Care.” He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Benjamin R. Elkins is the Director for Quality & Performance Improvement at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health (SMCH) where he leads functions that support efforts both to improve healthcare quality and to develop improvement capability throughout the organization. His teams also facilitate tasks such as the annual goal setting process, organizational learning from serious adverse patient events, and organization-wide surveys by accreditation and regulatory entities, such as The Joint Commission and CMS. 

Prior to SMCH, Ben worked on the Performance Improvement team at Stanford Health Care (SHC), which is the adult healthcare delivery system within Stanford Medicine. His work took him throughout the health system, including deployments with the General Medicine inpatient service, the Stanford Cancer Center, and the Cardiovascular Health service line. Ben assumed progressively greater responsibilities over time, including overall leadership of the team as well as administration of several Stanford Medicine improvement capability development programs. 

Ben holds a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics as well as an MPH in Health Management, both from Yale University. He lives in Sunnyvale, California (Bay Area) with his wife and two children, ages 5 and 7.

A practicing cardiologist, Garth Graham is the Director and Global Head of Healthcare and Public Health at Google Health/YouTube. He previously served in two US administrations as US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, and was Assistant Dean for Health Policy and Chief of Health Services Research in the Department of Medicine at the University of Florida School of Medicine. He also served as President of the Aetna Foundation as well as Vice President & Chief Community Health Officer at CVS Health. He currently sits on several boards, including the Advisory Council to the Director of the NIH, the National Academy of Medicine Board on Health Policy, and the board of the National Quality Forum. He previously served on the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Advisory Council.

An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Garth obtained his MD at Yale University School of Medicine, MPH at Yale School of Public Health, Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Cardiology fellowship at Johns Hopkins. He holds three board certifications including internal medicine, cardiology and interventional cardiology. He also holds an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Regis College and an honorary degree from the Eastern Virginia Medical School. In 2021, the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine inaugurated the Garth N. Graham Distinguished Lectureship Award, which spotlights trail blazers who are leading the creation and advancement of health equity.

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Andrea Barton Reeves is the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Social Services. With over twenty years of experience in Human Services and advocacy, she has dedicated her career to ensuring equity, dignity and accessibility to marginalized communities throughout the state. 

An attorney by training, Andrea spent ten years as an Attorney for the minor child and a guardian ad litem, advocating for and protecting the rights of children in family, probate and child welfare courts across Connecticut. She also served as the CEO of Harc, Inc. in Hartford, supporting people with intellectual disabilities and their families. 

In 2020, she became the founding CEO Connecticut’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Program. 

She has been named one of the Power 25 in Healthcare and the Top 25 Leaders In Business by the Hartford Business Journal, as well as appearing twice on that publication’s list of New Leaders to Watch. She has also been twice named to the CT NAACP’s list of the 100 Most Influential Blacks in Connecticut, and was recognized as 100 Women of Color in the New England region.

Andrea is also a TedX speaker, with a talk entitled “Social Justice in a gymsuit.” 

She holds a BA in English from Rutgers University, a JD from New York Law School, and is completing a Master of Arts in Religion with a focus on poverty alleviation at Yale Divinity School, where she is a Social Justice Scholar.