Jim Collins, Author, Good to Great and Co-Author, Built to Last
Jim Collins is a student and teacher of enduring great companies -- how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies. Having invested over a decade of research into the topic, Collins has authored or co-authored four books, including the classic Built To Last, a fixture on the Business Week best-seller list for more than six years, that has been translated into 29 languages. His work has been featured in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Harvard Business Review, and Fast Company.

Collins’ most recent book, Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t attained long-running positions on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week best- seller lists, has sold 3 million hardcover copies since publication and has been translated into 35 languages.

Driven by a relentless curiosity, Collins began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colo., where he now conducts research and teaches executives from the corporate and social sectors. Collins holds degrees in business administration and mathematical sciences from Stanford University, and honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Colorado and the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. 

Collins has served as a teacher to senior executives and CEOs at over a hundred corporations. He has also worked with social sector organizations, such as Johns Hopkins Medical School, the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Leadership Network of Churches, the American Association of K-12 School Superintendents, and the United States Marine Corps. In 2005, he published a monograph: Good to Great and the Social Sectors.

In addition, Collins is an avid rock climber and has made one-day ascents of the north face of Half Dome and the south face of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. 

Jean Chenoweth, Senior Vice President, Performance Improvement & 100 Top Hospitals Programs, Center for Healthcare Improvement, Thomson Healthcare
With more than 25 years experience in healthcare, Jean Chenoweth is known nationally and internationally as an industry expert and speaker on leadership in high performing organizations, performance measurement in healthcare organizations, and many other health care information issues.

Prior to Thomson Healthcare, Chenoweth was senior vice president of HCIA, Inc., president of Healthcare Knowledge Systems (HKS), and president of the Commission on Professional and Hospitals Activities (CPHA) in Ann Arbor, Mich. During her tenure, the companies developed a number of important industry tools including the first desktop medical record abstracting and editing system (PAS+), the first computerized ICD-9-CM encoding system in conjunction with 3M, the first distributed relational medical record databases for state hospital associations, the International Classification of Clinical Services for classifying transactional data (ICCS codes), the first national comparative database of detailed clinical treatment and resource consumption, as well as a series of risk-adjusted tools, including the Risk-Adjusted Mortality, Complications, and Re-Admissions Indices.

Chenoweth is a graduate of Northwestern University and the University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago.

Lawrence D. Prybil, M.A., Ph.D., F.A.C.H.E., Professor and Senior Advisor to the Dean, College of Public Health, The University of Iowa
Lawrence Prybil joined The University of Iowa in 1999 to assist in launching the university’s new College of Public Health, where he served as associate dean for six years and currently holds the position of senior advisor to the dean.

Prior to that, he was in the private sector for almost 20 years. From 1985 to 1999, he held various senior leadership roles with the Daughters of Charity Health System, including 10 years as chief executive officer for a six-state division. Previously, he served five years as corporate vice president for the Sisters of Mercy Health Corporation in Farmington Hills, Mich.

Earlier in his career, he was at the Medical College of Virginia. During his tenure there, Prybil chaired the Department of Health Administration, held the Arthur Glasgow Chair in Hospital Administration and served as deputy assistant provost for the health sciences campus.

Prybil has served on the governing boards of hospitals, multi-unit healthcare systems, state hospital associations and the American Hospital Association. Presently he is vice-chairman of the board for the Sisters of Charity Health System and oversees its compensation committee. He has authored and co-authored several publications on governance, including a study of governing boards in high-performing hospitals.

Prybil received his Ph.D. in hospital and health services administration from The University of Iowa College of Medicine in 1970.

Kaveh Safavi, M.D, J.D., Chief Medical Officer, Center for Healthcare Improvement, Thomson Healthcare
Kaveh Safavi, M.D., J.D., provides a leadership voice for the organization with customers, government agencies, and the media. He is responsible for the Center for Healthcare Improvement, a Thomson Healthcare research organization focused on healthcare services.

Safavi has 20 years of healthcare experience in senior management and in the practice of internal medicine and pediatrics. He has held leadership positions at organizations representing a variety of healthcare sectors, including health system, physician practice management, and health plan. He has also served on the board of directors for a publicly traded biotechnology company.

Safavi received his M.D. from Loyola University of Chicago and his J.D. from DePaul University, also in Chicago. He is a fellow of the American College of Law and Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics.