Building Stronger Relationships Across Healthcare Through Empathy

Shanelle Gabriel is a poet, singer, and lupus warrior from Brooklyn, NY who has performed internationally including Africa and Europe. Widely known for featuring on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, she has shared the stage with artists such as Jill Scott, Nas, Dave Chapelle and more. She was listed as one of Blavity.com's "Artist Activists You Should Know" and one of "8 Millennial Feminist Poets That Deserve Recognition" by BET.com. Shanelle is also a health activist who has spoken alongside the President of the National Institute of Health, on Capitol Hill, and has featured on the Lifetime Network, in Women’s Health Magazine, and more about her continued battle with lupus. Presently, she is working on her third album, pursuing her Master's in Education at Columbia University Teachers College while serving as the Interim Executive Director at Urban Word NYC, a youth organization that uses poetry & hip-hop to promote literacy and youth voice.

Erin has spent two decades honing her communication and interpersonal skills in the corporate sector. As a professional trainer, author, and public speaker, Erin is passionate about inspiring and encouraging others to live the life they truly desire.  Daily she equips sales professionals with the skills needed to better communicate and connect with healthcare providers and mentors a small group of top-rated sales trainers. Erin’s favorite training workshops are those that focus on developing relational skills like emotional intelligence, advanced communication, and leadership. 

Erin lost her father in 1997 to Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and her sister Meghan in 2018 to a rare lung disease. These heartbreaking life events taught her how to effectively advocate for a patient. The most recent loss of her sister led her to a vision of helping others powerfully advocate for the patient in their life. 

Laura Adams serves as Special Advisor at the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), where she provides leadership for the Digital Health and Evidence Mobilization portfolios of the Leadership Consortium, with the COVID-19 response as a critical area of focus. She has expertise in digital health, health care innovation, and human-centered care.  As Catalyst at X4 Health, Laura leads the national strategic partnerships for the 3rd Conversation (3C) project (https://www.3rdconversation.org/), also critical in the wake of COVID-19, helping to reweave humanity into the fabric of healthcare and healing.  She serves on the Board of Translational Medicine Accelerator (TMA), a Boston-based precision medicine company focusing on patients with recalcitrant and rare diseases.

Previously, Laura was the founding President and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), RI’s statewide Health Information Exchange. During her time at RIQI, Health Data Management named her one of their 2018 Most Powerful Women in Health IT in the Thought Leader category and Becker’s Hospital Review named her to the 2018 inaugural list of Female Health IT Leaders to Know and to its 2019 list of Women in Health IT to Know.  Laura currently serves on the Oversight Council for the MA Center for Health Information and Analysis. She chaired the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Planning Committee for the “Digital Infrastructure for Population Health and a Learning Healthcare System” initiative. Through her Laura Adams Consulting company, she has delivered conference keynotes in nearly every state in the union and in 13 different countries.

Laura traveled in the U.S. and Europe with W. Edwards Deming in the study of statistical-based quality improvement. She was Founder, President and CEO of Decision Support Systems, a New York-based company specializing in Internet-based healthcare decision support. She has been a long-time faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston. She directed the IHI Idealized Design of the Intensive Care Unit project and served as faculty in the VHA’s ICU improvement collaborative and was the Principal Investigator on the RI Statewide ICU Collaborative.  She was among the first to bring the principles of healthcare QI to the Middle East, in conjunction with Donald Berwick, MD and the Harvard Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East.  She served as IHI faculty at the inaugural IHI Middle East Forum on Quality Improvement in Healthcare in Doha, Qatar.   

Her publications include co-authoring with Gustafson, et al, Developing & Testing a Model to Predict Outcomes of Organizational Change, Health Services Research, 38(2), 751-776 and co-authored “Improving comfort and communication in the ICU: a practical new tool for palliative care performance measurement and feedback”, Nelson, J., Mulkerin, C., Adams, L. and Pronovost, P.; Quality and Safety in Health Care (QSHC), Aug 2006.  She co-authored with Peter Pronovost, MD, et.al.; The Rhode Island ICU Collaborative: A Model for Reducing CLABSI and Ventilator-associated Pneumonia Statewide, QSHC, 2010;19:555-561.   

Under her leadership, RIQI won the National Council for Community Behavioral Health Excellence Award for Impact in serving those with behavioral health and substance abuse challenges.  She received citations from the RI Congressional delegation for her visionary leadership and contributions to improving the healthcare system in Rhode Island.  Laura received University of Northern Colorado’s Distinguished Alumni award and her company was a multi-year winner of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce’s Exemplary award for Worksite Wellness. RIQI was named RI’s Most Innovative Company in Healthcare in 2015; was named 2017 Employer of Choice by the Employer’s Association of New England; and was a multi-year winner of RI’s Best Places to Work award from the Providence Business News. RIQI won the 2017 Innovation Award in Healthcare in Rhode Island, a national 2018 Healthcare Informatics Innovation Award for impact on the opioid crisis and was named a finalist for the 2018 New England Business Innovation award, again for impact on the opioid crisis. 

Sandy Leung serves as legal advisor to the Board of Directors and company executives, and is responsible for shaping the company’s legal strategy. Sandy is also responsible for Environment, Health & Safety & Sustainability, Corporate Security and Philanthropy.

“The accelerating pace of science, governmental policies and regulations and overall global complexity across our industry requires us to be even more agile than ever,” says Sandy. “Our legal team brings strategic value across all aspects of our business through practical and sound counsel that guide our company in its mission to help patients.”

Sandy joined Bristol Myers Squibb in 1992 as a staff attorney in the litigation department. In 1996, she became assistant counsel and one year later, was named associate counsel. In 1999, Sandy was appointed to the position of counsel and corporate secretary. In 2006, she was appointed acting general counsel and in 2007, she was named general counsel. In 2014, Sandy was named executive vice president.