Future of Maternal Care Summit

Dr. Diana Derige is the Vice President of Health Equity Stragy at the American Medical Association’s Center for Health Equity. In this role she provides strategic direction for the Center for Health Equity through alliances and programming. The role of the Center for Health Equity is to embed health equity across the AMA so that health equity becomes part of the practice, process, action, innovation, and organizational performance and outcomes. Over the past twenty years, Diana has designed and managed several private philanthropic, government, and non-profit programs.  She has supported local and national investments by serving as a convener, collaborator and catalyst, responsible for nurturing opportunities for affecting positive systemic change in communities. Throughout her career, she has concentrated on promoting public health and social equity for marginalized communities. Dr. Derige is currently adjunct faculty and the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, and has held positions as co-director of the Center for Latina Maternal and Family Health Research at the University of Houston, program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust and National Director of MCH Initiatives at Urban Strategies. Dr.Derige holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and women’s studies and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Michigan and a Doctor of Public Health from the University of North Carolina. She also holds a certificate in executive education from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and completed a leadership development program through the Center for Creative Leadership-Europe in Brussels, Belgium.

Amanda P. Williams, MD, MPH, FACOG is the Medical Director at Mahmee, a maternal
healthcare company dedicated to improving health equity and empowering all families with
wraparound care during the pregnancy and postpartum period. In this role, she oversees the
company’s clinical programming to better support mothers and birthing people, while fostering
institutional partnerships with academic medical centers, health systems, and payers.
Dr. Williams also acts as the Clinical Innovation Advisor to the California Maternal Quality Care
Collaborative (CMQCC) and serves as an adjunct faculty member in the OBGYN Department at
Stanford University School of Medicine. Prior to joining Mahmee, Dr. Williams worked at Kaiser
Permanente Oakland Medical Center where she served as Director of Maternity Services.
Additionally, she oversaw the maternity continuum for the Chiefs of OBGYN across Kaiser’s 15
medical centers in Northern California. She has also served on several state and national
committees, such as the California Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review committee and the
National Quality Forum Maternal Morbidity and Mortality work group.
Dr. Williams is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard University in Cambridge, MA where she
majored in American Medical History and Biochemistry. She completed her medical degree at
Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA where she also received a master’s degree
in public health, focusing on health policy and management. She completed her graduate
medical training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at The University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Williams has been a prominent voice on maternal health and health equity in 2023. Her
expertise has been showcased through Grand Rounds at prestigious institutions like Rush,
Stanford, and Howard Universities. A sought-after speaker, she has been featured at the The
Future of Maternal Care Summit, The Fortune 500 Most Powerful Women Next Generation
Conference, and The Doula Expo. Finally, she has been interviewed on national television
outlets such as PBS, BET, CNN and MSNBC and in print media such as, The New York Times and
The Washington Post.

Dr. Genen is an experienced physician executive who has spent her career focused on improving the lives
of women and children. Having worked as a clinician and engaged with health plans across the nation, Dr. Genen brings the lens of medical science, statistical analysis, health plan medical policy, billing/claims, and population health thus seeing the larger picture of health care’s complex system. She has insight into the digital health space of FemTech, vetting out companies for investment opportunities by venture
capital, private equity and health plan innovation centers.

In her current role as Chief Medical Officer at ProgenyHealth, she oversees clinical operations and is responsible for the advancement of products supporting women and children. She designed, launched, and scaled the Maternity Care Management program to complement ProgenyHealth’s other offerings in the NICU space. In addition to her clinical thought leadership, Dr. Genen is pivotal in the sale cycle, analyzing pre-sales data and presenting to various senior executive leaders at Health Plans across the country.
As Senior Vice President/Chief Medical Officer for UnitedHealth Group Research and Development, she
advanced innovations in healthcare in women’s health. Understanding the need to reach more women, she created and scaled a Virtual Centering Pregnancy program that was rolled out to all 23 Medicaid States of United Healthcare. Preceding her move to R&D, she was the Chief Medical Officer for Women’s Health at Optum servicing Fertility, Maternity and Neonatal programs and had responsibility for a P&L of
$35M. She shaped the operations of these programs by directing clinical and product teams, enhancing reporting, advising analytics, and supporting sales. She is known for her pioneering approach in designing
population health programs for both Commercial and Medicaid markets and received the Innovation Award in 2019 from UnitedHealth Group.
Linda currently serves as a Board Member for Hera Women’s Health, a Maternal Fetal Medicine practice backed by private equity and consults on various healthcare enterprises. She is zealously interested in
technology and machine learning applications that will help ensure timely care and improve outcomes.
In addition to her full-time role and board service, she is a Distinguished Mentor at Stanford Medical School
in the Master of Science in Clinical Informatics Management (MCiM) program.

Dr. Genen is affiliated as a neonatologist at Northwell Cohen Children’s Hospital and is an Assistant
Professor of Pediatrics at Hofstra University Medical School. She participates in clinical research and serves
on the inaugural committee of American Academy of Pediatrics Women in Neonatology promoting female leadership in the realm of Neonatology. Dr. Genen earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry graduating with honors from Wellesley College. She received her Doctor of Medicine from the SUNY – Downstate. She completed her pediatric residency at Columbia Presbyterian Babies and Children’s
Hospital and her neonatology fellowship at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. During her fellowship, she
earned a master’s degree in public health at Yale School of Public Health.

When it comes time to relax, Linda cherishes time with her husband and two sons. She enjoys digital
photography, hiking, planning fun family adventures and checking out the newest restaurants when not
creating in the kitchen.

Dr. Garner is currently the Chief Scientific Officer of Ferring Pharmaceuticals US, a leader in reproductive medicine,
maternal health, and uro-oncology and in specialty areas within orthopedics and gastroenterology including microbiome
therapeutics. Prior to joining Ferring in 2022, she was Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of ObsEva, a company focused on
addressing unmet needs in women’s health, and before that was CMO of Agile Therapeutics, a women’s healthcare
company focused on contraception. Beth previously held senior positions at Myriad Genetics, Abbott Laboratories, and
Merck Research Labs, where she led the Gardasil®9 HPV vaccine Product Development Team. Across her 16-year career in
the pharmaceutical industry, she has led or contributed to several US FDA product approvals, including the HPV vaccine-
Gardasil®9, Orilissa®-an oral treatment for endometriosis, the novel Twirla® low-dose contraceptive patch, and Rebyota-
the first FDA-approved live microbiota product for the prevention of recurrent Clostridium Difficile. Dr. Garner is on the
Boards of Directors of Kezar Life Sciences (KZR), which develops novel therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer and
Sermonix Pharmaceuticals, which focuses on targeted therapies for breast cancer. She is also the current President of the
American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA), the oldest multispecialty organization, whose mission is to advance
women in medicine, advocate for equity, and ensure excellence in healthcare. Dr. Garner received her M.D. and M.P.H.
degrees from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health and trained in Obstetrics and Gynecology
and Gynecologic Oncology at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals and the Dana Farber Cancer
Institute. Beth is a frequent speaker on a range of topics including the health of women, women’s leadership, diversity,
equity, and inclusion in the workplace, and clinical trial diversity, and is an author on close to 40 peer-reviewed scientific
papers. She is a 2019 and 2023 awardee of the PharmaVoice 100 Most Inspiring Individuals in the life sciences industry and
was the 2022 recipient of the Woman in Science Award from AMWA.

Over 30+ years, Linda has invested in public and private life science companies as an institutional investor, a corporate M&A executive, a hedge fund analyst, and a private venture investor; she’s held roles at companies including Essex Investment Management, Banc of America Securities, Novartis Diagnostics, Applied Biosystems (sold to Life Technologies Corp.) as well as at venture-backed life science companies such as VitaPath Genetics, Singulex, Raindance Technologies (sold to Bio-Rad), and Linkage Biosciences (sold to Thermo Fisher). Her areas of expertise includes finance, operations, and mergers and acquisitions and, within the life sciences specifically, diagnostics, genomics, healthcare services, and life science tools. In 2019, she co-founded Avestria Ventures, which invests in early-stage women’s health and female-led life science ventures.

Sarah Chen, MD is VP of Clinical Innovation at Maven Clinic, the largest virtual clinic for women’s and family health globally. Her personal experience as a Maven member brought her to join Maven, where she leads the team responsible for designing and executing evidence-based clinical programming to drive impact and better health outcomes. Through previous leadership roles at McKinsey, Clarify Health and Verily Life Sciences, Sarah has built extensive experience intersecting the clinical perspective with product, strategy and operations. Sarah received her MD from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and her BA in Biology and Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis.

Katie Spiess MBA, MSN, CNM has devoted her career to advancing midwifery and transforming the perinatal healthcare delivery landscape, most recently as associate director of maternal and child health strategy at UnitedHealthcare leading development of innovative perinatal initiatives for Medicaid markets and payor engagement in maternal health policy and care design. She brings to this work nearly two decades of clinical and leadership experience across diverse settings including freestanding birth centers, community hospitals, private midwifery and obstetrical practices, and academic medical centers. She currently holds a board advisory role at Mocingbird, a digital health startup;has severed as an advisor to maternal health startups through the UnitedHealth Group Accelerator program; is a long-term member of the American Association of Birth Centers Finance Committee; and has supported growth of midwifery practices and birth centers as a clinical and financial operations consultant with Primary Maternity Care. She holds an MBA in healthcare leadership from the Yale School of Management, an MSN from the Yale School of Nursing, a nursing degree from Case Western Reserve University, and an undergraduate in Chemistry from Oberlin College.

Crystal Pirtle Tyler PhD, MPH brings over 15 years of experience advancing reproductive and maternal
health equity. As the Chief Health Officer at Rhia Ventures, she translates the needs of the women and
birthing people most affected by systemic inequity into programming that fosters equitable reproductive
health products and services. Most recently, Crystal served as the Executive Director of Ci3 at the
University of Chicago, a research center addressing the social and structural determinants of adolescent
reproductive health and well-being through design, storytelling, play, and policy change.
Crystal began her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta first as an
Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer then as an Epidemiologist within the Division of Reproductive
Health. There, she served as a subject matter expert on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and
translating research to public health and clinical practice. From CDC, Crystal became the Director of the
Michigan Public Health Institute’s Center for Child and Family Health, where she implemented systems
level improvements to promote equity in the quality and availability of public health programs. She also
served as a Senior Research Leader at IBM Watson Health, where she supported state implementation
of Medicaid policy changes to advance maternal and child health outcomes.
Crystal serves on the Board of Directors for the Society of Family Planning, Orchid Capital Collaborative,
and the Black Woman’s Health Imperative. She has published in Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Journal
of Adolescent Health, Contraception, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, among others.
Crystal completed both her Ph.D. and MPH in Epidemiology at Michigan State University and the
University of Michigan, respectively, and her Bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies at Spelman College.

Sarah is a political social worker who has spent her career engaging young adults and womxn in government and politics. Sarah has started Youth Advisory Boards for 4 Congressmembers, mobilizing over 500 students. At Vote Mama PAC, she leads the political and programmatic work to support mamas running for office. This includes coordinating candidate endorsements, fundraising decisions, campaign contributions, and mentorship opportunities across different states. Previously, Sarah served as NY Chief of Staff for a member of the U.S. House, where she worked on supporting family-friendly legislation among other important initiatives. Sarah holds an MSW degree from Columbia University School of Social Work and a BA in Social work, Sociology, and Peace and Conflict Studies from Gordon College.