​Joseph Rafferty is a healthcare executive, operator, entrepreneur, and advisor with more than 25 years of experience leading healthcare organizations through growth, transformation, and change. A three-time hospital CEO, he has led hospital turnarounds, built and scaled healthcare businesses, advised startups, and worked across value-based care, financial performance, physician alignment, healthcare policy, and strategic partnerships.

​Joseph has also co-founded a profitable healthcare technology company and an urgent care business, bringing firsthand experience as both a health system leader and entrepreneur.

​Joe helps organizations scale by developing clear, aligned, and trust-driven GTM playbooks.

Malak Atut is a founder, operator, investor, and advisor working at the intersection of healthcare, AI, and business transformation. She leads the strategic evolution of global digital health platforms, building teams across continents, and brings a career that spans hospitality, luxury goods, finance and strategic sourcing at EY. In 2025, she was named one of New Jersey’s Innovate100 Most Innovative Business Leaders.

She designs immersive, experiential workshops and leadership development programs that help executives communicate strategy and lead through uncertainty, working with venture capital firms and their portfolio companies, executive leadership teams, and C-suite and founder audiences.

Malak teaches Entrepreneurial and Business Communication at Wharton, where she is also an Advising Entrepreneur to MBA students. She is the co-founder of Yalla Now AI, a boutique advisory firm and podcast making AI accessible to everyone.

She lives in the New York City metro area with her husband, two teenage sons, and an ever-growing collection of virtual cats. Shespends her downtime on crossword puzzles, design, and sports, where she finds no shortage of parallels to strategy and leadership.

​Amy Ravi is President and CEO of ExtendMed, a healthcare engagement platform and service provider for pharmaceutical companies and biotechs. ExtendMed deploys its private label platform to support clients’ virtual advisory boards, congress engagement, promotional education, publications and symposia, online focus groups and training, as well as clinical trial site communications – across a broad range of therapeutic areas.  Prior to founding ExtendMed, Amy came from a hospital network setting, previously serving as director of corporate information at Rush University Medical Center.  She graduated from Carleton College with a psychology degree and began her career as a sleep researcher studying the role that dreams play in managing depression. While at Rush, Amy earned her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

​Amy has also held an appointment on the graduate faculty of the School of Health Sciences at Rush University in Chicago and has guest lectured at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management on business leadership.  She is a Springboard alumna and HBA member.

​Melissa Klufio Peeler is an executive healthcare operator and Founder & President of Chesamel Health.

​Chesamel Health is a boutique healthcare consultancy that partners with bold, mission-driven digital health, health technology, and health services organizations to turn their ambitions into sustainable results — helping them achieve adoption and scale with payers, health systems, and employers.

​She brings 20+ years of experience across payer, provider, and health technology organizations, including Elevance Health, Oracle Health (Cerner), and Boston Children’s Hospital. Most recently, as Vice President and General Manager at Carelon Health (a major division of Elevance), she held full P&L ownership for a $2B portfolio serving 27 million members and driving 25% membership growth.

​Throughout her career, Melissa has scaled businesses, entered new markets, and built high-performing teams. She is known for defining bold strategy and driving it to execution, and for a leadership style that earns trust because she pays careful attention not only to results, but also to how they are achieved. Integrity in excellence is her hallmark.

​She holds a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University and an MBA with a concentration in healthcare from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

​Melissa and her family live in the Chicago suburbs with a high-energy cockapoo who keeps everyone active. Having lived and worked across four continents, she enjoys traveling and experiencing new cultures.

​Sara Sortal is SVP of Solutions & Implementation at Synapse Health, a high-growth, technology-enabled home medical equipment (DME) solution, where she leads payor solutions, implementation and data operations. Her career spans both sides of the healthcare ecosystem — from large, established systems like Advocate Health and AIM (Carelon), to fast-scaling, PE-backed companies like Synapse Health and Surgical Care Affiliates (SCA Health). That range gives her a practitioner’s view of what it actually takes to build and scale solutions that work for health plans and providers alike, not just in theory but in the operational weeds. Sara holds an MBA from Kellogg and has built her career around building high-performing teams and streamlining systems that turn strategy into results. She brings a grounded, execution-focused perspective on what’s required for startups to succeed in partnership with the incumbents around them.

Dr. Rinki Varindani Desai is a board-certified speech-language pathologist, digital health strategist, entrepreneur, and clinical educator with over 15 years of experience across clinical care, healthcare leadership, and healthtech innovation. As the founder of Theratactix, she advises digital health companies on clinical, product, and growth strategy. She is also co-founder and COO of the Swallowing Training and Education Portal and serves as an educator at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Desai is passionate about bridging clinical expertise with digital innovation to empower clinicians and improve patient outcomes. Learn more at www.rinkislp.com.