For nearly two decades, Dr. Spangler, IVI’s Chief Executive Officer, has worked in the professional health policy and public health sector with pharmaceutical and non-profit organizations. Dr. Spangler joins IVI from his most recent role as Executive Medical Director and Director and Head of Global HTA Policy Strategy & Engagement for Amgen, Inc.

Dr. Spangler earned his MD at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in 1998 and his Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2002. His commitment to public health, preventive medicine, and health equity date back to his medical school residency, during which he served as a medical team leader for free clinics in Costa Rica, a resident coordinator for free clinics for homeless around UPMC, and a clinical educator in the International Medical Corps in Kosovo.

After serving one year as Chief Resident, Dr. Spangler joined Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals as a Public Health and Health Policy Consultant. He remained in this role for three years and then moved on to the Partnership for Prevention, where he started as a Managing Senior Fellow and was promoted to Chief Medical Officer until he was recruited to Amgen.

Mary E. Reed, DrPH, is a research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, and a founding steering committee member of the CREST emergency medicine research network. Her research interests include health information technology and health care delivery organization and their effects on clinical care, quality, and costs. She examines patient care-seeking and health care experience, particularly in using patient-facing technology and in navigating health insurance benefits. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Disease (NIDDK), the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and she serves on the AHRQ Health Information Technology Research (HITR) study section. Her work has been recognized in Best Abstracts of the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting and as an AcademyHealth Notable Article-of-the-Year (2014). Dr. Reed is the incoming chair of the AcademyHealth Data and Methods Council.

She received her DrPH at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.

Melanie Ridley, Chief Program & Development Officer, is an experienced fund development professional with a background in writing and communications, research and health needs assessment, and project management. Ridley is an Institute for Healthcare Improvement-certified Improvement Coach; her professional focus has been community-based health care, public health, quality improvement, value-based care, and building capacity for health care safety net delivery systems.

Ridley served as Director of Fund Development for Essential Access Health, a statewide association in California advancing sexual and reproductive health; she managed a full lifecycle of federal and state grans and funder relationship management. Ridley formerly worked with Mental Health America supporting state mental health planning councils and state policy and advocacy initiatives.

Ridley holds a bachelor’s degree in community nutrition from the University of California, Davis.

Kevin grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Leavenworth, Kansas. He and his two brothers all were diagnosed with sickle cell disease. Kevin graduated from the University of Kansas and worked in pharmaceutical sales and management for 23 years before taking an early retirement due to health complications from his sickle cell. Since retirement, he earned his master’s degree from Walden University and a Community Health Worker certification from SCDAA. Kevin is now a patient advocate and is currently the President of the Uriel E. Owens Sickle Cell Disease Association of the Midwest in Kansas City, KS. He is involved with advocacy through the Rare Disease Legislative Advocates, is Chairman of University Health’s Patient Family Advisory Council and has worked on state and national committees.