Speakers

Greg Adams

Executive Vice President
Group President
Kaiser Permanente

Gregory A. Adams is executive vice president and group president reporting to the Chairman and CEO. He has direct responsibility for all eight Kaiser Permanente regions, serving 12 million members and operating 38 hospitals and more than 620 medical office facilities. Adams' accountabilities also include leading Kaiser Permanente’s Medicare care delivery strategy, national pharmacy operations, national patient care services and delivery system planning. Additionally, he also has responsibility for the organization’s partnership with the National Basketball Association, the league’s first-ever health care partnership.

Adams was appointed president of the Northern California Region for Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Health Plan, Inc. in April 2008. In January 2011, Adams was named one of the organization’s Group Presidents, assuming additional responsibility for the Mid-Atlantic Region and various national initiatives. In April 2016, he was named group president for all Kaiser Permanente regions nationwide.  In addition to his group president responsibilities, he serves on the organization's National Executive Team and Executive Committee.

Adams has over 30 years of leadership experience as a senior health care executive and strategic consultant. He started his career with Kaiser Permanente in Southern California in 1999 and has held a number of executive leadership positions within the organization. In the Southern California Region, he served as senior vice president and service area manager of the Tri-Central area and chief operating officer for the region. In 2007 he moved to Northern California, where he was associate regional president and chief operating officer before being named president.

Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, Adams held several executive roles in the health care industry, providing strategic and operational leadership for hospitals, health systems and medical groups throughout the country. He was senior vice president of Strategy and Business Development for Catholic Healthcare West in Southern California; president and CEO of St. Bernadine Medical Center in San Bernardino, California; chief operating officer for Baptist Healthcare System of Southeast Texas; and director of Critical Care Services for the Mayo Clinic’s St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. He also owned a health care firm that provided strategic and operational improvement consulting for health care organizations.

Adams is past chair of the California Hospital Association’s Board of Trustees and serves on the executive committee. He serves on the board of directors for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the California Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the National Association of Health Services Executives. Adams has a bachelor’s degree from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta and a master’s degree in nursing administration from Wichita State University. He speaks regularly on issues related to management, leadership and health care delivery and financing.

Michael R. Bleich, PhD, RN, FNAP, FAAN

President and CEO
NursDynamics, LLC

Dr. Michael Bleich is a Wisconsin native who has held clinical, consultative, service, academic, and association leadership positions.  A recognized scholar and thought leader, Dr. Bleich has addressed national and international audiences that include nurses, executives, governance bodies, associations, and the media.  Four contributions are especially important to the advancement of the discipline – his engagement as one of the five nurses on the committee that wrote the seminal report, The Future of Nursing, Leading Change, Advancing Health issued through the Institute of Medicine, Wisdom at Work: the Importance of the Older and Experienced Nurse in the Workplace published through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Men in Nursing: Understanding the Challenges Men Face in this Predominantly Female Profession, and Analysis of the Nursing Workforce Crisis: a Call to Action, both published in the American Journal of Nursing.

Dr. Bleich has a diploma, BSN, MPH and PhD from Midwestern Schools.  He has completed Fellowships with the Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellows Program, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the WK Kellogg Foundation.  An inductee of the American Academy of Nursing and the National Academies of Practice, he proudly serves as the current President of both CGFNS, International and FNINR, both advance science and ensure workforce mobility, quality and safety. 

Linda J. Knodel, MHA, MSN, NE-BC, CPHQ, FACHE, FAAN

Senior Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive
Kaiser Permanente, Oakland

Linda serves as the Senior Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive for Kaiser Permanente, based in Oakland CA. In her role, Mrs. Knodel leads 54,000 nurses across eight states serving 11.8 million members and reports to the Vice President and Group President.

Kaiser Permanente was founded in 1945 and is recognized as one of America’s leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Kaiser is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans, serving 11.8 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia. It is comprised of:

• Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and its subsidiaries
• Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc
• The Permanente Medical Groups

Prior to her current position, Linda served as the Senior Vice President/CNO for Mercy, a health system of 46 acute care and specialty hospitals, 700 physician practices and over 42,000 co-workers in the states of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma; Vice President/CNO of Mercy’s Springfield communities and as the Senior Vice President/CNO at St. Alexius Medical Center, Bismarck ND.

Linda has served in various local, regional and national capacities, most recently serving as president for the American Organization of Nurse Executives, and past member of the board of governors for the American College of Health Care Executives, Regent’s advisory council and served on the ACHE finance committee. Linda has participated/chaired AONE’s strategic planning, membership, bylaw and annual planning committees.  Linda has also held positions as a state/chapter president and American Hospital Association region 6 regional policy board member.  Ms. Knodel also served as a board member for the National Board for Case Management. She currently serves on the Health Professions Program Council with Western Governors University and the Clinical Leadership Committee for AHA.

Linda is a member of Sigma Theta Tau and served as chair of the Mercy/Southwest Baptist University College of Nursing Institutional Coordinating Committee.  Linda holds a Masters in Healthcare Administration from the University of Minnesota, a Masters in Nursing from the University of Mary and is a Wharton nursing executive fellow.  Linda has published and spoke extensively. In 2011 she was published by McGraw Hill in her book Nurse to Nurse: Nursing Management as well as recognized by the Springfield Business Journal as one of the 2011, “12 People You Need to Know” in Springfield, Missouri.

Mrs. Knodel is married to her husband, Ken, and has three grown daughters.

Janette Moreno, DNP, CCRN-K, NEA-BC

Director of Professional Development and Clinical Education
Stanford Children's Health

Dr. Janette Moreno currently works at Stanford Children's Health as the Director of Professional Development and Clinical Education. With more than 20 years of clinical and leadership experience, she has extensive experience with clinical and academic teaching, mentoring, coaching, consulting, curriculum development, and professional development of nurses at all levels of care in various health care settings. Her commitment to advancing the nursing profession led her to establish a learning resource center in the Bay Area to prepare new graduate nurses for the BRN licensure examination, developed leadership development curriculums for nursing faculty, continuing education courses, and established life support courses.

Janette holds a Doctorate of Nursing Practice, Executive Leadership from the University of San Francisco. Janette led the enterprise-wide restructuring of a 15-year old shared governance at Stanford Health Care to ensure alignment with the Magnet model of clinical excellence and the organization's strategic plan. Her DNP project was aimed at developing the future nurse leaders through the Shared Leadership Councils. The project has led to the internal promotion of 20% of SG council members to formal leadership positions, which has significantly decreased the number of days to fill vacant positions. She has presented nationally and internationally and shared best practices of the clinical excellence outcomes of the Stanford Shared Leadership Councils.

Janette is actively engaged in professional organizations as the President-elect of the Greater SF Chapter of the Association of California Nurse Leaders (ACNL). She is also the co-chair of the Healthy Work Environment Committee of state-ACNL. She has recently been appointed as Bylaws Chair of the American Nurses Association (ANA)/California. She is a Caring Science Coach and has integrated mindfulness and resilience as a transformational caring leader.

Tim Porter-O'Grady, DM, EdD, ScD(h), APRN, FAAN, FACCWS

TPOG Associates, Inc.

Dr. Tim Porter-O'Grady is currently senior partner-health systems for TPOG Associates, Inc. an Atlanta-based international health consulting practice. He has been Clinical Professor, Leadership Scholar at The Ohio State University, College of Nursing and also Professor and Innovations Scholar at Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation for the past 10 years, and is currently a Clinical Professor at Emory University, School of Nursing. He is nationally/internationally recognized as an expert in clinical health systems, professional governance, and health systems innovation. Dr. Porter-O'Grady has consulted with over 600 clinical systems world-wide and has lectured at well over 1000 settings globally. He has authored/co-authored 26 books and over 200 publications and is a 9-time winner of the AJ N "Book of the Year Award". Tim is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American College of Clinical Wound Specialists. Tim is currently Chair of the Board of the American Nurses Foundation and Board member of St. Joseph's Mercy Care of Atlanta, a community health system for the underserved and homeless. He also serves on the editorial boards of five proctored healthcare journals. Tim has received numerous awards including the AONE Lifetime Achievement Award, Luther Christman Health Leadership Award, and the AACN Healthcare Pioneer Award just to name a few. He participated in the federal grant project for initiating St Joseph's Mercy Care of Atlanta some 30 years ago and guided its implementation. He still happily serves today as a practicing clinical wound specialist in the Mercy Care Street Medicine program.

Karen Gabel Speroni, PhD, BSN, MHSA, RN

Dr. Speroni is a research infrastructure and process expert who uniquely integrates research goals and organizational strategies to advance the practice of nursing, ultimately to improve patient outcomes and work environment.

She has over 30 years of experience in biomedical research and hospital consultation, including evidence based practice research in hospitals, university teaching, Institutional Review Boards, contract research organizations and pharmacoeconomics.

Currently Dr. Speroni:

• Provides research consultation to develop and sustain research programs for Magnet recognition for several health care systems in the United States, including University of Maryland Shore Regional Health, and El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California;
• Serves as a consultant and educator with the American Nurses Association, Nursing Knowledge Center in (Consultant), for hospitals on their Magnet™ journey.  She is a Certificate Holder, Fundamentals of Magnet;
• Serves as a clinical scientist on Institutional Review Boards (IRB) for Chesapeake Research Review, Inc., and Inova Health System where she is also the Vice-Chair of the IRB; and
• Presents research processes and research findings nationally and internationally (listing available upon request), and authors research related publications (over 75 research manuscripts, abstracts and book chapters).