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SPEECH Conference
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Speakers

Meet the Speakers

Speakers at the 4th Annual SPEECH Regional Cancer Health Disparity Conference Virtual Conference include leaders and visionaries from Hunter College, Temple University/Fox Chase Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medicine.

Conference Speakers

Jennifer J. Raab
Jason Wingard, PhD
Olorunseun O. Ogunwobi, MD, PhD
Grace X. Ma, PhD
Joseph Osborne, MD, PhD
Joel Erblich, PhD, MPH (MPI, HC)
Hiroshi Matsui, PhD
Jayashri Ghosh, PhD
Sandra L. San Miguel, MS, DrPH(c)
Aisha Bhimla, PhD, MPH
Mandë Holford, PhD

Jennifer J. Raab

President, Hunter College of The City University of New York

jenniffer raabJennifer J. Raab marked her 20th anniversary as President of Hunter College, the largest college in the City University of New York system, with more than 24,000 students, five schools, and an annual operating budget of more than $250 million. President Raab has led the successful transformation of Hunter College from an open-admissions institution to a selective, highly ranked college; under her leadership both graduation and retention rates have increased markedly.

Since she has assumed the presidency, Hunter has significantly increased its government grants and awards and strengthened its fiscal management. President Raab has been responsible for securing $400 million in private support for the college. She has launched a $25 million library renovation; a science research and nursing/health professions facility in partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; a floor in the new Belfer Research Building at Weill Cornell Medical College; a $131 million School of Social Work in East Harlem; a new facility in Tribeca for Hunter’s renowned art graduate program and gallery; a townhouse on E 67th St to house Hunter’s theater department and the $25 million restoration of the historic 1908 Roosevelt House.

President Raab was earlier a litigator Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Paul, Weiss, after which she was appointed Chairman of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, a post she held from 1994 to 2001.

President Raab sat on the Board of Directors of Compuware Corporation, and is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the Steering Committee of the Association for a Better New York, Advisory Committee for WOMEN.NYC and sits on the boards of directors of The After School Corporation, United Way New York, and the One To World Foundation, and was a member of the 2004-05 New York City Charter Revision Commission.

A graduate of Hunter College High School (whose campus she now oversees), President Raab received a BA with distinction in all subjects from Cornell University in 1977, an MPA from Princeton in 1979, and a JD cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1985. In 2016, President Raab’s achievements were recognized by her election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jason Wingard, PhD

President, Temple University

Jason WingardDr. Jason Wingard is a leading academic and executive specializing in the areas of organizational strategy, leadership development, and the future of work. He currently serves as President of Temple University and holds a dual appointment as Professor of Policy, Organization, and Leadership; and Professor of Human Resource Management. Temple is a public research university, consisting of 17 schools across eight campuses and a regional health system. The university enrolls approximately 37,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and is among the nation’s largest providers of professional education in the combined fields of dentistry, engineering, law, medicine, podiatry, and pharmacy. Temple University Health System is a $2.2 billion health system consisting of more than 1,000 physicians supporting excellence in medical education, research, and patient care. Dr. Wingard is also currently Founding Partner and Chairman of The Education Board, Inc., a boutique management consulting firm specializing in executive coaching and corporate advisory services.

Prior to Temple, Dr. Wingard served as Dean and Professor of the School of Professional Studies (SPS) at Columbia University. The graduate school offers 16 interdisciplinary master’s degrees covering domains including analytics, management, communication, and science.

Before Columbia, he served as Managing Director and Chief Learning Officer at Goldman Sachs, a multinational investment bank. At Goldman Sachs, he oversaw the acclaimed Pine Street Leadership Development Group and Goldman Sachs University, and was responsible for the strategy and implementation of leadership development solutions for the firm's partners, global workforce, and clients.

Previously, he served as Vice Dean of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he was the head of Executive Education and oversaw one of the world's largest providers of leadership and management development. He also served as Senior Vice President of ePals, Inc. and President & CEO of the ePals Foundation. ePals, Inc. (now Cricket Media) is the world’s leading provider of interactive/collaborative learning products.

Prior to joining ePals, Dr. Wingard was Executive Director of the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute, at Stanford University, where he led the engagement of executive coaching and applied research practicums for school leaders across the United States. He has also served in a variety of cross-functional executive and consulting roles for organizations including the Aspen Institute, the Vanguard Group, and Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI).

As a thought leader, Dr. Wingard has published widely on the topic of strategy, learning, and leadership, including his most recent books: The Great Skills Gap: Optimizing Talent for the Future of Work (2021); Learning for Life: How Continuous Education Will Keep Us Competitive in the Global Knowledge Economy (2016); and Learning to Succeed: Reinventing Corporate Education in a World of Unrelenting Change (2015). His forthcoming book is: The College Devaluation Crisis: Market Disruption, Diminishing ROI, and an Alternative Future of Learning (2022). He is also Senior Contributor on Leadership Strategy for Forbes.

Dr. Wingard is a frequent keynote speaker. Recent engagements include Google, National Football League (NFL), PwßC, Procter and Gamble (P&G), CNBC, National Public Radio (NPR), the Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic.

Dr. Wingard serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Kroll, the world’s premier provider of services and digital products related to governance, risk and transparency.

As a public servant, he currently serves on the Boards of Directors of JUST Capital, Roundabout Theater Company, and the Education Board Foundation. He previously served on the Boards of Directors for Tides, Building 21, United Cerebral Palsy of Philadelphia, the National Center for Fathering, and Philadelphia Futures.

Dr. Wingard holds a BA in Sociology (Organizational Behavior & Social Psychology), with honors, from Stanford University where he was a member of the varsity football and track teams. He also holds a MA in Education (Professional Development) from Emory University, a EdM in Technology in Education from Harvard University, and a PhD in Education, Culture, and Society (Corporate Education) from the University of Pennsylvania.

He enjoys classic jazz, cycling, and spending time with his wife and their children.

Olorunseun O. Ogunwobi, MD, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Hunter College; Director Hunter College Center for Cancer Health Disparities Research (CCHDR)

Dr. Olorunseun OgunwobiDr. Olorunseun Ogunwobi obtained a medical degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, a master's degree in biomedicine from the University of Hull, United Kingdom, a master's degree in clinical and translational science from the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, and a PhD in molecular medicine from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom. He is the founding Director of the Hunter College Center for Cancer Health Disparities Research, tenured Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Hunter College of The City University of New York, and a member of faculty in the Biology and Biochemistry PhD programs at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. Dr. Ogunwobi is a translational cancer biologist whose work focuses on molecular mechanisms of progression of solid organ cancers with established racial disparities. His laboratory has established novel circulating tumor cell models that are being used progressively to elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying the role of circulating tumor cells in cancer metastasis. A major focus of Dr. Ogunwobi’s laboratory are studies elucidating the role of non-coding RNAs derived from the PVT1 gene locus in the development and progression of solid organ cancers. The Ogunwobi laboratory is also now working on epitranscriptomics, and utilization of genome engineering of the 3’untranslated region of the mRNA of known oncogenes as a novel therapeutic approach for lethal cancers. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, New York State, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the National Science Foundation, among others. Dr. Ogunwobi is a Contact Principal Investigator of the Synergistic Partnership for Enhancing Equity in Cancer Health (SPEECH) funded by U54 grants (CA221704 and CA221705), Contact Principal Investigator of 3U54CA221704-03S1 and Co-Investigator on R01 grant CA239603 from the National Cancer Institute. An author of 68 peer-reviewed journal articles and 2 book chapters, Dr. Ogunwobi has been issued 5 United States patents for biotechnology inventions with potential clinical applications in cancer, and he is a Co-Founder of NucleoBio, Inc, a City University of New York start-up biotechnology company. In 2022, Dr. Ogunwobi became a recipient of the Hunter College Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarship or Creative Activity.

Grace X. Ma, PhD

Associate Dean for Health Disparities; Director for Center for Asian Health; Laura H. Carnell Professor in Clinical Sciences, Lewis Katz School of Medicine of Temple University; Primary Member at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Temple University Health System

Dr Grace MaDr. Ma is a nationally recognized behavioral health scientist, leader and pioneer in cancer and health disparities research among underserved and vulnerable racial/ethnic minority populations. In her role as Associate Dean for Health Disparities, Dr. Ma has provided critical and effective leadership in building robust research infrastructure and leading multidisciplinary teams across Temple schools/colleges and multiple institutions in conducting independent and collaborative, highly competitive and innovative cancer health disparities research and education/training a pipeline of diverse investigators in population, translational and clinical sciences. Built on two decades of her leadership, Dr. Ma and her research team established successful partnerships with over 400 community organizations to engage Asian-Pacific American, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino populations in health disparity research and interventions. During her career, Dr. Ma has received continuous awards in research grants from National Institutes of Health (NIH), federal agencies and other funders. She has made seminal contributions in improving health equity and reducing health disparities. Over the past 22 years, Dr. Ma as Principal Investigator has directed 4 cycles of large-scale cancer health disparities research centers/networks funded by NCI/NIH including the recent U54 “TUFCCC/HC Regional Comprehensive Cancer Health Disparities Partnership.” Dr. Ma’s expertise spans a broad range of health disparities disciplines. Her community-based participatory research (CBPR) and patient-centered outcome research (PCOR) have focused on improving early detection, patient navigation, cancer prevention and control (Hepatitis-related liver cancer, cervical, breast, lung and colorectal cancers), smoking cessation, and access/quality of healthcare in underserved and racial/ethnic minorities. Dr. Ma has directed more than 100 intervention or observational longitudinal research studies, including large-scale cluster randomized intervention trials, implementation and dissemination studies at worksites, community health centers, primary care clinics, community-based organizations and churches (NIH funded R01s, U01s, R24s).

She also conducted a number of studies focusing on multilevel risk factors and viral related diseases (e.g. HBV, HCV, HPV and HIV), evidence-based interventions for improving screening, vaccination, disease management, medication adherence, quality of life and continuum of care in underserved Asian Pacific Americans and Black/African American populations. Dr. Ma mentored over 260 minority junior faculty, post-doctoral fellows, doctoral and master students that created a pipeline of diverse workforce of researchers in health disparities.

Dr. Ma authored 5 books, over 210 scientific journal articles, and delivered over 680 professional presentations. Dr. Ma has served on more than 40 scientific advisory boards in health disparities research, including NIH national Health Disparity Science Vision Advisory Panel and NIH study sections. Currently, Dr. Ma Co-Chairs Asian American, Native Hawaiian & Other Pacific Islander (AA NHOPI) Interest Group for NIH Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL) Against COVID-19 Disparities.

Joseph Osborne, MD, PhD

Keynote Speaker; Chief of Molecular Imaging and Therapeutics, Professor of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine and Attending Radiologist at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine

Joseph R. OsborneDr. Joseph Osborne is the Chief of Molecular Imaging and Therapeutics, Professor of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine and Attending Radiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Osborne is the Head of the Rad Health Equity Laboratory. The lab endeavors to move past advocacy into the practical implementation of projects and partnerships to reduce radiologic health disparities. He was the also the principle investigator on an NIH Academic Industrial Partnership RO1 grant “A new technique to make 68Ga-labeled pharmaceuticals widely available for clinical use” and the Dean’s Health Disparity Research Award “Prostate Cancer Health Impact Program (pCHIP)”.

Joel Erblich, PhD, MPH (MPI, HC)

Professor, Department of Psychology, Hunter College

Dr. Erblich was a founding member of the Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Institute and Institute for Translational Epidemiology at Mount Sinai, where he spent a decade focusing on cancer prevention and control related to genetic factors primarily impacting African American smokers. Using a multidisciplinary-translational approach, Dr. Erblich’s research in behavioral medicine has examined the effects of genetic polymorphisms on smoking behaviors and behavioral interventions to manage nicotine dependence. He has a long track record of research, training/mentorship and administrative leadership. In 2012, Dr. Erblich was recruited to HC to spearhead a new doctoral program in Health Psychology in Clinical Science (HPCS), which has matriculated a number of outstanding URM students. This doctoral program built on his long-standing work in training post-doctoral students and his mentorship of students, trainees, and junior investigators in cancer prevention and control.

He was a PI on numerous research grants and career development awards from diverse funding agencies, including the NCI, NIDA, American Cancer Society, Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, PCORI, and others.

Dr. Erblich also serves as the methodologist on several R01 grants in behavioral medicine. Dr. Erblich is currently the Hunter College MPI on the TUFCCC/HC U54 project, as well as the Project Co-Leader for the Lung Cancer project.

Hiroshi Matsui, PhD

Professor, Department of Chemistry, Hunter College

Hiroshi MatsuiProfessor Hiroshi Matsui teaches courses in biophysical chemistry and physical chemistry at Hunter College.  After engineering a variety of peptide/protein assemblies (Chem. Soc. Rev., (2010) 39, 3499-3509), biomimetic autonomous motors (Nature Mater., (2012) 11, 1081-1085), and enzyme-mimicking peptides (J. Am. Chem. Soc., (2014) 136, 15893-15896), Dr. Hiroshi Matsui’s nanotechnology labs have developed various nanoparticles including inorganic nanocages (Nature Commun., (2014) 5, 3870). Currently his lab is focused on medical applications of nanotechnology, including nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems, medical imaging, and lab-on-a-chip cancer diagnostic devices.

Jayashri Ghosh, PhD

Assistant Professor (Research), Fels Cancer Institute of Personalized Medicine, Temple University

Jayashri GhoshDr. Jayashri Ghosh started her career in the field of epigenetics as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Dr. Carmen Sapienza’s laboratory at the Fels Cancer Institute for Personalized Medicine, Temple University. She has been associated with Sapienza lab for more than 8 years now and has been recently promoted to the rank of Assistant Professor (Research). Dr. Ghosh initial works have focused on looking at epigenetic differences between two or more groups and interpreting the data into a clinically relevant aspect of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). One of the most interesting finds of her ART research has been the identification of epigenetic outliers or “Outlier Methylation Phenotype” (OMP). Such outliers have abnormal methylation patterns throughout the genome. The concept of epigenetic outliers is not restricted to ART and the team has expanded the study on outliers to the cancer field (secondary analyses of TCGA datasets). Furthermore, their recent work on racial disparity in colon cancer patients shows that methylation differences exists between patients of different races and African Americans patients are more likely to be OMPs than Caucasians ( TUFCCC/HC U54 Colon Pilot Study).

Sandra L. San Miguel, MS, DrPH(c)

Program Director in the Integrated Networks Branch of the National Cancer Institute’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CRCHD)

Sandra San MiguelSandra L. San Miguel is a Program Director in the Integrated Networks Branch of the National Cancer Institute’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CRCHD). In this role, she provides technical and scientific expertise to the Comprehensive Partnerships to Advance Cancer Health Equity (CAPACHE-U54) by managing various partnerships across the nation. The CPACHE funds equal partnerships between institutions serving underserved health disparity populations and underrepresented students (ISUPS) with NCI-designated cancer centers across the nation.

San Miguel co-developed and is responsible for managing the Connecting the Underrepresented Populations to Clinical Trials (CUSP2CT), a U.S. White House Cancer Moonshot Initiative. CUSP2CT is a UO1 national program that will implement and evaluate multilevel and culturally tailored outreach and education interventions with the primary goal of increasing referral and ultimately, accrual of underrepresented racial/ethnic minority populations, to NCI-supported clinical trials San Miguel is also responsible for managing a portfolio of Administrative Supplements (P30s) to the Cancer Center Support Grants at NCI-designated cancer centers. These administrative supplements constitute the National Outreach Network (NON) and play a critical role increasing accrual into cancer clinical trials, implementing the Screen to Save: NCI Colorectal Cancer Outreach and Screening initiative, and the HPV Health Education and Outreach initiative among racially/ethnically diverse, and rural, communities across the nation.

For the past five years, San Miguel has been leading global cancer control and prevention efforts working with the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) and various global NGOs. Through a groundbreaking collaboration among NCI, PAHO/WHO, and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, San Miguel is leading the development, implementation, and evaluation of Extension for Community Health Outcomes Latin America - ECHO ELA – collaborating with ministries of health, policy health makers, researchers, and key cancer stakeholders to promote WHO’s cervical cancer elimination goals to prevent and treat cervical cancer.

Sandra San Miguel possesses over 25 years of experience in public health, is a published author of multiple peer-reviewed articles, manuals and booklets and has received numerous accolades and recognitions for her work. Her expertise lies in population health - developing/adapting, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based, culturally sensitive, multilingual behavioral cancer interventions to decrease health disparities among racially/ethnically diverse populations within the U.S. and among underserved populations globally. Prior to joining NCI, San Miguel served in academia, holding faculty positions at the Dept. of Medicine - Epidemiology & Biostatistics at UT Health San Antonio and at the Dept. of Biology and International Studies at Trinity University.

San Miguel is a doctoral candidate in Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She received her MS in Psychology from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, and BA in Psychology from the University of the Incarnate Word.

Aisha Bhimla, PhD, MPH

Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Asian Health, Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine

Aisha BhimlaAisha Bhimla is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Asian Health at Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine. In this position, she provides support to federally funded projects that address health disparities among Asian American, Black/African American, and Latinx communities. Her involvement in health disparities research has included a broad range of community-based interventions and assessments related to chronic disease and cancer, physical activity, mental health, cognitive functioning, and teen pregnancy/STI prevention. She is specifically passionate about using epidemiological methods to understand how social determinants of health, such as the neighborhood environment affect health behaviors and risk factors associated with colorectal and liver cancers among racial and ethnic minority populations. She holds a Ph.D. in Kinesiology from Temple University and an MPH in Epidemiology and Global Health from the University of South Florida.

Mandë Holford, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, Hunter College

Mande HolfordDr. Mandë Holford is a tenured Associate Professor in Chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at The American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine. Her research combines biological and chemical techniques to examine venoms and venomous animals. She is particularly interested in using venom peptides to study rapidly evolving genes and to examine the cellular physiology of malfunctioning signals in pain and cancer. Dr. Holford’s lab applied an evolutionary venomics approach, integrating phylogenetic, transcriptomics, and proteomics, to investigate the evolution of venom in terebrid snails and to characterize their venom peptides. She was the first to reconstruct the molecular phylogeny of the group and demonstrate the analgesic and antitumor activity of terebrid peptides. The Holford has recently focused on developing invertebrate venom gland model systems that can be genetically manipulated to study the molecular innovation of venom. She is active in science education, advancing the public understanding of science, and science diplomacy. She co-founded Killer Snails, LLC, an award-winning EdTech company that uses tabletop, digital, and XR games about nature as a conduit to advance scientific learning in K-12 classrooms. Her honors include being named: a Sustainability Pioneer and Champion Scientist by the World Economic Forum, Breakthrough Women in Science by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NPR’s Science Friday, a Wings WorldQuest Women of Discovery Fellow, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, an NSF CAREER awardee, a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow, and Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. She received her PhD from The Rockefeller University.

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