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2008 Information Below - Check back for
2009
David Albertson
Editorial Director, Employee Benefit
News and Conference Chair
Washington, DC
 David
Albertson is Editorial Director for SourceMedia's
Employee Benefits Group. He has served Employee
Benefit News since the magazine's inception in 1986,
and in his current position since 1999. David is also
responsible for editorial content of the sister
magazines Employee Benefit Adviser, Employee Benefit
News Canada, the Web site Benefitnews.com, and four
e-newsletters. Among industry meetings, he serves as
Chairman of his group's annual conference, Benefits
Management Forum & Expo and numerous related one-day
events. In his 25-year career, David has contributed to
nearly two-dozen business publications in the fields of
health care, employee benefits and finance.
Wayne Bogosian
President and Managing Director
The PFE Group
 Wayne
G. Bogosian is founder and President of The PFE Group,
Southborough, MA, a leading retirement plan vendor search,
investment advisory and financial education consulting firm.
Wayne is a frequent public speaker, having conducted more than
1,000 workshops and seminars on topics ranging from retirement
planning and investments to corporate downsizing and mergers and
acquisitions. He is co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide
to 401(k) Plans and has been quoted in a variety of
publications including Business Week, Employee Benefit News,
Reader’s Digest, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington
Post, and appeared on WCVB, MSNBC, and AOL. Wayne has a B.S.
from Northeastern University, an M.B.A. from Suffolk University,
is an Accredited Investment Fiduciary (AIF), and holds various
securities licenses.
Audrey Browne
Director of
Regulatory Compliance & Contract Procurement
DC 37
Health & Security Plan
 Audrey
Browne conducts RFPs and negotiates contracts with
vendors, professionals, PMBs and others who provide a
variety of services for the DC 37 Health & Security
Plan. DC 37’s Plan administers a wide array of health &
welfare benefits, including a prescription drug benefit,
for over 300,000 of its union members and their
families. Ms. Browne is also an adjunct professor of law
at New York Law School where she recently taught a
course on the health-related legal issues surrounding
the building and destruction of the World Trade Center
towers.
Audrey has published a
number of papers on controlling prescription drug prices
and she has appeared on cable t.v. and various radio
shows regarding the litigation the Plan has undertaken
against the pharmaceutical industry. Last year she
served as Allocation Counsel for all third party payors
in a nationwide class action suit against Serono. That
case recently settled for $24 million.
Ms. Browne is a
graduate of The Columbus School of Law at Catholic
University and has a B.A. degree from The American
University. She is admitted to the bars of Pennsylvania
& New York as well as various federal and appellate
courts.
Linda Cahn
President
Pharmacy Benefit Consultants
 Linda
Cahn is an attorney specializing in litigation against
Pharmacy Benefit Management companies (PBMs), and the
founder and President of Pharmacy Benefit Consultants, a
nationwide consulting firm with a unique approach to
decreasing clients’ prescription coverage costs.
Pharmacy Benefit
Consultants focuses on the most important determinant of
clients’ prescription coverage costs - the PBM/client
contract. Thus, when Pharmacy Benefit Consultants
conducts s PBM RFPs for clients, it drafts and
negotiates and executes an entirely different form of
PBM contract during the RFP. Pharmacy Benefit
Consultants typically decreases clients’ costs by 10% to
30%. over clients’ previous year’s costs as a result of
its work. For further information about Pharmacy Benefit
Consultants’ work, see:
www.PharmacyBenefitConsultants.com.
Pharmacy Benefit
Consultants is also working to change the prescription
coverage marketplace change by disseminating free
internet information, including: (i) a two-part video
captioned “How to Conduct A Successful PBM RFP”; and
(ii) a downloadable Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form
to enable entities to eliminate consulting firms’
conflicts of interest. All such information can be
accessed through the firm’s website.
Pharmacy Benefit
Consultants’ clients have included, among others:
Business and union Coalitions, Fortune 50 companies,
multiple smaller corporations and unions, insurance
companies, and Medicaid HMOs.
Ms. Cahn began working
to change the prescription coverage marketplace in 1997,
when she initiated the first class action litigation in
the country against the two largest PBMs at that time:
Merck-Medco Managed Care and PCS Health Systems. During
the ten years that followed, she litigated those suits,
as well as several others on behalf of individual health
plans. Beginning in 1998, Ms. Cahn also began advising
federal prosecutors and approximately 20 state attorneys
general about PBM practices. Her work directly led to
the initiation of government investigations and the
filing of government lawsuits against PBMs. Ms. Cahn has
also met with, and advised, the staffs of several U.S.
Senate Committees about PBM wrongdoing, and has
testified before state legislative hearings on
legislation to improve the PBM marketplace.
Ms. Cahn has been
quoted by numerous national newspapers (copies of
articles can be found on the firm website), and she has
written two cover story articles for the IFEBP’s
Benefits & Compensation Digest (same).
Ms. Cahn is a graduate
of Princeton University and Hofstra Law School - both
with honors - and a member of the N.Y. and N.J. Bars.
Christopher
Calvert
Vice President
Sibson/Segal
 Bio
to come.
Michael
Crowley
Associate General Counsel
National Futures Association
 Michael Crowley is Associate
General Counsel for the National Futures Association, the
industry wide, self-regulatory organization for the U.S. futures
industry. For 15 years, Mike has advised NFA’s benefits
committee and senior management on issues concerning retirement
and health benefits. In those years, Mr. Crowley has been an
integral part of NFA’s efforts to build a comprehensive
retirement benefits program with particular focus on aiding the
benefit committee in discharging its fiduciary responsibilities
in the operation of NFA’s retirement plan. In addition to his
work in the benefits arena, Mike heads NFA’s legal department
who license all futures professionals in the United States. He
also provides legal advice to management on a variety of other
issues, including intellectual property, privacy, insurance and
contracts.
Mike received his B.A in Political
Science from the University of Illinois and his J.D. from
Chicago Kent College of Law. Before joining NFA, he prosecuted
slumlords in the office of the Cook County, Illinois States
Attorney and represented indigent clients at the Legal
Assistance Foundation of Chicago.
David Hom
Chairman of the Board
Center for Health
Value Innovation
 David
Hom is currently chairman of the non-profit Center for Health
Value Innovation, and the former vice president of Strategic
Initiatives at Pitney Bowes in Stamford, Connecticut. Since
1992, Mr. Hom has developed a nationally recognized and
award-winning integrated health care strategy that focuses on
increased employee productivity through disease, disability and
demand-management programs. His program design and results have
been recognized with various awards including 1998 NAMI
(National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) Corporate Leadership
Award, 1997 Washington Business Group on Health Top Five
Corporate Programs for Women's Health Care Issues, and 1996 C.
Everett Koop Award for Health Care University. Mr. Hom received
his undergraduate degree in economics from the State University
of New York at Albany and his MBA degree from Hofstra
University.
David has co-authored 2 books with
Dr. Jack Mahoney, which were released in 2006 and 2007. The
first book, Total Value Total Return: Seven Rules for Optimizing
Employee Health Benefits for a Healthier and More Productive
Workforce , has been read by over 37000 professionals across the
country. His second book, BeneFIT Design- the 7 Steps to Value
Based Designs has been well received by thousand of decisions
makers. The forward was written by former CMS Director, Mark
McClellan.
He is a member of the Employer
Advisory Boards for the American Management Association and for
Compensation and Benefits Review. Mr. Hom also serves as a board
member of the Pacific Business Group on Health in San Francisco,
CA.
Mr. Hom received his undergraduate
degree in economics from the State University of New York at
Albany and his MBA degree from Hofstra University.
Dr. Ronald S. Leopold, MD, MBA, MPH
Nat’l Medical
Director, VP
MetLife
 Ronald
S. Leopold, MD, MBA, MPH, is National Medical Director
and Vice President of MetLife Employer-Sponsored
Benefits Group. He is a Board Certified Occupational
Medicine Physician who holds a Masters in Business
Administration from the Wharton School of Business, the
University of Pennsylvania and a Masters in Public
Health from Boston University.
Dr. Leopold currently
serves as industry thought leader for MetLife
Institutional Business focusing on the future of work,
health and benefits. His role includes business
strategy, sales and market support and new product
development. He is a nationally recognized industry
public speaker and provides consultation to private and
public organizations.
He is the author of A Year
in the Life of a Million American Workers, an almanac of
absence management and non-occupational disability data
that provides a comprehensive picture of one million
American workers and their health conditions, illnesses
and absence patterns over a one-year period.
James O'Sullivan
Program Manager, Global Health Benefits Operations
IBM Human
Resources On-Demand
James (Jim) G.
O’Sullivan is a Program Manager in the Health Benefits
Operations department within the HR On-Demand
organization of IBM. Jim holds a Bachelor of Science
Degree from Pace University and an MBA from Western
Connecticut State University.
Jim started with IBM in
1983 in the Real Estate Division where he held several
administrative positions. From 1992 to 1998 Jim served
in numerous roles within IBM’s Global Procurement
organization, including two assignments on the Corporate
Staff. In 1998, Jim became the Operations Manager for
the Global Well-being Services organization where he
managed the Expense, Capital and Information Technology
budget plans, business controls, and served as the Chair
of the US Worker’s Compensation Best Practices team.
In April 2003, Jim
joined the Health Benefits team with responsibility for
the Point-of-Service plan and corresponding business
relationships with Aetna, MVP Select Care and United
HealthCare. In 2004 he led the redesign of IBM’s
self-insured active medical plan options and the
competitive evaluation process to source IBM’s active,
pre-65 and post-65 self-insured medical plans. The
initiative included the installation of a High
Deductible Health Plan with Health Savings Account and
an EPO. Currently, Jim is managing the relationship with
United Health Care and the administration of Medicare
Part ‘D’ for IBM. He also represents IBM in the THINC
and Arizona HealthCare Quality Measurement Initiatives.
Joan
Smyth
Principal
Mercer Health & Benefits
 Joan
Smyth is a Principal in the New York office of Mercer
Health & Benefits and is the Sales Leader for New York
City and Long Island. Joan has over 17 years experience
in employee benefits, 13 of them with this firm, working
with mid-sized employers in the design and
implementation of benefit programs. Her focus is on
strategy, long term solutions and enhancement of overall
benefit offerings, as well as cost control.
Joan came to Mercer
from a regional brokerage firm, and was previously with
The Equitable Life (now AXA). Before joining the
industry, she had experience working in the interior
design, fashion and electronics industries, and has
first hand knowledge of the challenges facing mid-sized
companies.
She graduated from The
Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with
honors in English Literature and Language.
Julie Hanson Snyder
Analyst
Forrester
Research
 Bio
to come.
Rob J. Thurston
President
HR Consulting Group, Inc
 Since
1981 has done consulting in Human Resources, Benefits,
and Management Strategic Planning. He has give more than
200 conference presentations.
On the Board and
Chairman of the Development Committee for NAPES and also
For NAPBA, and on the Board of TS Alliance.
President of HR
Consulting Group, Inc. since 1986, from 1983-1986 was
National Vice President of Fred. S. James
Consulting--3rd largest Benefits and brokerage firm in
the world. Now owned by Marsh. Responsible for all
fee-for-service consulting for 45 offices.
Published 3 Books, 4
videos, numerous tape sets of his presentations, and
over 26 articles published.
Received designation as
an Accredited Executive in Personnel (AEP) from SHRM-
One out of only ninety so accredited by June 1983. |
