I am a strategist and innovator. For more than four decades have been trusted counsel to leaders in government, business and nonprofit sectors globally.

As a School Psychologist, I developed ways to provide quality education for children with special needs in an era when they had no right to public school education. These became the basis for Individual Education Plans (IEPs) when those legal rights were established. 

As an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, I was responsible for policy for a $70 billion portfolio of health programs. For Merck&Co., Inc., I created global policy operations and later, as global vice-president of Merck’s Vaccine Business, expanded US operations to create a global business, tripling vaccine sales to more than a $1 billion in under three years. 

As Founder and CEO of Strategic Health Policy International, Inc., I solved solved tough health care problems, becoming known as a “one-woman think tank” with a talent for “organizing chaos” and solving complex problems.  

The NetworkSage: Realize Your Network Superpower, is the most recent of my innovations. It describes a new way to lessen the overwhelm of modern life, address work-life balance, performance, productivity, family care-giving, and independent aging, by understanding and engaging the eight networks that support adult life. 

As Co-Founder of The CogentSage Group, LLC, a digital health company, I am applying NetworkSage insights to a variety of use cases. One helps parents whose children have serious chronic conditions that require vigilance to engage others to protect children when parents are not present to do so. I also coach seniors and adult children helping them age in place to avoid expensive seniorcare options. 

I've served on corporate and non-profit Boards, including American Biogenetic Sciences, Inc., the David A. Winston Health Policy Fellowship, and Beyond Celiac. I was founding Vice-Chair of the Partnership for Prevention, Chairman of the National Commission on Rare Diseases, and a member of the National Council of the Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative, and the Institute of Medicine Committee to advise the Department of Defense on bioterrorism/biowarfare countermeasures. 

I was recognized as a Disruptive Woman in Health Care and a 2017 Disruptive Woman to Watch, received the Congressional Exemplary Service Award for Orphan Products Development and the highest award in public health, the Surgeon General’s Medallion from C. Everett Koop. My most recent was the Marie Curie Award was from the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association.

I live in Philadelphia where the Quaker influence resonates with my Midwestern upbringing. I am a mu shin Zen artist, donating my works to support children’s special needs.  

A Hoosier native, Indiana University is my alma mater. I've authored six books and remain connected to academia as a Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Neuroscience and Society, and a Fellow of the Drexel University Center for Population Health and Community Involvement. 

My next book, The SeniorSage: Building Networks to Support Today's Longevity Pioneers, will be available in late 2022.