Moderator: Cliff Cramer, Director, Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program and Adjunct Professor, Columbia Business School

Mr. Cramer spent over 25 years as a senior professional in the financial services and healthcare/ pharmaceutical sectors.  He was Managing Director at Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan in their global healthcare investment banking groups, and Vice President, Corporate Planning & Development at Merck & Co., Inc., with worldwide responsibilities for strategic planning and business development.

Mr. Cramer’s previous experiences also include the co-founding of American Health Capital / VHA Enterprises, Inc., a healthcare/ financial services firm serving the capital needs of multi-hospital systems and other healthcare providers, and investment banking positions with Paine Webber, Inc. and L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin, Inc.

Mr. Cramer is currently Director of the Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Graduate School of Business.  He teaches two courses in the spring semester: Strategy and Competition in Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology, and Healthcare Investment and Dealmaking.

Moderator: Linda V. Green
Armand G. Erpf Professor, Columbia Business School

Linda V. Green is the Armand G. Erpf Professor at Columbia Business School. She earned her doctorate in Operations Research from Yale University. Her research, which has focused on the development and application of mathematical models of service systems, has resulted in dozens of publications in the major technical journals including Operations Research, Management Science, and The Journal of Applied Probability as well as prominent healthcare journals such as Health Services Research, Inquiry and Academic Emergency Medicine. Her early work led to the development of a model for the dispatching and allocation of emergency vehicles which became the foundation for a patrol car allocation model that is used by many major cities in the U.S. as well as several other countries. Her current research is on identifying operational policies to improve the delivery of healthcare. Specific projects focus on improving emergency responsiveness, developing strategies for the efficient and effective use of major diagnostic equipment such as MRIs, providing timely access to primary care, and the development of a new nurse staffing methodology. She is a co-founder and co-director of the Columbia Alliance for Healthcare Management, a unique partnership of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health and the Business School of Columbia University dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary research and education in healthcare management. She has been a consultant for both private and public sector organizations and has served on several advisory boards. She has served in many administrative positions at both Columbia and in the major professional societies and is currently the Department Editor for Public Sector Applications for the journal Management Science. In recognition of her professional achievements, Professor Green was elected a Fellow of INFORMS, the premier international professional society for operations research and management science.

Officers of the HCIA are first- and second-year MBA students pursuing careers in the healthcare industry.