BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Peggy Gibson Carroll
Founder
Patient Advocacy Consultant
Ms. Carroll has over twenty-eight years of proven leadership experience in Life Sciences (pharmaceutical and biotech) with extensive oncology and advocacy experience. Areas of expertise include patient advocacy & strategic alliances, corporate relations, sales, project management, training and patient educational programming. Most recently Ms. Carroll joined Patient Alliances, LLC as a managing partner.
Ms. Carroll has executed numerous national oncology disease awareness campaigns including Tour of Hope, Komen Race for the Cure, Light the Night and Oral Head and Neck Cancer Awareness screening events throughout the US. She effectively trained and managed sales teams and developed a sense of oncology commitment and mission throughout the corporate headquarters and the US field based organizations. Ms. Carroll has been appointed to the National Patient Advocate Foundation Presidents Council and serves on the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School's Sales Curriculum Advisory Panel. Peggy has lived in Cary, NC most of her life and has two adult children.
Kelsie Johnson
Chair of the Board
Candidate Experience Program Manager, Wells Fargo
Kelsie is currently a Candidate Experience Program Manager at Wells Fargo. After graduating from Wake Forest University in 2004, Ms. Johnson started her career in Washington, D.C. at the Corporate Executive Board, and has been a part of Wells Fargo’s Enterprise Talent Acquisition team for the past 10 years. During this time, she has worked on numerous initiatives including early talent, digital media, and candidate experience. She currently lives in Raleigh, NC.
Ms. Johnson grew up in Rowland, North Carolina, a small town that instilled a deep sense of community and social responsibility in her at a very young age. She is very active within the Junior League of Raleigh where she has, and continues to serve, as a JLR Community Council Member, volunteering with local organizations including Heritage Park and StepUp Ministries.
Stewart Patch
Treasurer of the Board
Director of Commercial Real Estate, Dogwood State Bank
Stewart Patch is Director of Commercial Real Estate at Dogwood State Bank and manages the Raleigh branch.
Prior to Dogwood, Mr. Patch served as Vice President at Pinnacle Financial Partners (formerly BNC Bank) in Raleigh, NC, specializing in commercial real estate lending. Mr. Patch was also an analyst and assistant vice-president with Wells Fargo’s commercial real estate group, where he was responsible for new loan originations and portfolio management of a $400MM real estate loan portfolio.
Prior to his debt capital markets experience, Mr. Patch held various roles in both commercial real estate leasing, brokerage and equity investment. Stewart holds a BA in Economics from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as an MBA from UNC’s Kenan Flagler Business School.
Stewart lives in Raleigh, NC with his wife, Kristen, and two children, William and Anne Lasseter. In his spare time, he enjoys golf, saltwater fishing, duck hunting, and otherwise spending time with family and friends.
Chris Bennett
Founder & CEO, Entrepreneur’s Growth Network, LLC
Chris is the Founder & CEO of Entrepreneur’s Growth Network, LLC, an advisory business that partners with early stage healthcare companies to help scale and accelerate growth. He mentors dozens of entrepreneurs across the United States and is also an active investor with several private equity firms. As the former CEO of Medic First Aid International, Inc., Health & Safety Institute, Inc. and the Executive Chairman of Institute for Professional Care Education, LLC, Chris helped lead companies that certified more than twenty million people in CPR, first aid, emergency care, home health and caregiver training. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Triad Learning Systems, LLC and In the Know, LLC, and a director at Envisage Technologies, MicroD, LLC, and the App-Garden.
Chris holds an AB in Political Science from Duke University and an MBA from Kenan Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. He resides in Cornelius, North Carolina with his wife Julie and two children.
Martha Deiter
Retired Educator and Community Volunteer
Information coming soon!
Jill Forrest
President, Jill M. Forrest LLC and Oncology Strategies LLC
Ms. Forrest has spent her nearly 30 year professional career in the oncology pharmaceutical marketing and sales arena, most recently as Vice-President, Head of Oncology Global Marketing for Teva Pharmaceuticals. Jill has held senior leadership positions at Bristol-Myers Squibb Oncology, Pharmion Oncology, Agenus and others. She has worked in all areas of pharmaceutical commercial development from business development, early product strategic planning, launch, and life cycle management. She has been instrumental in the launch several critical oncology therapeutics. Jill recently started her own marketing consulting firm.
Jill’s passion for cancer research, drug development and survivorship started when she lost her aunt and role model to colon cancer at an early age. She channels her Aunt Marilyn in her own role as “Aunt Jill in Kansas” to 13 nieces and nephews. Jill resides in Overland Park, Kansas where she is actively involved in several non-profit boards. She is an outdoor enthusiast who enjoys her suburban farm, riding her horse, Jazzy and spending quality time with her best friend and dog, Patsy Cline!
Megan Gardner
Pharmacist, UNC Hospitals Outpatient Pharmacies and The Plaza Pharmacist
Megan is a part-time pharmacist at UNC Hospitals Outpatient Pharmacies and The Plaza Pharmacist at Duke Raleigh Hospital. As the daughter of a pharmacist, you could say the profession is in her genes. Her career in pharmacy began at the age of fifteen at Kroger Pharmacy. She continued to work for Kroger through pharmacy school at UNC-Chapel Hill and completed nearly twenty years until all Kroger stores closed in North Carolina.
Megan has lived her entire life in the Triangle area of North Carolina. As the daughter of a cancer survivor and someone who is passionate about travel/family adventures, she is excited to serve the Fill Your Bucket List Foundation. When she is not at work, she loves to spend time with her husband and daughter outdoors on walks and bike rides.
Lisa Grimes
Managing Director, Habergeon LLC and President & CEO, PurThread Technologies
Lisa is the President & CEO of PurThread Technologies, a North Carolina–based corporation which manufactures high performance antimicrobial fibers and yarns for healthcare, consumer, military and industrial markets. Lisa has a 30-year career in sales, marketing, and executive management in the healthcare industry, and is the former CEO of InSite Clinical Trials, a site management organization that was acquired by United Healthcare.
Previously, Lisa served as Vice President of Business Development for PPD. She was a member of the Executive Advisory Group of Campbell Alliance and its subsidiary, the Pharmaceutical Institute, for more than a decade. Lisa has also served as CEO of AcSentient, a specialty pharmacy company focused on ophthalmics, and Angiomics, an anti-angiogenesis company.
She serves as the Board Chair for Galen BioSciences, an all-natural nutritional beverage company. She is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Lighthouse Ministries and is a former Chairman and Board member of The Caring Community Foundation (a local cancer charity). Lisa graduated from the School of Pharmacy at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Lisa has been married to her high school sweetheart for over 32 years and has two adult sons. She and her husband are members of Apex Baptist Church.
Choots Humphries
Co-President, linkconnector
Choots is uniquely suited to thrive in a digital world, bringing a superior record of leadership, entrepreneurship and Internet marketing experience to LC. Prior to envisioning a superior performance marketing network and co-founding LC, Choots co-founded and sold DotCom Corp. He speaks at leading industry conferences, such as Affiliate Summit and AM Days, and is a council chair for the PMA. Choots is passionate about disrupting industry norms and pushing the Performance Marketing space forward. Offline, Choots enjoys family time and Tar Heel basketball.
Mary Jones
Director, Sales Management
SAS
Mary is a Director in SAS' sales management organization. She has over 31 years experience working with SAS clients across multiple industries. Most recently she has focused on developing software solutions specifically for the mid-market financial services institutions.
Tisha Powell
Co-anchor, ABC11
Tisha Powell co-anchors ABC11 Eyewitness News every weeknight at 5, 6 and 11pm with Steve Daniels. You can also find the team at 10pm on CW22. When Tisha is not on the anchor desk, she is out in the community or working on special reports for Eyewitness News.
Before coming to ABC11 in 2004, Tisha's career in TV news bought her to various places around the southeast. This Louisiana native graduated from Loyola University New Orleans where she majored in broadcast news and minored in political science. After college, Tisha worked as a reporter, producer and anchor for WCBI in Columbus, Mississippi. She soon after went back home to Louisiana. As a reporter for WDSU in New Orleans, Tisha traveled to Honduras to cover the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. She was then hired as a reporter for KABB in San Antonio where she covered the escape of the Texas Seven and the Spurs 2003 NBA Championship. Shortly after, she became the midday anchor and health reporter for News 9 San Antonio.
While here in the Triangle, Tisha traveled back to New Orleans in 2005 to cover Hurricane Katrina. She reported on the Pope's visit to Philadelphia, the Carolina Panthers trip to Super Bowl 50 and has interviewed influential people like First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey. Tisha has also jumped with the Army Golden Knights Parachute Team in Lauriburg, North Carolina.
Tisha is an Army wife and a mother of two daughters who were born on the same day 12 years apart. She's also an avid supporter of the American Heart Association, the Girl Scouts and the USO of North Carolina.
Tisha is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and the Triangle Park Chapter of the Links, Inc.
Ann Steagall
BSN, RN, OCN
Director, Clinical Policy, McKesson Specialty Health
Ann graduated from nursing school in 1983 and began her career at UNC – Chapel Hill as a staff nurse. In 1987 she became the first oncology clinical trials nurse at UNC and remained a research coordinator for more than 10 years. During this time she was fortunate enough to work in all areas of oncology.
She spent 5 years in breast cancer assisting in the formation of the UNC Multidisciplinary Breast Center and in 1994 focused solely on thoracic oncology. In 1995 Ann started the multidisciplinary thoracic oncology program at UNC-CH with Drs. Detterbeck, Rivera, Rosenman and Socinski. She has consulted nationally and published on implementing and maintaining a multidisciplinary oncology program. She has been active in many professional oncology organizations. She has presented at national conferences and on multiple speaker bureaus throughout her career.
In 2009 Ann retired from UNC and joined Biologics, Inc., an independent oncology focused specialty pharmacy as the director of clinical operations. Ann led a team of oncology case managers who supported a payor driven program. The program attached oncology case manager to members of self-funded employers.
In 2014 she became the Director of Clinical Policy for the entire organization. In this role Ann drives excellence in patient care by developing and implementing programs and policies that support Biologics’ patients. In 2016 Biologics became part of McKesson specialty health. After the integration Ann also leads the clinical policy efforts not only in Cary, NC but also for the patient assistance program pharmacy in Fort Worth, TX. Ann also chairs the clinical oversight committee at Biologics and is a member of the oncology board of advisors.