Stephen Edge, MD, is the Vice President of Healthcare Outcomes and Policy; and Professor of Oncology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY. Founded in 1898 as the nation’s first cancer center, Roswell Park set the standard for today’s multidisciplinary approach to the highest quality cancer care. Dr. Edge trained at Case Western Reserve University and the National Cancer Institute. Prior to his current position, Dr. Edge served as the Cancer Center Director at Baptist Cancer Center in Memphis, TN. Until July 2013, Dr. Edge served for 21 years as Chief of Breast Surgery and the Alfiero Foundation Endowed Chair in Breast Oncology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY. He is the immediate past Chair of the Commission on Cancer and the American Joint Committee on Cancer. His research focuses on community wide quality of cancer care across the continuum of care.

Lisa Simms Booth serves as Executive Director at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, a Washington, DC based health, education and arts nonprofit with the mission to develop and promote healing practices that explore physical, emotional and mental resources that lead to life-affirming changes for people affected by cancer.

Most recently, Lisa served as Senior Director of Patient and Public Engagement at the Biden Cancer Initiative, where she helped define the organization’s advocacy outreach and collaboration strategies. She also led the design and coordination of the Biden Cancer Collaborative, which mobilized the cancer patient and advocacy community around key priorities, promoting, and sharing tried and tested approaches to addressing common problems.

Prior to joining the Initiative, she was at FasterCures, a center of the Milken Institute, playing leadership roles in partnership development, external affairs and operations. Throughout her 14-year tenure at FasterCures, she created programs that brought together pharmaceutical, biotech, philanthropic, and non-profit communities.

Previously, Lisa worked for political and advocacy organizations including LISTEN, Inc., The Alliance for Justice, Time Dollar Institute, Children’s Defense Fund, Democratic National Committee and the National Rainbow Coalition. She is a Pittsburgh native and graduate of Michigan State University. She is active in the music ministry and community outreach efforts for her church, Metropolitan AME, which recently celebrated its 181st Anniversary.

Jeff Belkora, PhD, is an Adjunct Professor, Patient Support Corps, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). His professional mission is to help people grow in their capacity for leadership, teamwork, and decision-making. To this end, Dr. Belkora develops, implements, and evaluates patient engagement programs in health care. His programs have been implemented and evaluated in academic and community settings in the United States and the UK. He is the author of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and case studies on patient decision making. Dr. Belkora also disseminates his work internationally through speaking, training, and consulting engagements. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty, Dr. Belkora was a co-founder of Outcome Software, a decision analysis software company. Dr. Belkora earned a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University. His graduate training at Stanford University included an M.Sc. in Statistics and culminated with a Ph.D in Engineering.

Lauren Barnes is Head of Global Commercial at Blueprint, a Sanofi Company, a commercial stage Boston based precision medicine company focusing on genomically defined cancers, rare diseases and cancer immunotherapy. Ms. Barnes has extensive expertise and experience in pricing, market access, pre-commercialization and managed markets in particular for the US market. She has been involved in launch planning of more than 50 drugs, devices and diagnostics during her career. Prior to her current role Lauren was Vice President at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, SVP Avalere Health and led their Reimbursement & Commercialization practice and has also held various roles at Amgen and the agency that runs the United States Medicare Program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Ms. Barnes has a BA in Public Health and an MHS in Health Care Policy from Johns Hopkins University. She serves on the board of Ascelia, a Swedish biotech company, as well as Ossium Health, a US biotech company, both of which are developing innovative cancer treatments.

Jeff Allen, Ph.D. serves as the President and CEO of Friends of Cancer Research (Friends). During the past 20 years, Friends has been instrumental in the creation and implementation of policies ensuring patients receive the best treatments in the fastest and safest way possible. As a thought leader on many issues related to Food and Drug Administration, regulatory strategy and healthcare policy, he is regularly published in prestigious medical journals and policy publications, and has contributed his expertise to the legislative process on multiple occasions. Recent Friends initiatives include the establishment of the Breakthrough Therapies designation and the development of the Lung Cancer Master Protocol, a unique partnership that will accelerate and optimize clinical trial conduct for new drugs. Dr. Allen received his Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from Georgetown University, and holds a Bachelors of Science in Biology from Bowling Green State University.