Speakers Bureau

Cathy Menkiena, MBA, BSN, RN-BC

Senior Vice President, Professional Services

Ms. Cathy Menkiena is a SVP, Professional Services with Health Catalyst engaging with clients to enable data driven transformation, performance improvement and cost reduction.  Cathy serves as a coach in the Health Catalyst Accelerated Practices Program focused on enabling performance improvement for a diverse network of clients. 

Cathy is board certified in nursing informatics and has more than 35 years combined experience in information systems, health care operations, administration, nursing management, consulting, and clinical expertise.  She has led progressive healthcare initiatives, strategy, systems analysis, software implementation, and enterprise wide process redesign and transformation in multi-entity settings.  Her expertise spans community hospitals, IDNs, Specialty Hospitals and Academic Medical Centers – both for profit and not-for-profit organizations. Prior to Health Catalyst, Cathy was a Vice President of Solutions Development for the Provider Business Unit of Encore, an emids Company. Prior to Encore, Cathy was an Associate Partner at IBM Global Business Services responsible for leading the Provider Health Analytics Practice. She previously served as the Vice President of Clinical Transformation responsible for strategic planning and implementation of the BayCare Electronic Medical Record (Cerner) across a nine hospital IDN.  Prior to BayCare, Cathy was an Associate Partner Healthlink/IBM with responsibility spanning Strategy/Advisory Services as well as leadership of four practices including Cerner, GE/IDX, Siemens and Eclipsys.  Additionally, Cathy has held leadership positions at Cerner Corporation and Transition Systems Inc.  Her earlier career included over 15 years at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center with successive roles as critical care nurse with CCRN advanced certification, nurse manager, Information Systems Patient Care Systems manager, member of the hospital administration team and President of MSO spanning both acute and ambulatory services areas. Ms. Menkiena has also served as adjunct faculty for the University of Buffalo MBA, Nursing Informatics, and Family Practice Residency programs. 

David Gardiner, MBA, MHA, MPH

Senior Vice President and Executive Advisor

David Gardiner joined Health Catalyst as a Senior Vice President, Professional Services after nearly 24 years’ experience at Intermountain Healthcare where he most recently served as the Chief Operating Officer for Intermountain’s Care Transformation organization.  Gardiner also led the Intermountain EHR development, implementation, and adoption/optimization strategy.  During his career, David has held executive operational leadership and improvement roles including hospital operations, clinical programs and services, quality, finance, and strategic planning. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and chemistry, a Master of Public Health, a Master of Healthcare Administration, and a Master of Business Administration

David Grauer, MBA, MHSA

Senior Vice President and Executive Advisor

David Grauer joined Health Catalyst in 2016 after 23 years in executive leadership positions at Intermountain Healthcare, a Utah-based, not-for-profit system that is widely recognized as a leader in clinical quality improvement and in efficient healthcare delivery.  Just prior to joining Health Catalyst, he served as CEO/Administrator of Intermountain Medical Center, a 502-bed hospital in suburban Salt Lake City that is both Utah’s largest hospital and the flagship of Intermountain Healthcare. Previously, he was CEO/Administrator of two other Intermountain hospitals—Cottonwood Hospital and The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital/TOSH.  He holds Master of Business Administration and Master of Health Services Administration degrees from the University of Michigan.

Jason Jones, PhD

Chief Analytics and Data Science Officer

Jason Jones is passionate about achieving the Quadruple Aim through better and easier use of data in healthcare, including helping organizations to find analytic focus; helping providers feel that the systems they work for have their backs; and helping people to understand and have their goals and preferences respected for the hopefully brief periods during which they are “patients.” Previously, Jones served as Vice President, Information Support for Care Transformation, at Kaiser Permanente (KP). In that capacity, he brought together and co-led the national Hospital and Healthplan Quality and Finance analytic functions and led development of national quality strategy and care delivery IT investments. Prior to that, he was KP’s Executive Director of Clinical Intelligence and Decision Support and a Research Scientist in KP’s Southern California region. Before joining KP, Jones was a Senior Medical Informaticist for Intermountain Healthcare. He also held analytic and marketing positions at Bayer Healthcare in Wayne, N.J., and Ingenix (now Optum) Pharmaceutical Information Products in Salt Lake City, where he developed a model for converting United Healthcare data into a saleable asset for external customers conducting outcomes research. Throughout his career, Jones has taught graduate courses in statistics to medical informaticists at the University of Southern California and at the University of Utah. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers in medicine, predictive modeling, and outcomes improvement.

Kathleen Merkley, DNP, APRN, FNP

Senior Vice President, Professional Services

Kathleen Merkley, DNP, ANP, FNP has been a nurse/clinical nurse specialist/ED nurse practitioner with Intermountain Healthcare, in Salt Lake City, Utah for over 30 years. She has an extensive clinical background in ED and has done clinical quality improvement work with the Intermountain Intensive Medicine Clinical Program. While at Intermountain she was instrumental in developing an ED EMR. She has published numerous articles related to emergency department care, informatic topics and process improvement work. She has been certified as a nurse practitioner in both adult and family medicine since 1992 and received her doctorate in nursing practice from the University of Utah in 2013.

Kathleen has worked at Health Catalyst since March of 2013, as a senior vice president in Professional Services and has led a Health Catalyst team of clinical professionals, which has focused on using analytics to drive clinical improvement work. She has worked with clinical teams in various health systems to reduce 30-day heart failure readmissions, improve the care of septic, pneumonia, and ACS patients, reduce elective inductions and NTSV C-sections and improve ED throughput. Kathy is also involved in development of the Health Catalyst content library and is on faculty at the University of Utah College of Nursing and is a board member for the Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance.

Will Caldwell, MD, MBA

Senior Vice President and Executive Advisor

Will Caldwell attended Davidson College where he prepared for a career in medicine, studying biology and working in East Africa as a wildlife manager. Dr. Caldwell completed residency training in otolaryngology – head and neck surgery at the University of Maryland Medical System and the Shock Trauma Center of Maryland, and went on to achieve triple board certification in otolaryngology, allergy and immunology, and sleep medicine. In 2013, Dr. Caldwell became a board member and medical director of Give Hope Global, a not-for-profit entity dedicated to the development of health systems focused on the use of community health workers. He also serves as Senior Medical Advisor to Zanmi Lasante, the name for Partners in Health in Haiti. His work there was documented in a film that won two Emmy Awards. Dr. Caldwell earned his MBA With Highest Honors and was named for Academic Distinction from Wake Forest University. He served as the Senior Vice President for Clinical Integration at Novant Health, building the Novant Health Clinically Integrated Network, a value-based platform comprised of over 2800 providers across 26 specialties. In his current role as Senior Vice President for Physician and Market Development at Health Catalyst, he promotes the use of data analytics to promote good health and save lives. His area of expertise rests in technology enabled health care delivery models and value-based care platforms. He continues to see patients and has received over 26 awards for clinical excellence during his 17-year career as a clinician.

Trudy Sullivan, MBA

Chief Communications and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer

Sullivan leads Communications and Diversity & Inclusion efforts as a Health Catalyst leadership team member. She holds a Masters in Business Administration from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a BA in History from the University of Portland, Oregon. Sullivan brings experience in B2B, B2C + B2G environments, from innovative high tech companies, including biomedical, semiconductor and aerospace & defense. She spent more than a decade in healthcare, including serving more than one hundred Pacific Northwest hospital customers, as CEO of an American Red Cross blood services region. Sullivan’s functional experience includes Operations Management; Human Resources; Marketing; Business Development; Strategy; M & A; Investor, Government + Community Relations; and Brand Development.