Speakers

Jim Corum, MBA

Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer

Diana Health

Jim Corum is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Diana Health. He founded Diana Health to offer an innovative, health delivery model that improves patient outcomes, lowers cost, and enhances the patient experience in a segment that needs change.

Prior to Diana Health, Corum served as the lead business development officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). Prior to VUMC, he held various roles in health care industry segments, including ambulatory surgery, physician practice acquisition and integration consulting; patient satisfaction, and managed care where he serviced in both business development and operational leadership capacities.

Corum has a Bachelor of Arts from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky and a Master of Business Administration from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Patrick Jordan, MBA

CEO and Director

Mycovia Pharmaceuticals

Patrick Jordan is a pharmaceutical and private equity leader with a passion for advancing health care solutions and creating value in partnerships.

He is CEO and Director of Mycovia Pharmaceuticals which is developing a drug for women’s health. Jordan holds MBA and BA degrees from Duke University.

David Ridley, PhD

Faculty Director

Duke Health Sector Management

David Ridley, PhD is the Dr. and Mrs. Frank A. Riddick Professor of the Practice of Business. He is also the Faculty Director of Duke’s Health Sector Management. Ridley teaches in the daytime MBA, executive MBA, and Health Analytics programs. He received a PhD in economics from Duke University in 2001.

In his research, Ridley examines innovation and pricing in health care. To encourage development of new treatments for neglected diseases, Ridley (with Jeff Moe and Henry Grabowski) proposed the priority review voucher program which became law in the United States in 2007. Total voucher sales have exceeded one billion dollars. Ridley’s research appears in economics journals (Journal of Public Economics), medical journals (Journal of the American Medical Association), and scientific journals (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery).

Megann Vaughn Watters, MBA

Vice President of New Ventures & Strategic Alliances

LabCorp

Megann Vaughn Watters is an experienced corporate development executive and investor with over 10 years of novel technology identification, partnership development, deal execution, alliance management, financial and strategic return, and venture-backed board experience within the health care industry.

As the Vice President of New Ventures & Strategic Alliances at Labcorp, she manages the Labcorp Venture Fund and leads the Corporate Development team tasked to identify, assess, and bring innovative science and technology to Labcorp through partnerships, such as equity investments, licensing, and strategic partnership opportunities.

Vaughn Watters previously held positions at the United States Patent and Trademark Office as a Patent Examiner for medical devices and Humacyte conducting tissue engineering research.
Vaughn Watters received her MBA from the Duke University Fuqua School of Business and her BSE in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University Pratt School of Engineering.

Charlene Wong, MD, MSHP

Assistant Secretary for Children and Families

NCDHHS

Charlene Wong serves as the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. She is a practicing primary care pediatrician, specializing in adolescent and young adult medicine.
She also serves as the Executive Director of North Carolina Integrated Care for Kids (NC InCK), an innovative model serving Medicaid-insured children in central North Carolina that aims to meet children’s health, social and educational needs.
Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as the Chief Health Policy Officer for COVID-19 at NCDHHS.

Wong received her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain scholar and her MD degree at Emory University as a Robert Woodruff Memorial scholar. She completed her pediatrics residency at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital. Prior to joining Duke, she was at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for adolescent medicine and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Fellowships.