Sarah Sample-Reif

President

Sarah is currently Chief Strategy Officer of Healthcare for Zivaro. The highlights of her career include 10+ years at Cerner managing implementations across multiple clients. The following decade, she spent building and growing Health IT divisions of $1B publicly traded staffing and consulting firms, across North America, and then as a healthcare overlay at NetApp.

Throughout her career, Sarah has repeatedly driven herself and the teams she works with to exceed high revenue quotas by leading with strategic initiatives within the healthcare market.  The focus of her team is to bridge the gap between project requirements and deadlines by helping clients purposefully find the best platform for long term patient care.

Sarah is currently Past President for the Colorado Chapter of HIMSS. If you are interested in learning more about participating in the chapter, please feel to reach out.

MariJo Rugh

President Elect

MariJo Rugh is VP and CIO of UCHealth Affiliates. With over 25 years of healthcare IT leadership and management experience in academic, pediatric and community based health systems, MariJo has led multiple complex system implementations and is well versed in application portfolio management, integration of IT systems, clinical engineering, interoperability and virtual health delivery. MariJo is currently responsible for the Epic Community Connect program, the Project Management Office, Enterprise Resource Management, Integration and Interoperability and EHR Archive at UCHealth. MariJo has a Masters of Science in Medical Informatics from Northwestern University and a Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO) designation from College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).

Past President

Bonny Roberts

Secretary

Bonny Roberts oversees customer/partner acquisition for Opsis Health, a fast, accurate and continuous nutrition assessment company. Beginning her career as Yale New Haven Hospital's Administrative Fellow, she entered the Colorado's startup world with the Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) where she was a product manager innovating healthcare ecommerce supply chain. Next Bonny facilitated clinician-driven IT project prioritization, custom app development and Epic implementations at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. In 2010, she returned to Colorado to join Aventura where she drove implementation, customer support, acct mgmt, and, for a time, sales operations, and marketing. After Aventura, she led customer experience for Diameter Health, an intelligent clinical data refinement solution in the interoperability space. More recently she was the Director of IT Portfolio & Relationship Mgmt for the business side of Centura Health. She lives in Superior where she can be found hiking with her dog and family.

Jami Craig

Treasurer

Jami has spent 18 years working in Health IT on both the vendor side (Cerner, Allscripts, Nuance) as well as the provider side (Dignity & CHI). She is passionate about the industry and wants to do her part to move the needle.

Carolyn Singer

Sponsorship Chair

Carolyn Singer is a Healthcare Solutions Advisor for Sirius Computer Solutions. She provides direct sales and leadership management for direct IT solutions.  Her ability to engage, retain and develop C level relationships combined with a consultative sales style has fueled her success. Expertise in strategic, solution selling and Challenger Sales methodologies at the corporate and enterprise level as well as healthcare knowledge have made her excel in this field.

Carolyn has extensive knowledge within the hospital setting and specifically clinical and medical imaging-specific workflow, EMR workflow, and communication capabilities.  Carolyn has a solid background in strategic planning, as a key contributor to successful business, product, and technology approaches. Comprehensive business/product vision and strategy aligned with long-term corporate objectives and defined market needs. She can create and coordinate commercialization, marketing, and sales programs that integrate market vision and development objectives.  Carolyn has assisted very large customers integrating multiple third-party systems; and enabling customers to have full access to patient healthcare records throughout their enterprise and at the point of care.

With over 30 years of experience, Carolyn’s industry knowledge stems from leading companies such as Sirius Healthcare, Iron Mountain, Fuji Medical, Hologic, and Phillips Medical Systems. Carolyn earned her Business Administration/Accounting degrees from Duquesne University, while earning a 4-year full basketball scholarship.

Breanna Wong

Programs Chair

Breanna Wong is Sr. Manager of the Product Strategy team for Nuance Communications’ Dragon Ambient eXperience. Passionate about empowering others, she serves as a course developer and adjunct faculty and on the boards of Colorado Medical Group Management Association, Colorado Health Administration Alumni Association, and the Cornell Club of Colorado. Breanna has performed HIPAA, reimbursement, and financial consulting, and run special projects and the affiliate IT program for a large healthcare system. She achieved her MBA - Healthcare Administration and MS in Finance from The University of Colorado and triple majored at Cornell University. Ask her about 14ers, traveling, volleyball, and current home improvement projects at your own discretion.

Brian Levy, MD

Advocacy Chair

Dr. Levy is an executive Healthcare Physician with deep expertise in creating software and content. He is passionate about improving the delivery of healthcare for patients, improving their outcomes, and achieving semantic interoperability of their records. He currently serves as Lead Physician Executive for Oracle Cerner focusing on Federal interoperability initiatives including the VA/DoD project. He was formally an invited member on the HIMSS HIE and Interoperability and Physician Committees. Dr. Levy continues to practice medicine as well using use the latest Telehealth technology in delivering everyday patient care.

Jon Lowe, MS, RN-BC

Informatics Chair

Jon Lowe, MS, RN-BC has served as a Clinical Informaticist at Centura Health since 2015. He is board certified by the American Nurses Credentialing Center in Nursing Informatics and maintains multiple EHR vendor certifications in support of this role. With over a decade of direct care experience, Jon’s approach to informatics and technology is steadfastly human-centered.

In 2022, Jon joined the Colorado HIMSS Board of Directors as the Informatics Chair and was delighted to support the CU Anschutz College of Nursing (his clinical alma mater) as an adjunct informatics instructor. He is also a regular member of the HIMSS Informatics Networking and Education Task Force, where he enjoys collaborating with nurse informaticists across the globe. His B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee is a foundation for his curious approach to the sociotechnical landscape.

Natalie Tishkowski

Academics Chair

Natalie Tishkowski is a Healthcare Client Manager at World Wide Technology.  Natalie previously served 2 years on the Colorado HIMSS board as Membership Chair and absolutely loves the Colorado HIMSS community.   She has spent over 15 years in healthcare technology for industry leaders such as GE Healthcare and FujiFilm Medical Systems and in information technology at AT&T, Verizon, NetApp and Nutanix.  She is passionate about helping organizations provide better patient care through the use of technology.  She has a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of Oklahoma.  In her free time she enjoys spending time with her husband, watching her son’s theater productions and her daughter’s soccer games.

Kunle "K.O" Obafemi

Membership Chair

Kunle is currently a Sr. Solutions Consultant for Luma Health. He has over 15 years of experience in Healthcare IT both on the vendor and provider side.  His career started as a PACS Administrator for Community Health Systems in Wisconsin and grew over 6 years to managing the health network’s technology infrastructure (14 locations over 70 miles).

Since leaving CHN in 2011, he's worked for Aventura, Nutanix and now Luma Health, selling and supporting solutions to help his Healthcare customers improve processes and enabling them to provide better healthcare to their customers. 

Rich Morris

Outreach & Collaboration Chair

15+ years in healthcare ranging from strategic planning, healthcare facility development, telemedicine, physician relations to today where I focus on digital transformation for healthcare providers and payers to control costs and drive better outcomes through improved engagement and patient experience. I am the past President of the Colorado Association of Healthcare Executives. I live in Denver, went to Vanderbilt for undergrad and SMU for my MBA. I have three kids, a patient wife, and two rotten dogs.

Minal Patel

Communications Chair

Minal is a healthcare IT leader with over 25 years of experience in healthcare organizations, management consulting and software start-up arenas within the provider and payer sectors. Minal has a strong focus on strategic and operational innovations to improve the overall health of our community. Minal serves as the Director of Affiliate Services for University of Colorado Health. Prior to UCHealth, Minal served as an Executive Leadership Advisor for Bluetree Network, IT Director at Centura Health and held various roles at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Minal has experience in operational and project management, program direction as well as IT strategy and planning. Minal holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Florida and a Master of Public Health (focused in Healthcare Management) from Emory University. In her spare time Minal enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, hiking, biking, running, basically anything outdoors and cooking.

Patrick J. Guffey, MD

Physician Member at Large

Patrick is a pediatric anesthesiologist at the University of Colorado and the Associate Clinical Director of the anesthesiology department at Children’s Hospital Colorado. He is the IT clinical champion for perioperative services and serves on numerous other IT committees at Children’s Colorado. Patrick’s research work centers on using clinical IT and the EMR to further healthcare quality and patient safety, and he has written many articles, abstracts, and lectures on the subject. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a BSE in Chemical Engineering and an MD. He fulfilled his residency in Anesthesiology at the University of California, San Francisco and his fellowship training was performed in pediatric anesthesiology at the University of Colorado. 

Sanjeev Sah

Member at Large

Sanjeev leads the Information Security Office and the Cyber Plan at Centura. Sanjeev is responsible for executing on the Cyber Plan to (1) sustain, enable and transform business and clinical capabilities (2) protect people, data and technology assets (3) provide assurance for disaster recovery and business continuity, and (4) comply with legal, regulatory and industry standards. Additionally, Sanjeev leads the IT & Cyber due diligence related to Mergers, Acquisitions and Affiliations.

With over twenty-four years of strategy, operations, technology and information security experience, Sanjeev joined Centura in November 2020. Sanjeev is passionate about extending, elevating, and enhancing the whole person care by transforming capabilities through technology and cyber innovation. Sanjeev previously served as Chief Information Security Officer at Medical University of South Carolina, Texas Children’s Hospital, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Amedisys Home Health & Hospice, and as the Head of Technology at Unum Group and Chief Technology Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana.

Sanjeev received a Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems Security from the University of Phoenix and completed the CIO programs at Educause and Deloitte. Sanjeev serves on the Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council (HSCC) Cybersecurity Working Group (CWG) Executive Committee, HIMSS Colorado Board of Directors, and a member of American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and a member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

Steve Bell

Member at Large

Steve has been on the CO HIMSS chapter board for 8 years serving in positions of Sponsor Chair and Member Chair.  Steve have been serving Healthcare for 13 years and in the technology industry for close to 30 years.  Steve currently is the National Sales Director at SentinelOne, which is a market leading end point security company serving healthcare and all public sector accounts.