Carl J Flatley, DDS, MSD
Founder & Chairman, the Sepsis Alliance
After graduating from the dental program at St. Louis University, Dr. Flatley joined the US Navy where his service included a voluntary tour in Vietnam. Returning to the practice of general dentistry, he soon chose to specialize in endodontics and, for more than 20 years, headed a successful four-doctor practice in Clearwater, Florida.
A devoted family man, Dr. Flatley’s world turned upside down when his 23 year old daughter Erin, a perfectly healthy graduate student, entered a hospital for elective surgery, 5 days later she was gone; a victim of Sepsis.
Since that time, Dr. Flatley has made Sepsis awareness, early detection and effective management his personal mission and professional pursuit. He has invested nearly 5 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in seeding efforts which now come together in the Sepsis Alliance.
His many efforts have included the establishment of the Erin Kay Flatley Chair for Sepsis Education and Infection Control at St. Petersburg College, initiation of the Endowment for Sepsis Awareness and Education at the University of South Florida and the Internet-based, Advanced Technical Certification Program in Sepsis Awareness and Education. A knowledgeable and moving speaker, Dr. Flatley has addressed groups including the national gathering of Eli Lilly’s Acute Care Division, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign in Michigan, the Nursing Association of Georgia and has twice made presentations to Women in Government.
Jim Barrett
Jim Barrett has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce since 1976. He also serves as President of Michigan Chamber Services, Inc., which provides seminars, publications and insurance services for the business community, and as President of the Michigan Chamber Foundation.
The Michigan Chamber has built a reputation for being an active organization involved in important economic, political and social issues of the state. The Michigan Chamber has been cited in numerous surveys as the state’s leading public policy lobbying organization. In 2003, the Michigan Political History Society selected Mr. Barrett as the top Association Leader in Michigan over the last 50 years. Current affiliations include:
Member and Past Chairman:
Chamber of Commerce Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Council of State Chambers of Commerce
American Chamber of Commerce Executives
Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Ingham Regional Medical Center
Trustee, Ingham Regional Healthcare Foundation
Director and Secretary, McLaren Health Care Corporation
Director, Michigan Virtual University
Member, Steering Committee, Michigan Prayer Breakfast
Member and Past President, Rotary Club of Lansing
Art Caston
Art Caston is widely recognized as a pioneer and thought leader in the field of Enterprise Architecture. A leading international consultant, author, and speaker on the strategic use of information technologies, his experience in the formative years of the IT industry culminated in the international best seller Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology that he co-authored in 1992 with Don Tapscott.
In 1993, Mr. Caston formed A.T. Caston Consulting to focus on advising major private and public sector enterprises on achieving I.T.-enabled business transformation. He has built his consulting practice around the use of enterprise architecture methodologies to guide executives, planners, business architects, and other consultants through the challenges and complexities of enterprise transformation. He formed Proact Business Transformation Inc in 1998 to “package” this experience in the form of the Proact Business Transformation Toolkit®.
Mr. Caston has worked with a number of diverse national and multi-national enterprises to apply Enterprise Architecture to many different types of transformational outcomes. These include defining marketing repositioning strategies, creating new enterprise visions, developing enterprise policies, identifying partnership and alliance opportunities, streamlining service delivery, restructuring organizational accountabilities, achieving major cost reductions and uncovering reuse opportunities for systems development. Clients have included Safeway, Motorola, Best Buy, the US Department of Defense and the Government of Canada.
Dr. Carl M. Kuttler, Jr.
Dr. Kuttler has been president of St. Petersburg College, formerly St. Petersburg Junior College, since 1978. Kuttler led St. Petersburg College into a new era as a four-year school offering baccalaureate degrees, the first community college in Florida to be given such a privilege. SPC now offers more than 20 bachelor’s degrees. Among these, Dr. Kuttler established a Health Education Campus that now serves 2000 students enrolled in both two-year and four-year programs. St. Petersburg College's nursing program is one of the largest in the United States. Recent additions include a College of Pharmacy and Dental School.
Dr. Kuttler’s presidency is perhaps best known for the successful business partnerships he has formed. Most recently they include a $32-million, high-tech facility offering economic, workforce and community development through facilitated collaboration, joint-use libraries for city residents, faculty and students. Collaborations in support of fine and performance art have made SPC the hub of those professional communities.
Over the years Kuttler has received numerous honors and awards acknowledging his leadership in education. He has also been inducted into the Tampa Bay Business Hall of Fame and received the prestigious Liberty Bell Award from the American Bar Association. Russian President Putin of invited him to participate in an International Law panel (including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac). Kuttler was later named Honorary Consul to the Russian Federation. Recently, he was honored by the President of Guatemala for his work to eliminate gang-related crime in that country.
Largely as a product of Dr. Kuttler’s personal perspective and commitment, SPC developed a required Applied Ethics course, which has been successfully completed by more than 75,000 students.
Mark Lambert
Founding President & CEO, the Sepsis Alliance
Mark Lambert is a start-up and turn-around specialist who has, for more than 20 years, lead companies and 501(c)(3) organizations in media, education and science. With a particular focus on transformational teaching technologies and “life-long learning”, he has provided strategic planning services to entities such as IBM, the National PTA and the Graduate School of Education at UCLA.
Mr. Lambert was the Founding President of Positive Communications, Inc. where, working one-on-one with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (author of The Power of Positive Thinking), Mr. Lambert and his team developed, funded, produced, installed and evaluated life-skills programming implemented through statewide Systems of Education.
Lambert later founded two recreational “life-style” businesses and, for 10 years, worked with Big Picture Investors, LLC in the “angel investment” arena. Since the mid ‘80s, he has explored the leading edge of new technologies offering self-improvement, motivation and inspiration in home video, spoken word audio and interactive digital programming. He is the originator of “Narrowcast Networking” (1989 Kellogg Foundation White Paper). Lambert has successfully financed this form of collaborative communication through private investment, corporate sponsorship, philanthropic giving and the support of government.
Mr. Lambert began his career as an actor/singer on television, film and the Broadway Stage; performing in both the Academy Award-winning “Best Picture,” Bob Fosse’s, CABARET and in the Tony Award-winning “Best Musical,” A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, for Harold Prince and Steven Sondheim. He was also a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Publicist’s Guild.
Ambassador Richard N. Swett, FAIA
Ambassador Swett served as US Ambassador to Denmark from 1998 through 2001. Twice elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, he served on the Committees on Public Works and Transportation; Science, Space and Technology; the U.S. Congressional Delegation for Relations with the European Parliament and the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. He also introduced legislation to encourage energy conservation and use of renewable energy, which were included in the Energy Policy Act of 1992.
A licensed architect with experience in designing and managing high-rise mixed-use projects, Ambassador Swett’s worldwide business activities encompass architectural design, project management, corporate management, project development and finance. Areas of professional activity have included real estate, alternative energy development and production, energy conservation, industrial development and international export promotion.
He also has worked with U.S. government organizations such as USAID and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. He is an active Senior Counselor with APCO Worldwide, a public affairs and strategic communications firm with 23 offices worldwide offering integrated services with “local experience and global perspective”.
Swett’s primary commitment is as Managing Principal of the Washington, D.C. office of Leo A Daly, the eighth largest architectural design firm in the world. Working around the globe, he is redefining the profession by providing leadership of societal development through design.
A prolific writer, Ambassador Swett is the author of the just released book, Leadership by Design: Creating an Architecture of Trust and contributing author to A Nation Reconstructed.
Kevin J. Tracey
Kevin J. Tracey, MD, who is a neurosurgeon by training, is Director and Chief Executive Officer of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, in Manhasset, NY. He is also Professor and President of the North Shore-LIJ Graduate School of Molecular Medicine, an independently chartered Ph.D. granting institution. Dr. Tracey received his medical degree from Boston University in 1983 and completed his clinical training in neurosurgery at The New York Hospital in 1992. Dr. Tracey has published more than 225 research papers in the fields of immunology and neuroscience. The Institute for Scientific Information named him as “Highly Cited Researcher in Immunology,” placing him in the top 0.5% of all publishing scientists.
Dr. Tracey’s honors include election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2001, and recipient of lectureships from The Karolinska Institute, Harvard University, Washington University, University of Texas Southwestern, the University of Pittsburgh, and others. Dr. Tracey is Editor in Chief of Molecular Medicine, and Advisory Editor of The Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Dr. Tracey is a leader in immunology and neuroscience. While others studied how the immune system affects the nervous system, Tracey and his colleagues reasoned that nerves provide information that directly controls the development of an immune response. This work revealed that the vagus nerve, which has been termed the most important nerve in the body because it controls heart rate, digestion and other essential functions, regulates how the immune system responds to threat. The vagus nerve turns off the production of molecules (“cytokines”) in the immune system which cause “cytokine storm,” the process that causes tissue damage in diseases as varied as infection, arthritis, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and other inflammatory diseases. This new understanding of how the brain can influence health and disease, termed the “inflammatory reflex,” offers new insight into mind and health.
These highly cited observations have significantly expanded knowledge of neurological function and immunology, opened new avenues for scientific study being pursued by many others, and led to new experimental strategies for treatment of diseases.
His critically acclaimed book, Fatal Sequence: The Killer Within, published by the Dana Press in 2005, recounts the hospital course of young patient that changed his life, and a series of remarkable events that shaped his research.
Mark L. Weinstein
Mark L. Weinstein is a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer who has been in practice since 1979. Mr. Weinstein attended the Maxwell School of Public Citizenship (now know as the Maxwell School of Public Affairs) at Syracuse University where he attained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He then attended Tulane University School of Law and after graduation entered into private practice in Miami, Florida. Born in West Hartford Connecticut he now resides with his wife and two children in Wellington, Florida.
Mr. Weinstein currently sits on the Board of the Wellington Boys and Girls Club, is a member of the Professionalism Committee of the Dade County Bar Association and sits on the governing board for Temple Beth Torah.
Sepsis Alliance Staff & Counsel
Robert Glen Bryson
Chief Financial Officer, the Sepsis Alliance
CFO Glen Bryson holds a Bachelors Degree in Physical and Health Education from Queen’s University, Canada, and a Master of Business Administration from Nova Southeastern University in Florida. Glen has a combined 29 years of direct non-profit experience as a Program Director, Director of Operations, Executive Director, and, for the past 6 years, CFO. He is the current CFO of the Significance Foundation. Glen’s work experience includes multi-year assignments in Latin America, Europe, Canada, and the United States, which have provided him with unique opportunities to embrace a wide variety of cultures and to find creative and innovative ways to match resources and needs.
Jo Ann Platt
Chief Operating Officer, the Sepsis Alliance
Ms. Platt has a record of start-up successes with high-tech companies and in the “web-based community” space. As one of the earliest employees at InterVU, Ms. Platt facilitated a developmental arc that resulted in the company’s successful IPO and later resulted in acquisition by Akamai Technologies for $2.8 Billion.
After successfully exiting InterVU, she joined the early development effort at CollegeClub.com. During her tenure, the entity raised over $85 Million in private equity, acquired three competitors and grew its membership by more than 2000% to become on of the largest communities on the web. While with Verance Technologies, Ms. Platt developed expertise in digital rights management, broadcast monitoring and statistically based reporting methodologies.
Educated in both accounting and marketing, Ms. Platt’s eclectic skill set ranges from customer-driven product design to real estate; from “Road-show/Fund-raising” packaging to operational systems design and daily management of both for-profit and 501(C)(3) organizations.
David M. “Mike” Repass
Of Counsel, the Sepsis Alliance
Mr. Repass was admitted to bar, 1970, Florida; 1972, District of Columbia; 1972 United States District Court for the District of Columbia; 1972, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia; 1975, United States Tax Court; 1976, United States Supreme Court; 1986, United States Claims Court.
Repass earned degrees from Stetson University (B.A. 1967); Stetson University College of Law (J.D., 1970) and The George Washington University National Law Center.
While with the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Repass was the initial draftsman of the private foundation regulations under Code sections 4940, 4942, and 4948. In the Office of Tax Legislative Counsel, Mr. Repass was the reviewer for all of the proposed and final regulations relating to private foundations and charitable contributions under the Tax Reform Act of 1969 from June 1972 through June 1974. In private practice, Mr. Repass has devoted most of his professional time to addressing issues and solving problems related to charitable contributions, private foundation excise taxes, exemption and compliance matters for a variety of tax-exempt organizations, and unrelated business income taxes.
In addition, Mr. Repass has recognized expertise in a range of issues not limited to tax-exempt organizations, including the deductibility of interest and travel and entertainment expenses, the like-kind exchange rules, income taxation of trusts, and estates, etc.
