Cristina Benetti, RN

Cristina Benetti, RN, has been working at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Quebec, in the Operating Room since 2004. In 2010 she worked for 3 months on a malnutrition project with the NGO AVSI in Port au Prince, Haiti.

Cristina Benetti worked from1995 to 2003 as Head Nurse in Operating Room at the St. Raphael Hospital and Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, and from 1993 to 1995 as Head Nurse in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Civic Hospital of Udine, Italy. She started her career working from 1984 to1993 as an RN in Internal Medicine at the Civic Hospital, Cividale del Friuli, Italy.

Theo Boer, PhD

Theo Boer (Rotterdam, 1960) studied theology and ethics in Utrecht and Uppsala. From 1987-2001 he worked as a researcher at the Centre for Bio-ethics and Health Law of Utrecht University. He wrote his PhD Thesis on the Ethics of James M. Gustafson. Since 2001 he is a senior researcher of Christian Ethics at the Protestant Theological University at Utrecht and Groningen, and since 2014 he is a Professor of Health Care Ethics. From 2005-2014 Dr. Boer was a member of a Regional Review Committee for Euthanasia in the Netherlands, during which he assessed 4,000 euthanasia reports for the Dutch Government. Dr. Boer is a member of the Health Council, the most important advisory board for the Dutch Government on Health Care issues.

Catherine Chen, B.A., M.ADS, RP

Catherine Chen is a Behavior Clinician at Spokes Autism, a private organization that provides evidence-based treatment for children affected by Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other developmental disabilities. She has been working with children and young adolescents with ASD since 2012. She received an Honors Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from York University (Toronto, Ontario) in 2011 and obtained her Master’s in Applied Disabilities from Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario) in 2021. She has provided both Intensive Behavioral Intervention and Applied Behavioral Analysis services in multiple settings including clinic, home, school, and daycare settings.

Federica Fromm, DO

Federica Fromm, DO received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Classics at New York University, New York, and then attended New York College of Osteopathic Medicine where she obtained her DO degree. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn NY, practiced as an internal medicine hospitalist for two years at Phelps Memorial Hospital in Sleepy Hollow NY, and is currently a full-time Hospitalist at St Cloud Hospital in Minnesota where she has been practicing for seven years and serves on the executive leadership council for her hospitalist group. She helped found and has been on the board of the American Association of Medicine and the Person and she has been on the planning committee for the annual MedConference since its first event in 2009.

Lisa Kilgard, RN

Lisa Kilgard is a BSN prepared registered nurse at the St Cloud Hospital. She has a certification in Med/Surg nursing, public health nurse, and school nurse certifications. She loves spending time with her family and finds comfort in the simple things in life. She became a nurse because when she was 9 years old, she was a patient for over two weeks in the hospital after an accident. From then on, she knew being a nurse was what she wanted to be. With 19 years of floor nursing experience, including progressive units and working as a charge nurse, nothing could have really prepared Lisa for her last 1 1/2 years on a COVID unit. She notes that throughout this time, maneuvering through the unknown has been difficult yet rewarding.

Suzanne MacDonald, MD

Dr.Suzanne Mac Donald graduated from McGill University Medical School following a Bachelor's Degree in Physiology at the same University. She did 3 years of core pediatric residency training at McGill University/Montreal Children's Hospital followed by a 2-year fellowship in adolescent medicine and pediatric emergency medicine at the same site. She is an assistant professor of pediatrics in the discipline of adolescent medicine. She is an associate member of McGill’s University’s Institute for Health Sciences Education and the Division Educational leader(McGill Department of Pediatrics) for the division of Adolescent Medicine She spends most of her time doing clinical work and teaching.

Mark Painter, PhD

Mark graduated from The University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2014 with a B.S. in Biology, and subsequently entered the Graduate Program in Immunology at the University of Michigan. During graduate school he studied how HIV evades the immune response and establishes a persistent infection, discovering a new class of drug that could help the immune system recognize and kill HIV-infected cells. Mark completed his PhD in Immunology in November 2020 and began a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in January 2021. His postdoctoral research focuses on human immunology, and he currently co-leads a team that has published several high-profile studies on the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and infection, appearing in journals including Science Immunology, Immunity, Nature Medicine, and Science.