Walls Appointed MGB Chief Operating Officer

Ron Walls, MD, executive vice president and chief operating officer at the Brigham, has been named chief operating officer at Mass General Brigham, effective Oct. 1, 2020. Shelly Anderson, MPM, will succeed Walls as executive vice president and chief operating officer at the Brigham at the time of his transition.

In his new role, Walls will oversee and facilitate collaboration across clinical departments, specialty hospital service line development and oversee operations and active asset management across our system. He will work to optimize and standardize inpatient and ambulatory operations to enable a better patient experience via operational improvements in access and navigation, and oversee improvements in pharmacy operations and strategy.

As EVP and COO at the Brigham, Walls has been responsible for the Brigham’s day-to-day operations and, along with Brigham President Betsy Nabel, MD, guided both short-and long-term strategy to position the system for success well into the future. Walls twice served as chair of academic departments of emergency medicine, most recently as chair of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine. He held this role for more than two decades. In addition, Walls served the Brigham and Women’s Physician Organization, with more than 1,500 physicians from all specialties, as Chair of the Finance Committee and Chair of the Board.

Walls is a noted educator and scholar in emergency medicine with more than 180 scientific publications, including 19 textbooks. He has received major awards from all three emergency medicine national societies. He also served as president of the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine. A native Canadian, Walls attended medical school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and completed his residency training in Emergency Medicine at Denver General Hospital. He held faculty positions at George Washington University Medical Center, Vancouver General Hospital and the University of British Columbia prior to joining the Brigham.

Anderson Named Brigham Chief Operating Officer

Shelly Anderson, MPM, will succeed Ron Walls, MD, as executive vice president and chief operating officer at the Brigham, effective Oct. 1.

Anderson has served in many executive roles at the Brigham, most recently as senior vice president of Business Development and Innovation and chief strategy officer. In this role, she was responsible for collaborating with other Brigham leaders to design and execute strategic initiatives, leading the Active Asset Management program and working to innovate best practices and facilitate organizational accountability, among other responsibilities. A member of the Brigham leadership team since 2011, Anderson has more than 25 years of experience in health care administration, strategy implementation and operations improvement.

Anderson led the Brigham through the planning and implementation of Mass General Brigham eCare, a transition of significant scale that delivers coordinated, seamless care across the entire Mass General Brigham network. She has also led planning and execution for comprehensive patient affordability initiatives, patient progression, care redesign and other integral initiatives.

Before joining the Brigham in 2011, Anderson was a partner at the health care consulting firm Stockamp & Associates and then a managing director when the firm was purchased by Huron Consulting Group. Anderson also worked as an independent consultant for Strategic Health Care and Spectrum Communications in Washington, DC, and Mental Health Centers of Denver. She earned her master’s degree in policy management at Georgetown University and her bachelor’s degree at Concordia College.

Nour Appointed Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Nawal M. Nour, MD, MPH, has been appointed chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She succeeds Bob Barbieri, MD, who announced his decision to step down as chair earlier this year.

When she assumes the role on Oct. 1, Nour will be the first Black department chair at the Brigham, the first department chair of Sudanese descent and the third woman to assume a chair role. Nour is committed to establishing equitable care for all patients and dedicated to ensuring that the next generation of health care providers better reflects the diverse populations we serve.

Nour has been a member of the Brigham family for more than two decades, joining the Obstetrics and Gynecology faculty in 1999 following her residency at the Brigham.

In 1999, seeing the influx of African immigrants and refugees to the U.S., she founded the African Women’s Health Center at the Brigham, the first practice of its kind in the U.S., which improves access and services by providing culturally and linguistically competent counseling, reproductive health evaluation and medical care for women who have undergone female genital cutting.

In 2018, Nour was named the chief diversity and inclusion officer for Faculty, Trainees and Students. Since assuming that role, she has unified the community and provided support to help women and underrepresented minorities in medicine. Additionally, she has engaged senior leadership across the hospital and academic departments by providing resources to promote inclusiveness. As she steps into the chair role, Galen Henderson, MD, will serve as the interim chief diversity and inclusion officer for Faculty, Trainees and Students.

Nour’s research focus has been on the array of diseases that women in resource-poor settings experience. In 2009, she established the Global Obstetrics and Gynecology Division at the Brigham, which is focused on making motherhood safer for women in resource-poor nations. In 2015, she developed a Global OB/GYN Fellowship at the Brigham to further support these efforts.

Nour has served as the director of the Ambulatory Obstetrics Practice for two decades, and more recently assumed leadership of the Ambulatory Gynecology Division last year, unifying these two divisions and establishing a collaborative, efficient and supportive culture.

Boland to Serve as President of the BWPO

Giles Boland, MD, has been selected to serve as president of the Brigham and Women’s Physician Organization (BWPO), effective Sept. 1. Boland succeeds Allen Smith, MD, who announced this spring that he will step down as president at the end of August.

Boland, who is the Philip H. Cook Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, has been chair of the Department of Radiology since August of 2016. In this role, he was responsible for the academic and operational success of a department that performs and interprets approximately 800,000 imaging exams per year, and includes over 120 attending physicians, 80 physician trainees and a large complement of technologists, nurses and support personnel.

During his time as chair, Boland’s focus has been on the delivery of cost-effective patient outcomes, and he has made dramatic improvements in patient choice as well as access and experience. He has also achieved significant growth in the department’s research and educational portfolios, and expanded subspecialty reporting. Additionally, under Boland’s leadership, collaboration and integration with our colleagues across the Mass General Brigham system has strengthened.

Boland will step down as chair of Radiology, and Peter Doubilet, MD, PhD, will serve as interim chair of the Department of Radiology while we conduct a search for our new chair.

In his new role, Boland will lead a number of priorities recommended as part of the review of the BWPO that was initiated last year to redefine governance, operations, and finance in light of the unprecedented changes the health care industry has experienced since the organization’s inception. He will play a key role on the leadership team and direct the strategic work of the BWPO.

Boland will also serve as one of the institutional leaders in advancing and affirming our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by partnering closely with the department chairs, and serving as a co-executive sponsor of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Health Equity, and Community Health Advisory Committee.

Henderson Appointed Interim Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for Faculty, Trainees and Students

Galen Henderson, MD, FNCS, has been named the interim chief diversity and inclusion officer for faculty, trainees and students. This role was previously held by Nawal Nour, MD, MPH, who has been appointed chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, effective Oct. 1.

Henderson will continue the work that Nour began in 2018 to increase the representation of Underrepresented in Medicine (URiM) minorities in faculty and trainees throughout the Brigham’s clinical departments and to create an environment of inclusiveness for all physicians across Brigham Health.

Henderson is well-positioned to make progress toward these goals. He has been involved in Center for Diversity and Inclusion programs for many years, leading Reflection Rounds for underrepresented minority physicians, scientists and residents and working with the center’s Summer Training in Academic Research and Scholarships (STARS) program to encourage underrepresented minorities to pursue careers in medicine.

Henderson is director of Neurocritical Care. A Mississippi native, he is a graduate of Tougaloo College, a historically Black college in Jackson, Miss., and Brown Medical School. He completed his residency in the Harvard-Longwood Neurology Training Program and a fellowship in Neurocritical Care at the Brigham. Henderson subsequently joined the Brigham’s Neurology Department, where he became the director of Neurocritical Care in 2001. During his tenure, the neurocritical care service has grown from five to 20 beds.

In addition to his work at the Brigham, Henderson is the founding deputy editor of Journal Watch Neurology, editor of Reprints in Stroke and the associate medical director of two federally designated organ procurement organizations. He received awards from three secretaries of Health and Human Services for his contributions to the development of the Organ Donation National Collaborative.

He is also assistant professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, where his research focuses on clinical trials regarding treatments for stroke and cerebral hemorrhage. In addition, he lectures at the Neurocritical Care Society and the American Academy of Neurology.

Henderson is a member of the board of trustees of Brown University and past president of the university’s alumni association. He received a notable alumni service award from the university for his leadership and many contributions.

Milliken Named Interim Executive Director of Ethics Service

Aimee Milliken, PhD, RN, HEC-C, has been appointed interim executive director of the Ethics Service, effective Sept. 1.

Milliken will collaborate with Nick Sadovnikoff, MD, associate director of the Ethics Consultation Service, to continue providing this service to clinicians and patients. Martha Jurchak, PhD, RN, will be stepping down from her role as executive director and will assist Milliken and the service until her retirement in January.

Passionate about clinical ethics, Milliken came to the Brigham in 2017 for a two-year fellowship after completing her PhD. For the past year, she has served as a clinical ethicist and nurse scientist, as well as director of Research in the Center for Nursing Excellence.

Milliken, who has a decade of critical care nursing experience, has published and presented nationally and internationally on the topics of nursing ethics, clinical ethics and moral distress. Her research focuses on ethics and ethical awareness, and she has received funding to study trends in ethics consultation requests. She also teaches in the Master of Bioethics program at Harvard Medical School.

Golden to Depart for Cedars-Sinai

Jeff Golden, MD, chair of the Department of Pathology, will be leaving the Brigham in October to pursue an opportunity at Cedars-Sinai.

Golden, who joined the Brigham in 2012, has devoted his career to expanding the boundaries of pathology and medicine through research. During his time at the Brigham, he significantly increased Pathology’s research funding, including support from the NIH. As chair, he worked collaboratively across his department to develop a new and equitable infrastructure and expanded the number of faculty in the department by 30 percent. Under his leadership, the Department of Pathology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was established, as well as the Division of Computational Pathology, which now consists of multiple faculty members and is federally funded. OncoPanel, a cell-based profiling service that can detect not only genetic mutations, but also other critical types of cancer-related DNA alterations, was developed and implemented during his tenure as chair. And, Jeff served as chair of the Brigham and Women’s Physician’s Organization Board of Trustees for four years, during which time he worked closely with Brigham Health leadership to advance multiple initiatives.

Jon Aster, MD, will serve as interim chair, effective Oct. 1, while a national search is conducted.

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