2018 Speaking Faculty

Amal Agarwal, D.O., MBA, is a board-certified emergency room physician with clinical, entrepreneurial, administrative and operational experience. Dr. Agarwal’s mission is to help with the necessary transition from a fee-for-service model to a value-based-care model through patient and physician engagement. By merging both patient and health care provider data, he hopes to improve patient outcomes.

Dr. Agarwal is uniquely leveraged, having functioned as a chief medical officer for a health analytics platform, a pharmaceutical consultant for Navigant, health care consultant for Accenture and now as a medical director in the Executive Physician Immersion Program at Humana. After completing his Six Sigma green belt training, he is a firm believer that poor results are primarily attributed to process rather than people.

Outside of work, Dr. Agarwal advises several health care startups. He received his MBA from the University of Illinois, his medical degree from Des Moines University and his B.S. in finance and accounting from Washington University in St. Louis. He completed his residency in emergency medicine at the University of Florida.

Dr. Chris Guinther has worked on a variety of initiatives for pharmacies, health plans and pharmacy benefit managers, including plan design, formulary management, and medical to pharmacy benefit conversions. He currently serves as System Director of Managed Care Pharmacy Services for Mercy Health, the largest health system in Ohio. His recent initiatives include orphan/biologic drug pricing and modeling the effects on plan spending. Prior to joining Mercy Health, he served as a Senior Clinical Consultant for Express Scripts working primarily in the Medicare Advantage space. He has been active at the national and regional level with various pharmacy associations including the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy

Dr. Guinther received a Pharm.D. from the University of Florida and a B.S. of Pharmacy from the Ohio State University.

Morgan Molloy currently serves as the Head of U.S. Commercial at Spark Therapeutics. Prior to Spark, Mr. Molloy most recently was Vice President, Global Disease Lead Fabray Disease at Genzyme Corporation. While at Genzyme, he served in a variety of commercial leadership roles in three of the legacy Genzyme business units. Prior to Genzyme, Mr. Molloy spent ten years at Biogen Idec Inc. in positions of increasing responsibility within the commercial organization

Dr. Pezalla in a leading innovator and consultant on payer strategy for pharmaceutical and device manufacturers. He focuses on unlocking the value of new products by developing industry-leading approaches to incorporating payer requirements into development programs, technology assessment plans, and value frameworks. He works with a variety of policy and industry groups on cutting edge coverage policy, innovations in value-based payments, and adaptive regulatory and market entry pathways. He is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy in Washington.

Dr. Pezalla is the former Vice President for Pharmaceutical Policy and Strategy in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer at Aetna. In this position Dr. Pezalla developed and coordinated strategy for pharmaceutical evaluation and coverage across both the medical and pharmacy benefit, created Aetna’s framework for innovative contracts, and developed Aetna’s public policy positions on drug and device coverage.

Dr. Pezalla holds both BS and MD degrees from Georgetown University and an MPH from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a board certified pediatrician and was a Health Services Research Fellow at the University of Michigan.

Reg Waldeck is the head of Market Access, Pricing, Health Economics and Payer Communications at Celldex Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology company developing targeted therapeutics for patients with devastating diseases, with a current portfolio focused within immuno-oncology. He directs departmental efforts in support of successful access, evidence-generation, and commercialization of the Celldex portfolio. Dr. Waldeck received an MSc (Chemistry) from the University of Amsterdam, a PhD (Biochemistry) from the University of Sydney, and has completed post-graduate certificates in Health Economics (Monash University, Australia) and Marketing (University of Connecticut, USA).