homeBoard Membership
Chairperson: Dr. W. Craig Vanderwagen, M.D., RADM USPHS - Retired
Dr. Craig Vanderwagen is a senior partner with Martin, Blanck, and Associates who joined the firm on November 1, 2009. His most recent assignment prior to joining MBA was the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response for the US Department of Health and Human Services. He has special interests and experience in bio defense, domestic disaster preparedness and response, international humanitarian and disaster response, federal health delivery systems, innovative organization development and evaluation, and cross cultural health care. From August, 2006 until July, 2009, Dr. Vanderwagen was the founding Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this role he was responsible for the leadership and development of a new organization whose mission was preparing the Nation for response and recovery from public health and other health disasters whether natural or manmade. The organization was initiated after hurricane Katrina and formalized after the passage of the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act. The Act empowered the ASPR as the lead for all federal public health and medical response in disasters. It also initiated the Biomedical Acquisition, Research, and Development Authority for the development and acquisition of medical countermeasures (preventives, treatments, and diagnostics) for the civilian population. Lastly the funding of grants for development of state and local hospital preparedness activities became a major element of the preparedness activities in ASPR.
Dr. Vanderwagen had a distinguished 28 year career in public service as a commissioned officer in the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). His assignments prior to becoming Assistant Secretary included many deployments in disaster environments. These included lead federal health official in Louisiana after Katrina from August-November, 2005; lead public health official and senior officer aboard the USNS Mercy in Indonesia after the tsunami in 2005; Director of Primary Care and Public Health for the Ministry of Health in Iraq from September 2003-March, 2004; consultant to the Pan American Health Organization in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1999; and Medical Director for Project Provide Refuge (joint DOD-HHS Kosovar refugee assistance) in 1999. These deployed assignments however were in addition to his regular duties in the Indian Health Service where during his 25 years of service, he held a number of responsible positions and was the agency’s Chief Medical Officer as his last assignment. During his career with Indian Health Service, Dr. Vanderwagen provided leadership in the uses of electronic health records, implementation of the use of best practices to combat chronic diseases, and was an early supporter of, and the agency’s lead negotiator for a majority of the early Self Governance Compacts. Dr. Vanderwagen is a family physician who believes passionately in the union of public health and clinical medicine. He and his wife of 38 years have 3 grown sons and one granddaughter.
Ms. Carla Botting
Ms. Carla Botting is the Director of Product Development and Access Unit and Head of the RTS,S Program at the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) in Washington, DC. Her work involves integrating the needs of developing country health systems into MVI's product development activities, and ensures that vaccines, once developed, will be available and accessible to those in need.
Ms. Botting has more than a dozen years of industry experience in business development and in the development and approval of biologics. Prior to joining MVI, Ms. Botting was the Director of Government Business Development at Cangene Corporation, where she oversaw program management, business development, and government relations with regard to the United States and other industrialized countries. Ms. Botting has worked on joint biological development programs with such partners as the Centers for Disease Control, NIH, the Department of Defense, GSK and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Ms. Botting has served on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for BioSecurity and as a member of the Board of Regents at the University of Winnipeg.
Ms. Botting has an honors degree in commerce from the University of Manitoba and has studied French at the University of Caen in France. She has worked in Russia, Ecuador, and the United Kingdom.
Dr. Digvir S. Jayas
Distinguished Professor Dr. Digvir Jayas was educated at the G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Pantnagar, India; the University of Manitoba, and the University of Saskatchewan. Before assuming the position of Acting Vice-President (research), he held the position of Associate Vice-President (Research) for eight years. Prior to his appointment as Associate Vice-President (Research) he was Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Department Head of Biosystems Engineering. He is a Registered Professional Engineer and a Registered Professional Agrologist. Dr. Jayas holds a Canada Research Chair in Stored-Grain Ecosystems, and he conducts research in the areas of physical properties of agricultural products; modified atmosphere storage of grains, oilseeds, potatoes, and meats; mathematical modeling of biological systems; and digital image processing for grading and processing operations in the Agri-Food industry. He has authored or coauthored over 650 technical articles in scientific journals, conference proceedings and books.
Mr. Gerry Labossière
Mr. Labossière is a Chartered Accountant and holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Manitoba. His rich work experience includes the position of Auditor for the City of Winnipeg, Chief Executive for a Deposit Insurance Corporation for Financial Cooperative Institutions in Manitoba, and Principal in charge of the Financial Services Practice of Coopers & Lybrand Consulting Group in Winnipeg. Mr. Labossière was one of the founders of Momentum Healthware Inc., a company that provides software and services to the North American Healthcare market. In 2001 Mr. Labossière started AIS which has rapidly become one of the Canadian leaders in healthcare eLearning solutions. AIS was recognized in 2006 as the second fastest growing company in Manitoba. The company has clients in North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia. His extensive and diverse background includes strategic planning, performance improvement, financial management, controllership, marketing, receivership, computer audit and audit.
Dr. Mary Pat Moyer
Dr. Mary Pat Moyer is a recognized biomedical scientist, entrepreneur and technology business leader. She founded the innovative life sciences company, INCELL Corporation (1993; www.incell.com), after over 20 years as an academic scientist, as Director of the Center for Human Cell Biotechnology, Division Head of Surgical Research, and Professor of Surgery, Microbiology, Cellular and Structural Biology, Pediatrics, and Molecular Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She received her Ph.D. in microbiology, emphasis in virology, from the University of Texas at Austin. As a biology major, she received BS and MS degrees from Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Moyer is an advocate for accelerating development of products from the laboratory to the clinic.
Dr. Brian Postl, MD, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba
Dr. Brian Postl's five-year term as Professor and Dean, Faculty of Medicine, began July 1, 2010. Dr. Postl succeeds Dr. J. Dean Sandham as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Postl is a graduate of the University of Manitoba. He received his doctor of medicine degree in 1976 and the Royal College Fellowship in Community Medicine and in Pediatrics in 1981 and 1982, respectively. He was the founding president and CEO of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA), a position he held for ten years. Dr. Postl has served as head of pediatrics and child health and as head of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. He has also served as director of the J.D. Hildes Northern Medical Unit and division of community and northern medicine and as director of the Faculty of Medicine’s community medical residency program.
His research, published works and professional involvement focus on Aboriginal child health, circumpolar health and human resource planning. His contributions in these areas, combined with his experience as a visiting pediatrician to communities in northern Manitoba and Nunavut, contributed to him earning the Canadian Association of Pediatric Health Centre’s Child Health Award of Distinction in 2006 and the Inter-Professional Association on Native Employment’s Champion of Aboriginal Employment award in 2007. Dr. Postl serves on a number of committees and boards of provincial and national associations, foundations, institutes and other organizations.
Dr. Andrew Potter
Dr. Andrew Potter is an internationally recognized authority on vaccine development. Dr. Potter is renowned for his visionary research into how bacteria cause disease and for his groundbreaking projects at Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Organization and the University of Saskatchewan that have generated “world firsts” in disease prevention and more than 50 patents for animal vaccine development and therapeutics. He currently runs a successful research program well-funded by competitive grants at the national level. Recently, he has been working on the application of genomics to the animal health field, as well as forging links between the animal and human infectious disease research communities to ensure that technologies common to both fields can be leveraged to their greatest benefit.
Mr. Jim Welch
Mr. Jim Welch serves as the Executive Director of the Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation, a non-profit foundation that collaborates globally with public and private organizations and institutions in promoting effective biosafety training, occupational health awareness, and advocacy of responsible research. Mr. Welch serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Biosafety and Biocontainment Training Program (NBBTP) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD and on the board of directors of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A retired educator, he was included in the premier edition of Who’s Who in American Education and was a nominee for both the National PTA’s Phoebe Apperson Hearst Outstanding Educator Award and the Daughters of the American Revolution “Outstanding Teacher of American History.” He was named Tennessee’s “Outstanding Teacher of the Humanities” in 1998 by the Tennessee Humanities Council and was the Tennessee Council for the Social Studies “Outstanding Social Studies Teacher” in 2002.
In his “other life while teaching,” Mr. Welch worked with various entities in organizational assessment, creating and implementing action strategies, personnel recruitment, leadership development, government relations, and human resource programs. He remains a regular editorial columnist for the Kingsport Times-News and speaks at a number of leadership development seminars. Educated at East Tennessee State University and the University of Tennessee, Mr. Welch was recognized in 1998 as an Outstanding Alumnus from ETSU’s College of Education.
Mr. Welch is married and the father of two grown children and is the grandfather of the world’s smartest and most beautiful grandson.