U.S. Senator Bill Frist, M.D.

Founder & Chairman

Senator William Frist, M.D. is a nationally-acclaimed heart and lung transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, and chairman of the Executive Board of the health service private equity firm Cressey & Company. He is actively engaged in the business as well as the medical, humanitarian, and philanthropic communities.

Senator Frist graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Frist completed surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford. As the founder and director of the Vanderbilt Multi-Organ Transplant Center, he performed over 150 heart and lung transplants, authored over 100 peer-reviewed medical articles, and published seven books on topics such as bioterrorism, transplantation, and leadership. He is board certified in both general and heart surgery.

Dr. Frist annually has led medical mission trips to Africa and Haiti, and emergency response teams to disasters around the globe, including to Sri Lanka after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Bangladesh, Sudan, New Orleans after Katrina, Haiti after the earthquake, and the horn of Africa. He is chairman of both Hope Through Healing Hands, which focuses on maternal and child health and global poverty, and SCORE, a statewide collaborative education reform organization that has helped propel Tennessee to prominence as a K12 education reform state. Most recently he launched NashvilleHealth, a community wide initiative that creates a culture of health and wellbeing by serving as a convener to open dialogue, align resources and build smart strategic partnerships to forge a dynamic plan to improve the health of all Nashvillians.

His current board service includes the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Kaiser Family Foundation, Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, Bipartisan Policy Center, and Nashville Health Care Council. He is a member of the advisory committees for global health at Duke, Harvard, and the Massachusetts General Hospital. His previous board service includes Princeton University and the Smithsonian Institution.

In the private sector, he serves on three public company boards, Select Medical, Teladoc and AECOM, (the largest engineering/architectural company in the world). In addition he is a board member of Unitek (nursing and information technology), Aegis (lab), Aspire (palliative care), MDSave (health consumerism), Cognosante (information technology in health) and Accolade (patient navigation). Past board service includes Third National SunTrust Bank in Tennessee.

Currently Dr. Frist serves as an adjunct professor of Cardiac Surgery at Vanderbilt University and clinical professor of Surgery at Meharry Medical College. As a leading authority on healthcare, Senator Frist speaks nationally on health reform, government policy, global health, education reform, and volunteerism.

Dr. Frist is married and has three sons and lives in Franklin, Tennessee.

Mark Yancy

President & CEO

Mark is a lifelong Tennessean, having spent most of his life in Memphis. Mark became a healthcare
leader at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, a not-for-profit system that is one of the state’s largest
outside of Nashville.

Mark has intentionally devoted his career to the underserved and those most impacted by lack of access to care and resources. He is motivated to help them mount a winnable fight against chronic illness.

While at Methodist, he purposely worked at urban hospitals that allowed him to focus on those most
impacted by social determinants of health, notably those with Sickle Cell Disease among other chronic
conditions. Working on behalf of the underserved afforded Mark the opportunities to fund-raise,
business plan, and engage public and private sector businesses to launch innovative service lines and
solutions.

Mark then joined Anthem via its subsidiary CareMore. As Director of Health Services, he ran operational point for a multi-site value-based  attributed panel of over 15,000 Medicaid patients, focusing on assertive preventive care for chronic and behavioral health. From there, he was recruited by DaVita Kidney Care as Regional Operations Director to oversee care for what he perceived to be “hidden” endstage renal patients in Memphis and eastern Arkansas.

While most healthcare administrators have graduate degrees in business or health administration, Mark chose to acquire a Master of Public Health so he could better understand and engage the chronic medical and social dynamics that lead to acute presentations in hospitals or clinics. It’s that passion that led him to NashvilleHealth, an organization totally focused on improving population health and promoting wellness for all.

Mark is married to his soulmate, Shaherah Yancy, also a healthcare leader directing research for
orthopedic medical devices. They have a daughter, Akiyana, and a son, Christopher. Rounding out the
family is a Boston Terrier, Zyg.