Leadership

Brian Anderson

Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Brian Anderson is the Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), a non-profit coalition he co-founded in 2021. CHAI is focused on developing a set of consensus-driven guidelines and best practices for Responsible AI in Health, as well as supporting the ability to independently test and validate AI for safety and effectiveness.

Prior to leading CHAI, Dr. Anderson was the Chief Digital Health Physician at MITRE, where he led research and development efforts across major strategic initiatives in digital health alongside industry partners and the U. S. Government. He was responsible for leading much of MITRE’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic, working closely with the White House COVID Task Force, as well as Operation Warp Speed. He also led MITRE’s largest R&D effort in Oncology, focusing on the initial development of mCODE and the use of AI in more efficient and inclusive clinical trial design.

Dr. Anderson is an internationally recognized author and expert in digital health, and is regularly engaged as a speaker on digital health innovation, health standards development, clinical decision support systems, and interoperability. Prior to MITRE, Anderson led the Informatics and Network Medicine Division at athenahealth. He has also served on several national, and international, health information technology committees in partnership with the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Brenton W. Hill, JD, MHA

Head of Operations and General Counsel

Brenton W. Hill is the Head of Operations and General Counsel at the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), healthcare’s leading nonprofit thought partner organization dedicated to providing guidelines for the responsible use of AI in healthcare.

Trained as an attorney and a healthcare administrator, Brenton approaches his work from a risk-informed and operationally feasible perspective which helps CHAI move with agility to accomplish its mission and best serve its members. Prior to his role at CHAI, Brenton served as the Regulatory Strategy and Compliance Manager for Mayo Clinic Platform assisting in identifying its approach to emerging AI regulation and risk mitigation strategies. As part of his role, he served as a member of Mayo Clinic’s SaMD Review Board, which provides governance for AI models being implemented at Mayo Clinic. Additionally, he served as Mayo Clinic’s first legal-trained Administrative Fellow. After his first year in the fellowship program doing traditional hospital operations, Brenton pivoted and spent the next year exclusively focused on digital health regulation and AI implementation where he gained a passion for responsible AI governance and adoption.

He is passionate about connecting the entire health sector to CHAI’s work and providing a collaborative community that can help define how AI can help solve some of the health sector’s most pressing issues. Brenton completed his undergraduate studies at Arizona State University and completed his JD and MHA at the University of Kentucky.

Lucy Orr-Ewing

Chief of Staff and Head of Policy

Lucy Orr-Ewing leads Policy efforts for CHAI and joins from Stanford Medicine as a Harkness Fellow in the Clinical Excellence Research Center. At Stanford, her research focused on the current landscape for testing and evaluation of Generative AI in healthcare, on best practice LLM deployment, and on patient perceptions of AI in healthcare.

Prior, she was Chief of Staff for Technology Policy for the National Health Service (NHS) in England, during which she convened more than 200 portfolios of work into one strategy, the Digital Health and Care Plan, and delivered the NHS’ first HealthTech Summit. She was also Head of Strategy for the Federated Data Platform Programme, the UK’s largest investment into its data infrastructure to connect all operational health data for the UK.

Tom Kirby

Chief Financial Officer

A husband, father, operator, and founder – each to varying degrees of success.

Merage Ghane, PhD

Director of Responsible AI

Merage Ghane, Ph.D., is the Director of Responsible AI at the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), where she leads efforts to develop guidelines and best practices for AI development and implementation in healthcare. In this role, she collaborates with a wide array of health industry stakeholders—including clinicians, technologists, policymakers, and patient advocates across multiple sectors—to develop practical products, tools, and services that prioritize responsible innovation and impact.

Merage is passionate about bringing people together to make translational and tangible contributions to the field of health AI, in service of greater mental, physical, and social health for all.

Before joining CHAI, Merage was a Principal Behavioral Designer at ideas42, focusing on AI and ML in Health. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Science/Psychology from Virginia Tech, where she applied computational and machine learning methods to study how the brain processes uncertainty during decision-making. Dr. Ghane continued this research as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Psychiatry, investigating the clinical neuroscience of approach-avoidance behaviors and how individual differences in uncertainty processing affect these behaviors.

Anthony DiDonato

Program Manager

Anthony DiDonato received his undergraduate degree in Music Performance & Behavioral Economics and graduate degree in Healthcare Management, both from Carnegie Mellon University. He spent his early career as a Senior Healthcare Analyst at The MITRE Corporation where he led several health data standardization projects, as well as innovation and strategy projects for MITRE’s health sponsors.

Anthony is now the Program Manager for CHAI and focuses on working with brilliant people in entrepreneurial environments to build things that are good for the world.

Sumanth Ratna

Founding Engineer

Sumanth Ratna leads CHAI’s technology efforts. With a background in software engineering and data science from the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, he focuses on healthcare AI applications. His research spans digital pathology, proteomics, and genomics.

Sumanth’s professional experience includes roles at Microsoft’s AI for Health group; Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center; Yale School of Medicine; the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and various startups, including Anyscale and Invenio Imaging.

He is committed not only to developing innovative healthcare solutions but also to ensuring responsible AI implementation and governance in the health sector.

Greg Shemancik

Operations Manager

Gregory J. Shemancik is the Operations Manager at the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), where he leads strategic and operational efforts to advance the coalition’s mission of promoting responsible AI in healthcare. With a background that bridges innovation and execution, Greg ensures CHAI’s initiatives are delivered effectively and with lasting impact.

Before joining CHAI, Greg served as the Clinical Insights Operations Group Lead at The MITRE Corporation. In this role, he led high-impact data and AI initiatives sponsored by agencies including the NIH, CMS, HHS, the World Health Organization, and the U.S. Department of State. His work spanned real-world evidence generation, development and implementation of standards through the CodeX HL7 FHIR Accelerator, advancement of the mCODE oncology data standard, data governance, program management, and operational excellence.

Earlier in his career , Greg contributed to the health data startup RowdMap, where he cultivated a strong interest in health innovation and entrepreneurship. He also worked at Vanderbilt University Medical Center , garnering a passion for clinical research and national efforts like the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative.

Based in Pittsburgh, Greg holds an MHA from Cornell University and a BS in Cellular Neuroscience and Economics from Allegheny College.

Nirav Shah

Senior Advisor and Chair of the Policy Work Group

Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH, is Senior Scholar at Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center. His expertise spans digital health and AI, clinical operations across the continuum of care, public and private health insurance, and regulatory oversight of healthcare and public health. He is Board-certified in Internal Medicine and is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale School of Medicine, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He serves as Senior Fellow of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), independent Director of STERIS plc [NYSE:STE], and member of the Advisory Committee for the Director of the CDC. Previously, he served as Commissioner of Health for New York State and Chief Operating Officer for Clinical Operations at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California.

Umair Shah

Senior Advisor for AI Policy

Dr. Umair A. Shah is a physician, public health leader, and expert in health transformation with more than two decades of experience bridging healthcare and public health. He most recently served as Secretary of Health for Washington State, where the agency received national recognition for its work in innovation, strategic partnerships, and public health communications.

Previously, Dr. Shah led Harris County Public Health in Texas - the health department for the nation’s third-largest county - where his leadership earned national honors, including recognition as Local Health Department of the Year. He also served as president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), representing more than 3,000 local health departments across the country. During his time in Texas, he spent two decades as an emergency physician in the VA health system, deepening his expertise in clinical care and crisis response.

Now based in the Seattle area, Dr. Shah holds faculty appointments at the University of Washington, Washington State University, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Texas. He is the founder of Rickshaw Health, a consultancy advising health agencies and leaders on strategy, innovation, and systems change. His leadership is grounded in his Asian American heritage, Midwestern upbringing, and Texas roots - values that continue to shape his commitment to resilience, excellence, and meaningful impact in health.