Sara Teppema is President of Alta Advisers, where she focuses on quantifying the value of population health programs. Before launching her consulting practice, Sara led the design of innovative and value-based payment models at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. She has over 25 years of health care and actuarial experience, primarily in consulting with a wide variety of clients, including providers, health plans, employers and government entities. She is a member of the Society of Actuaries’ Board of Directors, and she chairs the SOA’s Diversity & Inclusion strategy. She is the past chair of the SOA’s Research Executive Committee, and led a task force as part of the SOA’s Health Section’s strategic initiative for Public Health. She is also on the advisory board of the actuarial program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (her alma mater). When she is not involved in work and volunteer activities, Sara spends time with her husband and three young adult daughters; plays music and sings as much as possible; and regularly hikes and practices yoga.

Jim Dolstad is a Vice President in Optum’s Payer Actuarial Consulting team. He has more than 30 years of industry experience working with payers, providers, and employers. Most recently, he has consulted with clients to address their needs around total cost reduction, population health management, program evaluation, performance management, predictive modeling and risk adjustment, and social determinants of health. Prior to joining Optum, Jim was the Chief Actuary for a global operations management and analytics company. He also has served as Chief Actuarial Officer for a population health management company. These two roles enabled him to develop actionable analytics for internal and external customers based on a value chain approach designed to more clearly illustrate cause and effect. Jim began his career providing actuarial and employee benefit consulting for nearly 20 years where he ultimately led a regional practice for a national consulting firm. Jim is an Associate of the Society of Actuaries and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries. In addition, he has published several white papers, and is a frequent speaker and industry conferences and webinars.

Dr. Leanne Metcalfe is a Health Economics executive consultant, she partners with corporate and tier one academic institutions to understand the drivers of financial and physical health outcomes. She is currently advising on a corporate-academic Covid-19 partnership involving best practices for testing and using data.

Formerly, Dr Metcalfe headed up the Clinical Research and Strategy teams at Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC - Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Montana). In that position she collaborated with clinical, network, government and data science teams, as well as external provider groups and top tier academic research institutions to create strategies aimed at improving wellness programs, healthcare value and patient quality of life.

Dr Metcalfe is the 2017 recipient of the Dallas 'Hidden Figures' award, 2019 Young Achievers Award, a Rhodes Scholar finalist and a former George's Family Foundation Health Research Fellow. Her research work has been recognized by the US Chamber of Commerce for two consecutive years with innovations leading to improved quality of health for both Asthma and Crohns Disease patients.

Dr. Metcalfe has also served as Senior Director of Clinical and Financial analytics at Premise Health Care. In that role she looked at the efficacy of clinical interventions on patient populations to understand outcomes and influence program offerings. Before that, she was research faculty at Georgia Tech, conducting research at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta around pediatric treatment process flows and mitigating medical errors. She also worked in the pharmaceutical industry at Merck and Company.

Academically, she has published in multiple journals and presented research findings across the country discussing clinical evaluations, health economics and health policy. Dr. Metcalfe received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering in the dual degree program at Emory Medical School and Georgia Institute of Technology. She also holds a BE in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.