Laerdal Foundation for Acute Medicine

Tore Laerdal is Chairman of the Board of the Laerdal Foundation for Acute Medicine, which since 1980 has provided financial support to nearly 2000 practically oriented research projects. (www.laerdalfoundation.org)

Mr Laerdal is also Chairman of the Board of the Laerdal Medical, a world leading company within training material and therapeutic equipment for acute medicine. www.laerdal.com

Mr Laerdal serves as Chairman of the Board of three external research foundations in Norway. He holds a degree from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, and has received a Honorary Doctorate in Science from the University in Hertfordshire in the UK.

Project ADAM Administrator Wisconsin/National Affiliate Program, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin

Alli joined Project ADAM in 2014. Project ADAM (Automated Defibrillators in Adam’s Memory) is a program of the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and the Herma Heart Center. She has six years of public health experience including program planning and implementation of health initiatives in schools and communities throughout Milwaukee. Alli received her bachelor’s degree in community health education from the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse. She uses her health education and program planning background to strengthen Wisconsin schools and communities to be prepared for sudden cardiac emergencies and continue growth of the Project ADAM affiliate program nationally.

William Paterson University

Dr. Rehberg is a Professor and Coordinator of Athletic Training Clinical Education at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. He is also a founding partner of The Rehberg Konin Group, LLC, serves as co-founder and President of Sport Safety International, and is a staff member at the Center for Concussion Care and Physical Rehabilitation at Overlook Medical Center in Summit, NJ. Dr. Rehberg previously served as the Director and Chief of Emergency Services at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, and spent 13 years as the head athletic trainer at Westwood Regional High School in Westwood, New Jersey.

A graduate of West Chester University (B.S.), the United States Sports Academy (M.S.S.) and Touro University International (Ph.D.), Dr. Rehberg has spent his career working in the athletic training, sports medicine, and emergency services fields. He has authored several refereed papers, and two textbooks, as well as over a dozen peer-reviewed online courses that have trained over 200,000 coaches, parents, and athletes in 23 countries. An award-winning lecturer, Dr. Rehberg frequently at state and national meetings on sports emergency care, spinal injuries in sports, sudden cardiac arrest in athletes, and concussion management.

Dr. Rehberg served as a member of the medical staff for athletics (track and field) at the 1996 Olympic Games. He has been active on both state and national levels, having served on the First and Second National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) Inter-Association Task Forces for the Appropriate Care of the Spine-Injured Athlete, the Task Force on Appropriate Medical Coverage for the Secondary School-Aged Athlete, the NATA Hall of Fame Subcommittee, and several other committees at the state level. Dr. Rehberg has also served as a technical adviser to the National Safety Council since 1992 and was a member of the American Heart Association Task Force that developed the first-ever international guidelines for first aid in 2000. He was a charter member of the New Jersey Disaster Medical Assistance Team.

Dr. Rehberg currently serves on the NATA Foundation Board of Directors, as the District 2 Treasurer of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, is a Trustee of the Brain Injury Alliance of New Jersey, and served as president of the Athletic Trainers’ Society of New Jersey from 2007-2009.

Dr. Rehberg has received numerous awards in recognition of his professional accomplishments by. Most notably, he is an inductee in both the New Jersey Scholastic Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Athletic Trainers’ Society of New Jersey (ATSNJ) Hall of Fame. He is also the recipient of both the NATA and ATSNJ Service Award, and in 2014 received distinction as a Most Distinguished Athletic Trainer. Dr. Rehberg has also been recognized by his alma mater, having been an inductee into the West Chester University Legacy of Leadership, and is a past recipient of the Ordo Honoris (Order of Honor) Medal and Award from the Kappa Delta Rho National Fraternity. Most recently, Dr. Rehberg was named a Fellow of the American College of Forensic Examiners.

University of Pennsylvania

Marion Leary RN MSN MPH FAHA is the Director of Innovation Research for the Center for Resuscitation Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research, education and clinical care on Cardiac Arrest, CPR quality and Therapeutic Hypothermia. Ms. Leary’s goal is to incorporate innovation into the work that is performed in these areas including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, wearables, mHealth and other digital applications. Ms. Leary has a grant through the Medtronic Foundation and the Laerdal Foundation exploring the use of virtual reality to train lay bystanders in CPR. Ms. Leary is an author on the American Heart Association’s digital health consensus statement and has presented nationally on the topic of digital innovation and resuscitation science. Ms. Leary is also a consultant with the Penn Medicine Social Media and Health Innovation Lab and is a contributor to the Huffington Post writing about health, technology and other areas.

Sarver Heart Center and University of Arizona

Karl B. Kern, MD, is a Co-director of the Sarver Heart Center and the Gordon A. Ewy, MD Distinguished Endowed Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Arizona, where he is a Professor of Medicine.

Dr. Kern is an interventional cardiologist, with a large practice based at the Sarver Heart Center within the University of Arizona. Dr. Kern is the coordinator of the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Research Group.

He was inducted as an honorary member of the European Resuscitation Council in 2014 and named a “CPR Giant” by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation and the American Heart Association in 2015. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Drexel University College of Medicine’s Alumni Association in 2014, and the Arizona Business’ Lifetime Achievement in Health Care Award in 2016. Dr. Kern has been named as one of the “Best Doctors in America” since 1996.

Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center/Medical College of Virginia

Dr. Joseph P. Ornato is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center/Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia. He is also Medical Director of the Richmond Ambulance Authority, Richmond Fire and EMS, and Henrico County Fire & EMS.

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he graduated from Boston University Medical School magna cum laude and completed his training in Internal Medicine at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital and in Cardiology at New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center. He is triple board certified (Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Emergency Medicine).

Dr. Ornato is an active researcher in the field of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Dr. Ornato is an Editor of the journal Resuscitation. He is past Chairman of the American Heart Association’s (AHA) National Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee and its Advanced Cardiac Life Support Subcommittee and served as the AHA’s national representative to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s National Heart Attack Alert Program’s Coordinating Committee and Chairman of its Science Base Subcommittee. Dr. Ornato served as a Special Consultant to the Circulatory System Devices Panel of the Food and Drug Administration. He chaired the National Steering Committee on the joint-sponsored NIH/AHA/Industry Public Access Defibrillation Trial and as Principal Investigator on a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Bioterrorism Training grant. He served as Cardiac Co-Chairman of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (ROC) and as Principal Investigator for VCU on the NIH-sponsored Neurological Emergency Treatment Trials (NETT) Network. Dr. Ornato is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine).

Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago

Dr. Berger is Executive Director, Heart Center; Interim Division Head, Cardiology at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

It is under Dr. Berger’s direction that Project ADAM was established, in November of 1999, after the sudden, unexpected deaths of several student athletes in Southeastern Wisconsin. He along with others advocated for passage of the ADAM Act in the United States Congress, a bill that will provide funding for a national clearinghouse for the dissemination of information that will assist schools establish AED programs.

Dr. Berger has published several papers, chapters and has edited books in the field of pediatric cardiology as well as on the topic of sudden cardiac death in children and adolescents.

Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine

Dr. Bentley J. Bobrow is Professor of Emergency Medicine and Associate Director of the Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. He is also Medical Director for the Arizona Department of Health Services’ Bureau of EMS and Trauma System. He has partnered with public health officials, EMS agencies, hospitals, and the public to develop a statewide reporting and educational network for responding to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, which has resulted in a significant increase in the rates of bystander CPR and a tripling of survival from sudden cardiac arrest in Arizona.

Alberta Children’s Hospital

Adam Cheng is Director of Research and Development, KidSIM Simulation Program at Alberta Children’s Hospital; Full Scientist, Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, and Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics at the University of Calgary in Calgary, Canada. He is chair and co-founder of the INSPIRE network, an international research simulation collaborative with over 200 institutions, focused on improving outcomes of critically ill children. He has served on the Board of Directors of both the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and the International Pediatric Simulation Society. He has provided leadership for various international simulation conferences and delivered lectures and workshops at conferences around the world. Dr. Cheng conducts research with interests in cardiac arrest, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and debriefing, and has led numerous multicenter simulation-based research trials. He has edited several textbooks and co-authored the Education chapter of the 2015 American Heart Association Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation guidelines.

University of Hawaii, School of Medicine
Department of Surgery

Dr. William H. Montgomery was a co-founder of the Foundation in 1987 and served as its President until 2004. He is an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Hawaii School Of Medicine.

He recently retired from the multispecialty Straub Clinic and Hospital in Honolulu where he was Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology for 38 years. He remains in private practice. During his career at Straub he held many other administrative posts including Chief of Staff, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer. His activities outside Straub include active participation in the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), He currently serves on its Board of Directors and is the Director of the ASA Consultation Program. He is also the President of the Hawaii Society of Anesthesiologists. Additionally he is a member of the Hawaii State Ethics Commission.

Dr. Montgomery’s interest in CPR and resuscitation began in 1973 at the Hawaii Heart Association where he began teaching American Heart Association (AHA) CPR courses. In 1975 he was invited to join the AHA activities at the national level and he has been very active in teaching, writing educational materials and ECC program administration. He served as chair of the AHA national BLS, ECC and program administration committees to name a few. He was chair of the 1985 Silver Anniversary National Conference to review the Standards and Guidelines for CPR and ECC and has coordinated subsequent conferences including the most recent 2010 International Consensus Conference on CPR and ECC. His special interest is fostering international cooperation in the resuscitation field and was an organizer of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) and its chairman from 1998-2006.

He has received numerous awards recognizing these achievements including the American Heart Association’s Meritorious Achievement award in 1995, induction as an Honorary Member of the European Resuscitation Council in 2004 and honored as a “Giant” in resuscitation by ILCOR and the AHA in 2000

Dr. Montgomery served as the ECCU program chair for several of the conferences. The Foundation created the William H. Montgomery, MD Excellence in Education Award in 2006. This award, sponsored by the Laerdal Foundation for Acute Medicine, is named in his honor and serves as encouragement to ECCU concurrent session presenters to strive for excellence in their presentations.