Dan Roden, M.D., senior vice president for personalized medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has been awarded the 2019 Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Prize in Cardiovascular Sciences by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Heart and Vascular Center.

Awarded biennially, the Schottenstein Prize honors leaders in the cardiovascular sciences who have made extraordinary and sustained contributions to improving health care. Roden receive the prize and a $100,000 honorarium during a ceremony at Wexner Medical Center campus Nov. 20.

Established by a $2 million endowment from humanitarian philanthropists and longtime OSU supporters Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein, the prize is chartered to The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Heart and Vascular Center.

A native of Montreal, Canada, Roden earned his medical degree from McGill University. After completing residency training in internal medicine in Montreal, he arrived at Vanderbilt in 1978 as a research fellow in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and later as a fellow in cardiology.

Roden has since become internationally recognized for his studies of the mechanisms and treatment of abnormal heart rhythms and variability in drug response. One major interest has been pharmacogenomics – and especially the role genetic variations play in adverse drug reactions such as drug-induced arrhythmias.

Roden directed the Division of Clinical Pharmacology 1992-2004 when he became founding director of the Oates Institute for Experimental Therapeutics.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is professor of Medicine, Biomedical Informatics and Pharmacology and the author of more than 700 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Roden is a leader in VUMC’s PREDICT (Pharmacogenomic Resource for Enhanced Decisions in Care and Treatment) project, which since 2010 has applied genomic testing to drug prescribing in an effort to avoid adverse drug reactions.

He co-directs the Improving Prediction of Drug Action program, part of the Pharmacogenetics Research Network funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is co-principal investigator for the VUMC site of the NIH Electronic Medical Records and Genomics Network and is principal investigator for the medical center’s DNA databank, BioVU.

Pediatric Society award goes to VUMC’s Edwards

Kathryn Edwards, M.D., who holds the Sarah H. Sell and Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair in pediatrics and is a professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, is the recipient of the 2020 John Howland Award, the highest honor given by the American Pediatric Society.

A member of the National Academy of Medicine, Edwards’ work focuses on the evaluation of vaccines for the prevention of infectious diseases in adults and children. She has led many of the pivotal clinical trials of vaccines licensed in the past several decades and has played a major role in their implementation.

The award, which was created in honor of clinician-scientist John Howland, M.D., will be presented to Edwards on May 3 during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2020 Meeting in Philadelphia.

Edwards is the third Vanderbilt faculty member to receive the John Howland Award, which has been given annually since 1952. The late Amos Christie, M.D., was honored in 1979, and Mildred Stahlman, M.D., received the award in 1996.

Edwards earned her medical degree from the University of Iowa. She completed her residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in infectious diseases at Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago.

Early in her career, Edwards aided the development of vaccines to prevent Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), at the time a leading cause of sepsis and meningitis in young children. Today, protein conjugate Hib and pneumococcal vaccines have virtually eliminated Hib and pneumococcal disease where these vaccines are used routinely.

In 2011 Edwards was awarded a contract by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct comprehensive pneumonia surveillance studies in more than 2,000 adults and children with community-acquired pneumonia. These studies established the burden and etiology of pneumonia in children and adults.

Edwards has extensive experience in leading National Institutes of Health-funded multicenter initiatives; in designing, conducting and analyzing pivotal Phase I, II and III clinical studies on vaccines and therapeutics; in facilitating networking with basic and clinical investigators with a wide range of interests and expertise; and in mentoring many of the investigators who currently lead vaccine research programs both locally and globally.

For the past decade, she has led a CDC-funded Center for Immunization Safety Assessment site at Vanderbilt, where she and her colleagues assess adverse events associated with vaccines in subjects of all ages.

For many years Edwards was the principal investigator for a Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit contract funded by the NIH and has received continuous support from the NIH and CDC for decades.

She has published more than 650 research publications, many with her trainees and mentees. Previous honors include the 2018 Maxwell Finland Award for Scientific Achievement from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

Tennessee Bank & Trust adds industry veterans

Tennessee Bank & Trust has hired Chet Alexander as chief credit officer and Sandi Lanier as executive vice president, operations and compliance. In these roles, Alexander and Lanier will oversee all credit and lending restructuring and the strategic operations and lending compliance for the bank, respectively.

Alexander has more than 25 years of credit experience, focusing on commercial and agricultural lending and loan operations. Before joining Tennessee Bank & Trust, he held several senior level positions at Simmons Bank. He also served as chief credit officer for First State Bank, where he spent 16 years.

Alexander holds a degree in business administration from the University of Tennessee at Martin and holds multiple certifications in the banking and lending space.

Lanier brings more than four decades of financial services expertise, including an extensive background managing various loan operational areas. Most recently, Lanier served as executive vice president of operations & compliance for CapStar Bank in Nashville. While there, she was responsible for the deposit operation, loan operation and compliance departments of the bank, including overseeing the restructuring of its loan operations department and the creation of its compliance department.

Mayernick honored for children’s charity work

Mike Mayernick, wealth management adviser at Mayernick & Associates with Northwestern Mutual in Nashville, has won the 2019 Invest in Others Global Impact Award, one of five national community service awards recently presented at the 13th Annual Invest in Others Awards Gala in Boston.

Mayernick earned the honor for his charitable work with Love One International, which received a $45,000 donation from the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation. Mayernick was one of three national finalists for the award.

Mayernick and his wife, Suzanne, founded Love One International, which serves more than 6,000 children and families a year in the impoverished Masindi District of Uganda, the region from which they adopted their daughter 10 years ago.

Mayernick’s goal was to help create the international nonprofit, fund it, grow it and serve the community in order to change the dire circumstances for children and their families. Today, Love One provides life-saving medical and rehabilitative care, food distribution, school tuition, and training in best practices in farming and child care in order to encourage empowerment and sustainability. Love One is now fundraising to build a larger medical recovery center that can serve 100 children.

“We are trying to save lives,” Mayernick said. “There are literally people dying from things than can be prevented. It’s a privilege to help people in need and really rewarding when we can help people who don’t have anything.”

The Invest in Others Awards program recognizes the charitable work of financial advisers in communities across the country and around the world. The Global Impact Award is presented annually to a financial adviser who has made a lasting impact on a community in another country by actively serving as a volunteer for at least three years with a charity whose primary mission is to help those who live outside the United States. Winners are selected based on their leadership, dedication, contribution, inspiration, and impact on a nonprofit and the community it serves.

Tucker named CEO of ‘Name That Country Tune’

Nelson Tucker has been named CEO of the new television game show, Name That Country Tune, to be taped in Nashville in early 2020.

Name That Country Tune LLC is a Nashville-based production company that will produce the show featuring Country Music recording artists raising money for their favorite charity.

Tucker is the executive producer and creator of the concept. He has 27 years of television production experience and hosted “You Asked for It” in the early 1990s.

He also is a songwriter with 31 published country songs. He is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Association International, Songwriters Hall of Fame, Songwriters Guild of America, and Academy of Country Music.

Top 30 Under 30 annual list announced

The Middle Tennessee chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation recently announced its 2020 class of Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30.

Each year, the foundation announces Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30, which recognizes the city’s most active young professionals and philanthropists younger than 30. This 16-week recognition program and philanthropic competition raises funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s work to develop ways to control and cure cystic fibrosis. This year’s Top 30 Under 30 class is:

• Mallory Acheson, Nelson, Mullins, Riley, Scarborough

• Ben Bartholomew, InstaMed

• Tyler Cauble, The Cauble Group

• Tiara Coleman, Enterprise Rent a Car

• Sam Deaton, Coleman Realty Company

• Rob Eakin, Eakin Partners, LLC

• Ellen “Ellie” Estes, Southwestern Investment Group

• Elam Freeman, Baker Storey McDonald Properties

• Travis Frew, Royal Caribbean International

• Daniel Goodman, Trilliant Health

• Will Hatfield, BB&T Bank

• Hannah Kay Hunt-Freeman, Butler Snow

• Danielle Johns, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP

• Kelsie Lancaster, Bridgestone Americas, Inc.

• Will Loeffell, Franklin American Mortgage A Division of Citizens Bank

• Racquel Martin, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, LLP

• Sarah Matthews, PwC

• Ann Hogan Murphy, Lewis Thomason King Krieg & Waldrop, PC

• Sarah Neese, Elliott Davis

• Ann Ralls Niewold-Brown, Stites & Harbison, PLLC

• Jeanette Opheim, Fishbowl Spirits, LLC

• Cole Parrish, Southeast Venture

• Tabitha Robinson, Nashville Electric Service

• Samantha Simpson, The Office of the Tennessee Attorney General

• Spencer Sweat, DevDigital

• Jordan Thomas, Jordan Thomas Foundation

• Patrick Thomas, Vaco

• William Upchurch, Schneider Electric

• Courtney Vick, Cumberland University

• Roger Waynick, Office of Customer Focused Government, State of Tennessee

The honorees were nominated by their co-workers, family and friends for their contributions to Nashville’s charitable and professional fields.

Union Station names sales, marketing director

Union Station Hotel Nashville, managed by Sage Hospitality, has promoted Trevor Bondarchuk to director of sales & marketing.

Bondarchuk moved to Nashville to join the Union Station Hotel team as director of sales in May 2019 after more than a decade of experience in the industry. In his new role, Bondarchuk is responsible for the daily sales efforts, development of customer experiences and brand communication for the hotel.

Before Union Station Hotel, Bondarchuk spent two years as the director of group sales and events for Sage Hospitality in the Pacific Northwest, as well as two years as the director of sales and events for Viejas Casino & Resort in San Diego and seven years as Hyatt Hotels & Resorts’ senior sales manager in California and Hawaii.

Originally from Canada, he studied at the University of Manitoba and The Ministry of Advanced Education in Vancouver.