Waller adds health care attorneys

Friday, September 26, 2014, Vol. 38, No. 39

Waller has announced the hiring of Steven E. Blumenthal and Kristen F. Johns to the law firm’s Nashville office.

Blumenthal is a veteran transactional attorney with extensive health care information technology and data privacy and security experience. Johns most recently served as assistant general counsel with Emdeon, a leading provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions.

Blumenthal’s practice has focused on the negotiation of electronic health record agreements, HIT interface development agreements, HIPAA business associate agreements and acquisitions of information technology systems. Previously, he served as general counsel of Carfax, a provider of automotive vehicle history reports.

Blumenthal earned his J.D. in 1995 from the University of Virginia School of Law. He earned his B.A. from Tulane University.

Johns has spent her legal career strategically protecting and maximizing intellectual property assets, both in private practice and in-house roles. With Emdeon, she advised product development teams on a broad range of matters related to intellectual property, including branding, marketing, privacy and data rights.

Johns earned her J.D. in 2000 from the Saint Louis University School of Law. She earned her B.S. in 1995 in engineering science from Vanderbilt University.

Insurance litigator joins Frost Brown Todd

Scott R. Brown, a front-line insurance litigator at Frost Brown Todd, is relocating to the Music City to expand and enhance the firm’s Nashville presence in the insurance and construction industries.

Brown has represented insurers, contractors and other business clients in numerous state and federal cases out of the firm’s Cincinnati office for the past 18 years. He is extensively involved in professional organizations working to prevent insurance fraud and is current president of the National Society of Professional Insurance Investigators – an organization consisting of insurance representatives, fire fighters, police officers, accountants and attorneys across the country. He also is a member of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

He is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and earned his J.D. from the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University.

Bone McAllester Norton adds former Haslam aide

Bone McAllester Norton PLLC has hired Samar S. Ali. An international lawyer and former White House fellow, Ali also served as assistant commissioner for international affairs in Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration.

At Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development, Ali created a five-year international strategic plan for job growth among small- and medium-size enterprises and opened and managed investment recruitment and export development offices in key locations around the world.

At Bone McAllester Norton, she will focus on international, corporate, and administrative law. She also will focus on conflict resolution and mediation work, remaining active in private diplomacy.

Chosen as a White House Fellow in 2010, Ali worked on foreign and domestic policy issues relating to national security. She served as an advisor on the senior staff of U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, stationed in both Washington, D.C. and Doha, Qatar.

Ali also was an associate attorney focused on corporate law with the law firm of Hogan Lovells US LLP, where she worked in the firm’s head office in Washington DC and also in the United Arab Emirates, where she established that firm’s office in Abu Dhabi.

She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (B.A.’03), where she served as student body president, and of Vanderbilt University Law School (2006). She serves as a member of the Vanderbilt University Alumni Board, Vanderbilt University Law School Board of Trust, St. Thomas Medical Center Board, International Business Council of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Tennessee Justice Center Board of Directors, and the Junior board of Women in Numbers. She is also an Adjunct Professor with Vanderbilt University, where she teaches courses in international relations.

Crosslin expands entrepreneurial staff

Crosslin & Associates has expanded its entrepreneurial business services team with Ashlee Parton joining as an entrepreneurial accountant.

Before joining the firm, Parton worked as a staff accountant at Bane & Associates in Lebanon. She earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

UNH Services names officers, board of directors

United Neighborhood Health Services has elected its 2014 officers and board members.

• Scott Mertie, President of Kraft Healthcare Consulting, LLC, is the new board chair.

• Vice chair: Brenda Morrow, Edgehill Family Resource Center

• Treasurer: Glenn Hunter, Hunter and Beyond

• Secretary: Mary Robertson, Community Volunteer.

Officers will serve one-year terms that expire Sept. 1, 2015.

Newly elected board members, who have begun serving three-year terms, are Ramon Cisneros, president & CEO of Millennium Marketing LLC, publisher of La Campana newspaper, and James Comer, community volunteer.

Returning 2014 board members are: Leigh Binkley, quality specialist at United Healthcare; Jennifer Hamilton, Metro General Hospital; Marc Hill, Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce; Ken McKnight, regional housing facilitator at Park Center; Mary Owens, community volunteer; Ronnie Steine, Metro Council

UNHS is a private, non-profit network of neighborhood health centers that have served Nashville for more than 30 years. Through its eight Nashville neighborhood clinics, the Downtown and Mission Homeless Clinics, two mobile health units, and a clinic in Hartsville, UNHS annually serves approx. 25,000 medically underserved people of all ages.

VUMC’s Sanders named TRIAD medical director

Vanderbilt’s Kevin Sanders, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, has been named medical director for the Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD).

In partnership with the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, TRIAD is dedicated to improving assessment and treatment services for children with autism and their families through research, training and clinical programs.

As part of his duties as TRIAD medical director, Sanders will serve as a co-primary investigator of the Autism Speaks – Vanderbilt Autism Treatment Network site. He will support innovative pharmacological and medical intervention trials across the university and facilitate training and services for individuals with autism spectrum disorder across a variety of clinical programs.

Sanders came to Vanderbilt in 2009 to focus on clinical service and teaching programs and develop and study innovative pharmacological and medical interventions.

Prior to joining the Vanderbilt faculty, he spent nearly a decade in private practice following a general psychiatry residency at the University of North Carolina and clinical training in child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University.

Sanders has served as a lead investigator across a variety of clinical trials during his time at Vanderbilt with the aim of developing safe and efficacious treatments for individuals with ASD across the lifespan.

He also has served as an attending psychiatrist within the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital’s Child and Adolescent Unit and served on the consultation service at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.

Franklin to lead initiative for better minority health

Tené Hamilton Franklin has been named director of the Tennessee Department of Health Office of Minority Health and Disparities Elimination.

In this position, Franklin will facilitate and advocate for the development of policies, programs and services that appropriately respond to population health disparity issues across the state, especially those of racial and ethnic minority populations.

Prior to joining TDH, Franklin served as a genetic counselor at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, helping to provide support to families with members with disorders including sickle cell disease.

Franklin holds a master’s in genetic counseling from Howard University and a biology degree from the University of Virginia.

DVL promotes Button to vice president

DVL Public Relations & Advertising has promoted Lisa Button, who joined DVL in 2013, from senior account supervisor to vice president.

Button provides clients and stakeholders with more than 20 years of experience in communications and strategic marketing. At DVL, Button leads accounts in the health care and utilities industries.

Mayor Dean hires Magras, brings back Lance

Mayor Karl Dean has named LaRhonda Magras as director of Children and Youth Initiatives.

Magras brings more than 20 years of experience to the position, most recently as vice president of youth development at the Martha O’Bryan Center.

Dean also has announced that Diane Lance has returned to the Mayor’s Office as special counsel and will coordinate efforts around his initiatives to improve the community response to domestic violence.

Magras earned a master of science degree in human services administration from Spertus College and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Chicago State University.

At the Martha O’Bryan Center, Magras was responsible for developing and sustaining programs for students through the K-16 continuum. During her tenure there, she collaborated on several successful grants to develop programming and funding to support youth and families in poverty, including a U.S. Department of Education Promise Neighborhood planning grant, a U.S. Department of Justice Byrne grant to combat community violence, and a Nashville Career Advancement Center youth employment/education initiative.

In her previous role in the Mayor’s Office, Lance focused on public safety initiatives, including a safety assessment of Metro Government’s response to domestic violence.

Lance left the Mayor’s Office earlier this year to run for district attorney general of the 20th Judicial District.

Lance earned her bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University and immediately went to work as a counselor in a residential facility working with gang-entrenched youth. Lance then became program director for a homeless and domestic violence shelter.

Lance attended law school at the University of San Diego School of Law from 1991 to 1993 and Vanderbilt Law School as a visiting student from 1993 to 1994.