Speakers

2020 Keynote Speaker

Clay Marsh

Clay Marsh, MD, is West Virginia University’s chief health officer, and serves as a member of President E. Gordon Gee’s leadership team.  As WVU’s vice president for health sciences, he oversees five health sciences schools and three health campuses. He also serves on the governing boards that determine policy and priorities for WVU Medicine and its component organizations. In addition, as executive dean, he is the leader of the WVU School of Medicine.

In his role as WVU’s health leader, he has mobilized resources across the University to help WVU Medicine become the leading employer in the state and to build signature programs of excellence in the areas of heart and vascular care, cancer prevention and treatment, women's and children’s health, trauma and critical care and neurological health and disease. He also has focused resources on areas of emphasis, including opioid addiction, diabetes and obesity.

As part of WVU’s efforts to address the opioid crisis in West Virginia and the nation, he organized a Substance Abuse Task Force to coordinate and strengthen the activities of the University’s patient care enterprise, research and teaching faculty, and administration in this area. He was a participant in the White House Symposium on the development of centers of academic excellence in addiction medicine. He participated in policy discussions with state and national leaders in education, research and public policy to advance these efforts.

Considered a national leader in personalized and academic medicine, Dr. Marsh has acquired more than $20 million in National Institutes of Health funding as principal investigator, co-PI, co-investigator and mentor. He has published more than 140 papers in peer-reviewed journals. His clinical interest is in determining how to help individuals stay healthy and defining a person’s biological age using genetic approaches. He is currently focusing on how to create precision health resources for people in West Virginia and beyond as a key strategy for improving health outcomes while reducing healthcare spending.

Marsh holds more than 20 patents or patent disclosures. He has mentored more than 50 MD, MD/PhD and PhD doctoral students, post-doctoral researchers and junior faculty, being honored numerous times with faculty teaching awards.

He is a two-time graduate of West Virginia University, earning an undergraduate degree in biology in 1981 and a medical degree in 1985.

Prior to his appointment to the WVU leadership team in 2014, he served as senior associate vice president, chief innovation officer and the leader in personalized medicine at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.

Dr. Marsh served as both vice dean for research and vice dean for Innovation in the College of Medicine, where he founded the IDEA Studio in healthcare application and design. Dr. Marsh serves on several national scientific advisory committees and on the scientific advisory committee for Caris Life Sciences. He is a Fellow in the American College of Physicians and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Track Speakers

Paul Daugherty

President & CEO, Philanthropy West Virginia

Paul D. Daugherty is President & CEO of Philanthropy West Virginia, the leadership network advancing the impact of grantmaking foundations, corporate giving, individual philanthropists, and professional advisors based in or serving West Virginia and central Appalachia. From an early age, Paul is building partnerships to make the impossible, possible for communities forgotten and marginalized by building partnerships across diverse perspectives and priorities creating community transformations.  Daugherty is a recognized leader who volunteers his time on numerous local, state, and national organization boards. He is currently a 2020 Presidential Leadership Scholar and honored with numerous awards for his civic involvement, leadership, and philanthropic impact.

Scott Myers

Professor and Chair Department of Communication Studies, West Virginia University

Scott A. Myers (Ph.D., Kent State University) is a Professor, Department Chair, and Peggy Rardin McConnell Endowed Teaching Chair in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University (WVU), where he teaches courses in instructional, organizational, and positive communication. He has been recognized by the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences as a Woodburn Professor (2005-2007) and as an Outstanding Teacher in 2010. He is a past President of the Central States Communication Association and was the founding editor of the Journal of Communication Pedagogy. His most recent textbook--Communication and Relationship Maintenance--was published in June 2019.

Kathryn Williamson

Teaching Assistant Professor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, West Virginia University

Kathryn Williamson specializes in physics and astronomy outreach. While at the Green Bank Observatory in 2013, she founded the WV Science Public Outreach Team (SPOT), which trains college ambassadors to deliver interactive STEM presentations to K-12 audiences around the state, reaching approximately 4,000 students each year. Her current work focuses on building persistence of rural, first-generation college STEM majors through "The First 2 Network" (F2N), an NSF INCLUDES Alliance. During Spring 2020, she led a 3-credit special topics Honors course at WVU called "Ambassadors for Change," which empowers students as leaders to enact change ideas within and beyond the university.

More speakers will be listed in the coming weeks.

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