The Neeley School of Business is home to a distinguished network of health care educators, researchers and industry leaders who create a dynamic environment for interdisciplinary learning at the intersection of business and health care. Connect with Patrick Crocker or Kristin Tesmer to discover how Neeley is shaping the future of health care innovation and excellence.
Primary Faculty Leaders
Patrick Crocker
Associate Professor of Health Care Practice
Faculty Director, Graduate Health Care Program
Management and Leadership Department
Patrick is an Associate Professor of Healthcare Practice at TCU's Neeley School of Business and an Associate Professor of Medical Education at TCU's Burnett School of Medicine, where he focuses on the intersection of policy, strategy, and leadership in health care. Prior to TCU, Patrick was a Senior Director and Senior Corporate Counsel at U.S. Anesthesia Partners (USAP), a healthcare strategy consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and spent over 10 years as an active duty Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army. Additionally, he is the founder and principal for Crocker Solutions, LLC, which provides strategy consulting and legal services to early stage companies and entrepreneurs in DFW and throughout the United States. Patrick holds a BS from Texas Christian University, an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a JD from the University of Richmond School of Law.
Kristin Tesmer
Assistant Professor of Health Care Practice
Assistant Director, Graduate Health Care Program
Management and Leadership Department
Forthcoming
Additional Teaching and Research Faculty
Maureen Kenney
Associate Director
Instructor
Professional Development Center
M.S., University of Texas at Arlington
maureen.j.kenney@tcu.edu
Kelly Slaughter
Professor of Professional Practice
Information Systems and Supply Chain Management Department
Forthcoming
Sriram Thirumalai
Associate Professor
Information Systems and Supply Chain Management Department
Forthcoming
Mary Uhl-Bien
Professor
Chair, Management and Leadership Department
BNSF Railway Endowed Professor of Leadership
Management and Leadership Department
Mary Uhl-Bien is the BNSF Railway Endowed Professor of Leadership in the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University (TCU). Prior to joining Neeley she was the Howard Hawks Chair in Business Ethics and Leadership at the University of Nebraska. She has also been a Visiting Scholar in Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Spain.
Mary’s research focuses on complexity leadership, relational leadership, and followership. She has published multiple books and numerous articles in journals including Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and The Leadership Quarterly. Her work has been funded with a grant from Booz Allen Hamilton, and her research contributions have been recognized with two Decennial Awards and multiple Best Paper Awards. She was noted as the #6 Most Influential Leadership Scholar from 1990-2017 in an analysis by Zhou & Li in The Leadership Quarterly in 2019, and was identified in Poets & Quants as a Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professor in 2018.
Mary is a co-founder of the Network of Leadership Scholars (NLS) in the Academy of Management and was elected as both Division Chair and Representative-at-Large for Organizational Behavior, the largest division in the Academy with over 6000 members. She is active in executive education nationally and internationally, delivering workshops and classes for the Brookings Institute, the Gallup Organization, and universities in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe. She has given keynote presentations around the world and was a regular commentator for CNBC Squawk Box. She participated in a Fulbright-Hays grant to Mexico during the summer of 2003 and trained Russian businesspeople for the American Russian Center and in Magadan, Russia as part of a USAID grant at the University of Alaska Anchorage from 1993-1996. She served as an executive consultant for State Farm Insurance Co. from 1998-2004.
Scott Ransom
Health Care Faculty-in-Residence
Dr. Scott Ransom leverages deep understanding of the diverse healthcare ecosystem to create substantial value for both legacy and start-up organizations with 12 years’ experience as a top strategy consulting firm partner and 20 years as a provider executive, health services researcher, and practicing academic obstetrician. He has served as an advisor to health systems, physician groups, payers, life sciences organizations, private equity-backed portfolio companies and various other start-ups on topics related to strategy-enabled transformation, organizational effectiveness and redesign, partnership and growth strategy, M&A, value-based care, digital strategy, physician performance, women’s and children’s health, and creating an investment thesis.
Community Mentors and Coaches
Ben Isgur
Vice President, Health Care Thought Leadership
Fidelity Investments
Ben Isgur has spent more than 25 years guiding US and global health benefit leaders and decision makers with industry intelligence and research-based perspectives. His work informs business leaders on the interdependencies between the health industry, benefit trends and the employee experience.
An author, Ben has written numerous reports, which have been cited by leaders across the health industry. He is frequently interviewed and quoted by journalists, is an accomplished speaker, and has given keynote addresses on diverse topics, from the drivers of US medical cost trend to the rise of the healthcare consumer’s voice.
Prior to joining Fidelity Investments, Ben founded a health research institute for a global consulting firm, where he led a team of industry experts, policy analysts and economists dedicated to developing original and independent thought leadership. Ben also developed health policy as a legislative director in the Texas House of Representatives and as a government relations officer for the City of Austin.
Ben received a master's degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin where he was a US Department of Defense fellow. Ben is a fellow with the American College of Healthcare Executives and serves as a board member for multiple health-related not-for-profits.
Areas of Expertise for Mentorship and Coaching
- Employer health benefits
- Health industry management consulting
- Health related research and policy issues
Justin John
Business Operations Manager, Emergency Services
JPS Health Network
Justin John currently serves as the Business Operations Manager for Emergency Services at JPS Health Network in Fort Worth, Texas. He has been in his current role since August 2023. He first joined JPS as an Administrative Fellow in June 2022 and has had the opportunity to collaborate with various leaders of the network and engage in departmental projects and strategic initiatives. Through his Administrative Fellowship at JPS, he enjoyed many performance improvement and organization development projects across multiple departments and has appreciated the opportunity to be a part of a great mission to be intentional with the community.
Justin has extensive experience in leadership development, nonprofit management/community outreach, as well as volunteer management through his involvement in Tri Sci Professions, a national career advancement nonprofit he founded and has led since 2015. Prior to becoming an Administrative Fellow, he served as a Graduate Administrative Intern at Houston Methodist Hospital. Justin holds a Master’s of Health Administration (MHA) from Saint Louis University and a Bachelor’s of Science in Neuroscience from UT Dallas.
He is looking forward to serving the students of TCU and is excited to share his experiences and contribute to their growth and success.
Areas of Expertise for Mentorship and Coaching
- Prospective Administrative Fellows
- Hospital Operations
- Project Management
Chris Kalish
President & CEO
PrimeStone Learning
M. Christine (Chris) Kalish, MBA, CMPE, serves as the chief executive for PrimeStone Learning, a company that creates sustainable business results for its clients by leveraging a network of trusted advisors who work collaboratively to provide strategic solutions, in addition to supporting the learning needed for success. She is a thought leader and strategist for emerging and expanding healthcare organizations, providing future-focused solutions, staying acutely aware of what is upcoming to help her clients be prepared for what is next. She uniquely addresses the whole organization, taking into consideration the partnership that must exist among the individual players to more positively move from strategy and tactics to long term results. Her experience includes leadership of specialty practices and multiple consulting projects in ambulatory care, focused around leadership and change.
Kalish is a passionate researcher with a strong background in academia and thrives on sharing her knowledge as a speaker, teacher, and author. She assimilates information quickly in order to provide adaptable solutions that are innovative and progressive. She is a co-author of the Simple Guide to Hiring Series and “Advanced Strategy for Medical Practice Leaders: Human Resources Management Edition”, both published by the Medical Group Management Association.
Kalish holds a Bachelor of Science in Health Services Administration from UT Southwestern Allied Health Sciences School and an MBA from TCU’s Neeley School of Business. She is a Certified Management Practice Executive through the Medical Group Management Association and has a certificate in Business Process Analysis from UT Austin. She is a graduate of Leadership Texas and Leadership Fort Worth.
Areas of Expertise for Mentorship and Coaching
- Ambulatory Care
- Physician practice models
- Revenue cycle and finance
Stephanie Robinson
Darin Szilagyi
Ken Weitzel
Research Director and Expert Partner
Advisory Board Company
Ken Weitzel currently serves as a research director and expert partner at the Advisory Board Company, a leading healthcare industry research and advisory firm. Mr. Weitzel specializes in the macroeconomic impacts in health care, and regularly presents and leads discussions on the Board’s “State of the Healthcare Industry” research, with audiences large and small. Other areas in which Mr. Weitzel helps clients include growth of specialty practices in provider organizations, digital health issues like artificial intelligence and the workforce, cybersecurity for health systems, and enterprise information technology. He has recently been tapped to lead workshops on the healthcare workforce. Mr. Weitzel just completing a research project on the “abrasion” between health systems and health plans.
Prior to joining the Advisory Board, Mr. Weitzel served in executive advisory roles at AWS, Forrester, and Slalom Consulting. For 15 years he served as a principal executive advisor and facilitator at CEB, now Gartner, in IT, strategy, and HR, where he also led the research team for information risk for 4 years. Mr. Weitzel also had a 20-year international career in IT consulting with such firms as Accenture, PepsiCo, and Hewlett Packard.
Mr. Weitzel serves on the Alumni Advisory Board of the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin and is an emeritus member of the executive committee. He participates in the Prison Entrepreneurship Program as a guest executive and post-release facilitator. Mr. Weitzel has been involved with the Boy Scouts of America for 20 years, and currently acts as faculty for the Woodbadge adult leadership training program, and the National Youth Leadership Training courses, where he teaches courses in ethical decision making. He has taught Consulting at TCU’s Neeley school since 2017.
Mr. Weitzel lives in Dallas with his wife Celia, a TCU alumna. Their son Braden is a UT Austin Graduate, and their daughter Lindsay is a UT Houston Medical School graduate who recently started her residency at UTSW/Parkland Hospital.
Kyle White
Lieutenant Colonel, Medical Service Corps, U.S. Army
Faculty Lecturer, Army-Baylor University Program in Health and Business Administration US Army Medical Center of Excellence (MEDCOE), TRADOC
Forthcoming
John York
Lecturer and Lead Instructor at UCSD, Rady School of Management and Jacobs School of Engineering (IGE)
Principal and CEO, Akita Biomedical
John M. York, PharmD, MBA brings 35 years in the biopharmaceutical business. After receiving his doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Michigan, York was the first graduate of the Rutgers Pharmaceutical Industry Fellowship program. He also completed his MBA at Kelley School of Business (Indiana University) and certificates in Life Science Business Management and Marketing through UC Berkeley. His industry career included increasing roles of responsibility at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Amgen, Allergan, and HDI. York has started three businesses: Akita Biomedical, MD Eyecare, and Ophthalmic Research and Education Consultants. His firm Akita Biomedical, a 20-year-old medical communications and strategy firm, has engaged with various life science firms (from startups to large multinationals) via publication programs, advisory boards, education programs, market research, and business planning. He has taught at the Orfalea College of Business (Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo), the Rady School of Management and Jacobs School of Engineering at UC, San Diego, and the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. York has served in faculty and mentor roles at Ahmedabad University (Amrut Mody School of Management), the University of Tsukuba, the ANHS ScaleUp HealthCare Academy, the Global Entrepreneurship Accelerator program for Korea, and the National Science Foundation I-CORPS™ program at UC, San Diego, and the Arab Academy program at Cal Poly. His current teaching responsibilities include being the co-director of the capstone projects class for the translational medicine certificate program, lead instructor for the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur at UC, San Diego, and adjunct faculty at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy Rutgers Pharmaceutical Industry Fellowship program. He currently serves on the scientific board for JD Biosciences. He recently accepted a part-time appointment as a clinical assistant professor of medical education at the Burnett School of Medicine at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth. He has authored over 51 publications (with 36 in business and entrepreneurship) personally, with over 175 (including 14 translational medicine articles) for various clients. His case study on CVS Health and the Amazon/PillPack challenge received an Emerald Publishing Literary Award for outstanding publication in 2022. A past associate editor of Cancer Control, he serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology and Archives of Business Administration. As invited faculty, York has presented at R&D Pharma, Bio International, MBC Labs, Rutgers University, the University of Tsukuba/Kyoto Workshop, and the UCSD/JETRO Biotechnology Commercialization Workshop. His Bio Startup Bootcamp presentation ended up as his fifth in the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, and his Tsukuba/Kyoto workshop as two new additions to this journal. Finally, York is a candidate for a PhD in leadership and management at the Cranfield School of Management in the United Kingdom, focusing on entrepreneurship and strategy, and will be defending his dissertation this upcoming fall.