Session Descriptions and Speaker Bios
Pre-Conference Session: Re-Strategizing the Strategist's Role in a World of AI
This 90-minute interactive session will give strategists of all levels the opportunity to explore, recognize and strategize how their current roles may evolve with the use of AI. Using a Strategic Foresight framework, participants will examine shifts in industry and technology, challenge existing conceptions of the strategist’s role, and explore career scenario planning to better prepare for multiple possible futures. Through interactive discussion, personal career design and a “live lab” using an AI tool, participants will consider what will change, what will be new, what strategists will be held accountable for, and why their role is imperative to ensuring AI is successful. Participants will leave with a broader understanding of industry and role changes, insights from their peers, and practical tools and techniques to continue designing and managing their own careers as AI reshapes how strategists think, work and lead.
Liz Vogel, Founder, The Byrnes Group
Liz Vogel is the founder of The Byrnes Group and an organizational development strategist and futurist with four decades of experience helping senior leaders and organizations navigate change, growth, and reinvention. Her career spans healthcare, technology, global business, and public service, including serving as CEO of a state regional healthcare organizationand Senior Director of Organizational Development at Moffitt Cancer Center. Liz has led enterprise transformation, healthcare product development, executive strategic foresight, and culture-change initiatives, including introduction of global technologies. She brings a distinctive perspective to the evolving role of the strategist—connecting emerging technologies with the human judgment, organizational readiness, and change leadership required to use them well. Liz holds a master’s degree in counseling and psychology, is certified in strategic foresight, with a focus on adult development and reinvention.
Road to Nowhere? Health Care Reform after the 2026 Elections
What will the 2026 elections mean for the future of U.S. health care policy? This session will examine the evolving political and policy landscape, what the election results could mean for health care reform, and the implications for health systems navigating an increasingly complex environment.
Jonathan Oberlander, PhD, Professor of Social Medicine and Health Policy & Management, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jonathan Oberlander is professor of Social Medicine in the School of Medicine and professor of Health Policy & Management in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Oberlander’s research and teaching interests include health care politics and policy, health care reform, Medicare, and American politics and public policy.
Oberlander speaks regularly on US health care, trying to translate the complexity and technical detail of health policy into something more understandable and accessible. He has commented on health care politics for a number of media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, the BBC, CBS News, and PBS.
Oberlander holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from Yale University, and a B.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.