Chief Executive Officer and Director
Dr. Williams is the founding Chief Executive Officer of Pharos Innovations. He is responsible for setting the vision and overseeing the execution of Pharos' mission to transform healthcare through patient engagement in self-care. He has 16 years of executive experience developing chronic care monitoring programs.
Dr. Williams graduated with honors from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine at the University of Minnesota, where he also served as chief resident. Dr. Williams specialized in cardiology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, with an emphasis on the care of congestive heart failure and cardiac transplantation. In 1995, Dr. Williams was recruited to Northwestern University in Chicago to develop their congestive heart failure program. There he created and developed one of the nation’s first and most successful chronic care programs. He served as Chairman of Care Management for the IPA oversee the development of the group’s care management department, with responsibility for over 120,000 at-risk lives. Currently, he serves on the Executive Committee of the Board for the Care Continuum Alliance, where he chairs the Governmental Affairs Committee. He is an author and frequent speaker on topics related to population health, physician leadership, and healthcare transformation.
Dennis Sweeney
Chairman and Director
Dennis Sweeney has served as Chairman of the Board and Director of Pharos Innovation since 2004. Mr. Sweeney received his AB in Economics from Princeton University and his MBA, with distinction, from the Harvard Business School.
Mr. Sweeney was a generalist senior partner at McKinsey & Company, Inc., with recent work focusing in the high tech and electronic commerce sectors. Virtually all his work is at the CEO level and working directly with Boards of Directors. His expertise is in corporate and business unit strategy, shareholder value maximization, CEO and top management team counseling and agenda development, as well as multiple operations and sales functional areas. Mr. Sweeney has done substantial work in the high tech, healthcare and energy industries. He received the Meritorious Service Medal for superior contribution and impact while serving in the United States Army. Some of his accomplishments in the military include Field Artillery Officer Basic School; Airborne School; Ranger School; 1st Battalion, 94th Field Artillery; 1st Armored Division, Furth, Germany – Firing Battery Executive Officer; Nuclear Weapons Officer.
Edward McC. Blair, Jr.
Director
Ed Blair, Jr. has been a director of Pharos Innovations since 2004. He received his AB from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Mr. Blair joined William Blair & Company, L.L.C., in 1974 where he is currently a senior healthcare banker.
Mr. Blair was a director of Research Medical, Inc., until it was sold to Baxter International, Inc., and was a director of Interleukin Genetics until a private company purchased control. He is a General Partner of Crabtree Ventures, LLC, a venture capital company focusing on the application of mathematics to business issues. Mr. Blair is currently on the Board of Trustees for The George M. Pullman Educational Foundation. He is also a chairman emeritus of the Chicago Zoological Society (Brookfield Zoo).
Dennis Drislane
Director
Dennis Drislane has been a director of Pharos Innovations since 2004. He received a BS in Business Adminstration from California State University, and a Master of Science degree in Management Information Systems also from California State University.
In a career that spanned 24 years, Mr. Drislane held a number of executive positions at Electronic Data Systems, including president of the healthcare strategic business unit.He left EDS in 1997 to join Healtheon as an officer during the start-up phase and went through a successful initial public offering in 1999 following a merger with WebMD. Mr. Drislane sits on the boards of several private healthcare companies, and is a partner at BelHealth Investment Partners, a private equity firm focused on healthcare.
Edward F.X. Hughes, MD, MPH
Director
Dr. Ed Hughes has been a director of Pharos Innovations since 2004. He received his AB from Amherst College, his MD degree from Harvard Medical School, and his Masters in Public Health from Columbia University.,
Dr. Hughes is professor of Health Industry Management and Management and Strategy in the Kellogg School of Management and Professor of Preventive Medicine in The Medical School, Northwestern University. He is also the originator of Northwestern's joint MD/Masters of Management Degree Program, one of the first programs of its kind in the United States. Dr. Hughes is one of the five co-founders of the Association for Health Services Research. He has also served as a member of the board of directors of The Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine. He was the founding Editor of "HMO/PPO Trends," is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of "Medical Interface;" "Health Business Digest;" and Group Health News. He is the Editor of the book, Perspectives on Quality in American Healthcare, published by McGraw-Hill. He was chosen by Faulkner and Gray's Health Information Center as a charter member of "The Healthcare 500," now "The Healthcare 1500," a directory of the most influential Americans in the field of health policy. He was also chosen as a charter member of the "Managed Care 1500."