Leadership
The people behind the platform.
Scott T. Massey, Ph.D. is Founding Chairman and CEO of
Global Action Platform, the leading university-business alliance
advancing scalable, sustainable solutions for abundant food, health, and prosperity. Headquartered in Nashville, Global Action Platform is the regional convener of the major universities of Middle Tennessee and an international platform for business, academic, investment, government, and NGO collaboration. In addition to his leadership role at Global Action Platform, Dr. Massey is Managing Partner for Global Partnership for Sustainable Solutions, an international development corporation focused on comprehensive development strategies for emerging markets. Dr. Massey is a member of Michael Porter’s Microeconomics of Competitiveness global network.
A published author, speaker, university advisor, strategy consultant, and Emmy-Award nominated television documentary producer, Dr. Massey works on initiatives that connect academic, business, investment, and government sectors, principally in innovation economic development.
Remy Szykier is Chief Health Data and Strategy Officer at Global Action Platform and the worldwide managing director, founding member and member of the Board of Directors of Aegis Health Analytics. In her leadership roles at Aegis, she is ultimately responsible for all aspects of the firm’s strategy, team and operations across all worldwide offices. She has championed the firm's commitment to delivering the best record of client results in promoting and protecting health.
At Global Action Platform, Remy works with government agencies, investors, corporations, universities and NGOs, to develop scalable solutions addressing the social determinants of health.
Jeffrey R. Balser, Dean, School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Vanderbilt University, served as Associate Dean for Physician Scientists at Vanderbilt and was appointed the Gwathmey Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology. Under his leadership, Vanderbilt’s clinical services supporting surgery and intensive care medicine grew by 25%. In 2004, he became the Chief Research Officer for the Vanderbilt Medical Center, heading a period of significant expansion that moved Vanderbilt into 10th place among U.S. medical schools in National Institutes of Health funding. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and has chaired the NIH Director’s Pioneer Awards Committee. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. His clinical work has primarily involved the care of postoperative cardiac surgery patients in ICU settings.
Sharon P. Shoemaker, PhD, is Executive Director Emeritus and Founder of the California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research (CIFAR) at UC Davis. She is an industry innovation leader and a founding member of UC Davis’ Global HealthShare®. Shoemaker catalyzes strategic growth for multi-disciplinary research initiatives and partnerships between university, business and government sectors in the USA, China, Japan, and other nations. Through CIFAR, Shoemaker provides highly effective confabs and foresight trend studies that engage vital discussions and disseminate new ideas, research insights, emerging technologies and industry partnerships. She has been a long-time science advisor and pioneer for U.S. DOE USDA, and the American Chemical Society. She is the editor-in-chief of a new Nature Partner Journal: Science of Food, and serves as an advisor to the Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology.
Cheryl E. Harrison is Executive Board Chair of the Vivia Foundation, where she develops innovative initiatives and facilitates sustainability programs in food and health, to benefit the livelihoods of regions in the USA, European Union, India, Asia and other regions around the world. Ms. Harrison’s leadership experience with businesses, universities, organizations and new ventures incorporate her keen ability to visualize and implement strategic goals, create solutions, build cross-channel communications, advocate, launch and implement new ventures. Ms. Harrison worked closely with the Global Action Platform and Summit since its inception in 2012.
Harrison has lead innovative multinational branding and marketing initiatives for Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial businesses, government agencies, non-profit organizations and NGOs. She is proficient in creating innovative and integrated brand programs – ranging from market assessment and research to creative direction and program initiation. Throughout her career, Ms. Harrison founded and supported food, health, social and creative arts companies and initiatives, cultivating relationships among numerous philanthropies and foundations and corporations. She works as a Director for Harrison Design Group and for PopPack LLC, creating sustainable solutions for the consumer packaging industry.
Over the past 20 years, she served as a leader and advisor to the University of California, Davis, a Trustee for the UC Davis Foundation and as a chairperson for the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Advisory Council, where she received the Award of Distinction for the College, and was recognized with the UC Davis Alumni Service Award. She is a member of the California Institute for Food and Agricultural Research and member of the Food Valley NL at Wageningen in the Netherlands. In San Francisco, she actively participated on various executive boards of non-profit academic, arts, education and civic organizations where she was honored with San Francisco’s Woman Entrepreneur Award. Ms. Harrison is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, with academic degrees in both Applied Behavioral Sciences and Environmental Design.
Dr. Christian H.K. Ketels, faculty member, Harvard Business School, leads Prof. Michael E. Porter’s research team at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. Dr. Ketels has led cluster and competitiveness projects in many countries and advised governments and international organizations on economic policy issues. Christian is President of TCI, Honorary Professor at the European Business School, Wiesbaden (Germany), and is the chair of the academic advisory board of ORKESTRA The Basque Competitiveness Institute. He currently serves on the advisory boards of The Baltic Development Forum, the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Universidad de los Andes, the Center for Competitiveness at the University Fribourg, and is a special advisor to the Asia Competitiveness Institute. Dr. Ketels is a member of the selection committee for the Spitzencluster-Initiative (Germany) and served on the European Commission's European Cluster Policy Group.
Edmon Begoli Ph.D. is Chief Data Architect at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and previously served as Chief Technology Officer at PYA Analytics, LLC, where he had primary responsibility for technology vision, strategy and research, and development of advanced analytic products and solutions. Dr. Begoli is also a Chief Data Officer and research scientist with Joint Institute for Computational Sciences (JICS), a leadership academic research and computing facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee managed jointly by University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
Dr. Begoli has been a technical architect for more than 18 years, serving in various technology leadership roles at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, Laboratory Corporation of America, and Lucent Technologies. His work on large scale analytic has been published in numerous international professional and research publications. Edmon holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee.
Global Action Summit & Report participants are global leaders devoted to solutions for food, health and prosperity.
