Symposium Presenter Bios

Maggie Buckley has been a patient advocate for more than 25 years while living with the chronic pain condition Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Maggie has served on the boards of several non-profit patient and professional organizations including The Pain Community who acts as the fiscal sponsor for AACIPM. She has testified at local, state and federal policy hearings, published articles, and coached hundreds of people to self-advocate for better care. Maggie has an M.B.A. in accounting with experience in banking and business management. In 2019, she became a Board-Certified Patient Advocate.

David Elton serves as Chief Strategy Officer for UHG Ventures Orthology. Previously he served in several leadership roles at Optum.

David has and continues to serve on advisory boards and working groups focusing on patient care and pain management, including the United Health Group Opioid Task Force and Pain Management Work Group, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

He has delivered several presentations on pain including before the American Physical Therapy Association and National Academy of Sciences.  Elton received his B.S., Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Northwestern Health Sciences University, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Before joining AOMA, Dr. Faria retired after 30 years as a healthcare executive/administrator. She spent 22 years with the Ascension Seton Healthcare System in Austin. She served as COO/VP/Administrator for Seton Southwest Hospital 17 years from the hospital’s opening until she retired on June 30, 2017. Before moving into healthcare administration, Dr. Faria started her career as an ICU and Diagnostics Specialty Respiratory Therapist. She is an adjunct professor at Texas State University and Concordia University. She serves on the AOMA and Concordia Institutional Review Board (IRB) and is a seminar lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin.  She received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation research was in the area of organizational change.  Dr. Faria has been involved in research in the area of human and organizational resilience and with Dr. Sheila Armitage presented findings at both the SXSW Conference and The Healthier Texas Summit.

Dr. Faria currently serves on several community advisory councils and not-for-profit boards. She is the board chair for the Austin Mayor’s Health and Fitness Council of Austin. Dr. Faria is also an accomplished age group distance runner, with local, national, and international age group race wins. She is also a triathlete. She teaches swimming to those fearful of water and was her age group winner in the 2016 Austin Fit Magazine’s Most Fit Competition.

Amy Goldstein serves as AACIPM’s Director. She founded Healthcare Collaboratives, LLC in 2019 to continue her passion for promoting access to quality, person-centered health care through alliance building and strategic collaboration. Amy was previously the Alliance Development Director for the Academy of Integrative Pain Management (AIPM). In that role, she was responsible for the creation, growth and sustainability of a national state-based and federal network to improve person-centered pain policy. Amy has been in the healthcare field for 25 years, advocating for people living with kidney failure, cancer, chronic pain, substance use disorder, mental health issues, and multiple sclerosis.

Nicole Hemmenway currently serves as CEO of the U.S. Pain Foundation, and directs the INvisible Project, an online and print magazine that highlights the experiences of people living with pain. Nicole is also an author and motivational speaker. Her book, No, It Is NOT in My Head: The Journey of a Chronic Pain Survivor from Wheelchair to Marathon, details her struggles and triumphs in dealing with complex regional pain syndrome, a debilitating neurological disorder. In September 2015, Nicole was featured in a campaign in USA Today in recognition of her role as an advocate for those living with chronic pain; and in 2017, she received the Unsung Hero Award for her work in the pain community. Nicole lives in the Bay Area with her husband and three young sons.

Dr. Shared Kohli Dr. Sharad Kohli is a family physician who has dedicated his career to advancing health equity. He has spent over 17 years working with Federally Qualified Health Centers in both urban and rural settings in California and Texas. He currently works at People’s Community Clinic, an FQHC in Austin, Texas, where he has spearheaded the development of an interprofessional pain management program.

Dr. Kohli previously served as the Director of Clinical Affairs for the Texas Association of Community Health Centers, where he provided clinical support to the more than 75 FQHCs through the state.

He was a founding Board Member and was instrumental in the growth and development of the national non-profit Integrative Medicine for the Underserved (IM4US), an interprofessional organization committed to health equity and justice through culturally-responsive, accessible, integrative care.

He also is an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Population Health at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, and is a Board Member of the Integrative Health Policy Consortium.

Dr. Shari M. Ling is currently the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Acting Chief Medical Officer serving in the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ), responsible for assisting the CMS Chief Medical Officer in the Agency’s pursuit of higher quality health care, healthier populations, and lower cost through quality improvement. Dr. Ling’s long-standing focus is on the achievement of meaningful health outcomes through delivery of high quality beneficiary-centered care across all care settings, with a special interest in the care of persons with multiple chronic conditions and functional limitations, and reducing health disparities.

Dr. Ling has served as the lead coordinator and facilitator of the CCSQ Measures Forum. Dr. Ling represents CMS on the Health and Human Services (HHS) Multiple Chronic Conditions workgroup, and the National Quality Forum Measures Application Partnership Post-acute Care/Long-term Care workgroup, and chairs the Measures and Data sources sub-workgroup for the HHS Action Plan for Healthcare Associated Infection (HAI) Prevention in Long-term Care facilities. Dr. Ling also serves as the clinical sub-group lead for the HHS National Alzheimer’s Project Act.

Dr. Ling is a Geriatrician and Rheumatologist who received her medical training at Georgetown University School of Medicine where she graduated as a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. Dr. Ling received her clinical training in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology at Georgetown University Medical Center, and completing Geriatric Medicine studies at Johns Hopkins University., remaining on faculty at Johns Hopkins for 5 years, after which she joined the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health at the National Institute on Aging as a Staff Clinician for 8 years studying human aging and age-associated chronic diseases with attention to musculoskeletal conditions and mobility function.

Dr. Ling continues to serve as a part-time faculty member in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the University of Mary-land. Dr. Ling volunteers at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Baltimore. She is a Gerontologist who received her training in Direct Service from the Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center, at the University of Southern California, and served as the co-director of the Andrus Older Adult Counseling Center.

David W. Miller, MD, LAc is the founding Medical Director for Pediatric Integrative Medicine with the University Hospitals Connor Integrative Health Network and Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.  He is one of the only physicians dually board certified in Pediatrics (American Board of Pediatrics) and Chinese medicine (NCCAOM – National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine).  Prior to joining the UH Connor network, Dr. Miller was in private practice with East-West Integrated Medicine, LLC in Chicago, Illinois for 14 years, and saw patients of all ages for holistic and integrative care.   Dr. Miller was also the founding Chair of the American Society of Acupuncturists, the leading industry voluntary professional membership organization for licensed acupuncturists in the U.S.  He has also been actively involved with the Illinois State Medical Society and Illinois Society of Acupuncturists, and has done work on legislation related to the practice of acupuncture, and has worked nationally on CPT code creation and management with the AMA related to acupuncture and non-retentive needling practice. He is currently the ASA representative to the Integrative Health Policy Consortium.

Matt Salo was named Executive Director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD) in February 2011. The association represents all 56 of the nation’s state and territorial Medicaid Directors, and provides them with a strong unified voice in national discussions as well as a locus for technical assistance and best practices.

Matt formerly spent 12 years at the National Governors Association, where he worked on the Governors’ health care and human services reform agendas, and spent the 5 years prior to that as a health policy analyst working for the state Medicaid Directors as part of the American Public Human Services Association.

Matt also spent two years as a substitute teacher in the public school system in Alexandria, VA, and holds a BA in Eastern Religious Studies from the University of Virginia

Cindy Steinberg is the National Director of Policy and Advocacy for the U.S. Pain Foundation and Policy Council Chair for the Massachusetts Pain Initiative. She is a nationally prominent and articulate spokesperson for the needs of people living with pain. She has been interviewed in print and on radio, television and internet websites including NPR’s Marketplace, WCVB’s News Center 5, WHDH’s Channel 7 Urban Update, Boston’s NBC affiliate, WBZ News Radio, the Boston local CBS affiliate and ABCNews.com. Her dedication to pain advocacy was sparked when she sustained a severe crush injury that left her with daily back pain. Ms. Steinberg has won numerous awards for her pain policy accomplishments.

In 2015, she was appointed by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker to serve on his Opioid Working Group and subsequently as a Commissioner on the Massachusetts Drug Formulary Commission. At the federal level, she has served on the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC), the highest-ranking pain policy oversight committee in the United States. In 2018, Ms. Steinberg was appointed by the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, to serve on the Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force created by Congress and was the only patient and pain advocate appointed to the panel. In February of 2019, Ms. Steinberg was invited to testify before the US Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee at a hearing on “Managing Pain During the Opioid Crisis”.

Ariana Thompson-Lastad is an integrative medicine researcher based in the San Francisco Bay Area. After five years as a health educator and group medical visit facilitator at a community health center, she received her PhD in medical sociology from UC San Francisco. Currently she is a postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, where her research focuses on group medical visits and integrative medicine approaches to advancing health equity in safety-net settings. In addition, Ariana is a member of the Bay Area Structural Competency Working Group, where she co-facilitates trainings for health care practitioners and trainees.

Kirk Williamson serves as a health policy analyst for the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices Health Division. Williamson’s policy and subject matter expertise is in opioids and substance use disorders, pharmaceuticals, infectious diseases and Medicaid. At present, Williamson advises governors on public health approaches to safely reopening state economies and improving compliance with state mitigation efforts during the COVID-19 response. Prior to joining NGA, he served as a research assistant at the George Washington University, Milken Institute School of Public Health, and as a health policy intern for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.