Agenda

Cherish Hart serves as Vice President, Community Impact of the American Heart Association’s Washington State market. In her role, she brings the American Heart Association's mission to life by orchestrating transformative change in the community. Her tenure has included collaboration with worksites of all sizes to engender a culture that supports healthy and happy employees through supportive policy and environment changes. Cherish holds a master’s degree in educational technology leadership from George Washington University and has worked in health and education leadership roles within non-profit organizations for nearly 25 years.

Roger Dowdy serves as Chief Operating Officer for Providence’s Well Being Trust, a $100 million endowment, strategic think-tank, and catalyst for change formed in 2016 to address the mental, social, and spiritual health of the communities Providence services. He also serves as Vice President of Mental Health Population Health Management at Providence, one of the largest non-profit health systems in the country with 120,000 employees, 52 hospitals, 1,085 clinics and a comprehensive range of health and social services across Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. In these roles, he leads initiatives around behavioral health clinical improvement, measurement-based care, digital therapeutics, staff/caregiver mental wellness and value-based behavioral health care. In addition, he co-chairs the system-wide, Providence Behavioral Health Leadership Council. Roger has over 30 years of experience as a clinician and administrator in the health care and non-profit sector. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, he worked extensively with individuals struggling with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Early in his career he served as an Emergency Room Psychiatric Social Work at Harborview Medical Center (the only level-one trauma center in Washington State) and a King County Designated Crisis Responder, conducting involuntary crisis commitment evaluations. As an administrator, Roger has led the overall coordination of large scale, clinic operations and health plan functions in multiple organizations, including the integration of behavioral health services into primary care. He has previously served in leadership roles at Virginia Mason Medical Center, VA Puget Sound Healthcare System and Neighborcare Health (a large Federally Qualified Health Center in the Puget Sound region). Prior to joining Providence, Roger served as Director of Mental Health and Wellness at Kaiser Permanente of Washington where he had responsibility for the behavioral health care delivery system as well as overall coordination of health plan functions and behavioral health network management. Roger holds a Master of Health Administration from the University of Washington and a Master of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work where he teaches graduate-level, health policy classes. He is a board member of Sound (one of the largest community mental health providers in Washington State) where he was first employed as a mental health case manager over thirty years ago.

Bill Dinger is the Vice President of Caregiver Benefits & Wellbeing for Providence Healthcare and is based in the Seattle, Washington area. He is responsible for the health and welfare, retirement, wellbeing, occupational health, & absence management programs for over 120,000 Caregivers. His focus is on enhanced engagement and driving quality improvement using data analytics. Bill joined Providence in January 2021. Prior to joining Providence, he was the Director of Healthcare Innovation & Labor Support for The Walt Disney Company. His role included benefits strategy, labor negotiations, wellbeing, administration of the two largest direct contracts in the country, and management of the onsite healthcare facilities. A finance professional by training, Bill is a CPA and a graduate of the Rollins College MBA program.

An experienced Total Worker Health® practitioner and consultant, Nichole has 20 years of experience in human resources, safety, and workforce health and well-being. She provides evidence-based education, coaching, and strategic support to organizations across the Pacific Northwest. Nichole is the vice president of the American Society of Safety Professionals Columbia-Willamette Chapter.