Team

CEO

Dick is an experienced health information technology leader with over 30 years focused on using information and data to drive fundamental change in healthcare. Dick recently retired from Oracle Cerner Corporation, where he held various senior management positions. Dick led regional and national client organizations throughout his career, including some of Cerner’s largest and most important client relationships. In 2014-2017 Dick led Cerner’s most significant acquisition, Siemens Health Services, and was President of Cerner Health Services with 5000 associates and operations in a dozen countries. From 2017 to 2020, Dick led Cerner’s IT Outsourcing business Unit, ITWorks, with over 2000 associates in 35 client organizations. In 2020, Dick co-led Cerner’s COVID response to clients by organizing a multi-disciplinary team of over 400 associates to help clients address COVID in their organization and community. Most recently, Dick led Cerner’s Regulatory Strategy and Policy practices.

Post Cerner, Dick is working as an advisor and investor with early-stage companies in the Digital Health space. Dick Co-leads Digital Health KC, a community-wide initiative building upon the extensive cluster in place today focused on using digital technologies to improve healthcare and foster growth and collaboration in the digital health community in the KC region.

Dick is active in the KC community, and his passion for healthcare is also shared in working with higher education. Dick serves on the Board of Donnelly College (former Board Chair), an urban private college primarily serving first-generation college students. Dick also serves on the Board of the University of Missouri Kansas City. Dick is a member of the Ethical Use of AI Taskforce at the Center for Practical Bioethics.

Advisory Board Chair

Leveraging experience as an entrepreneur, executive, engineer, investor, and coach, Maria works with select emerging and high-growth leaders, companies, investors, and entrepreneurial support organizations, helping them make opportunities happen.

As CEO of Orbis Biosciences, Maria built a technology company that improved pharmaceutical manufacturing, won awards for its novel innovation, and was acquired by Adare Pharmaceuticals. As Managing Director of Techstars Kansas City, Maria invested in and coached companies across health tech, biotech, fintech, deep tech, and consumer tech. She has worked with founders from over 30 companies as a business growth guide.

Maria was a Director at Cerner Corporation, where she held P&L responsibility for a life sciences business unit that provided drug safety software and services to pharmaceutical companies. She also created a new enterprise within Cerner for state and regional healthcare software.

Maria was named one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s Entrepreneurial Women to Watch and received the Pipeline Entrepreneurs’ Inspiration Award and Central Exchange’s STEMMy Enterprising Innovator Award. Maria serves on the Board of Directors of BioNexus KC and earned degrees from the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and Kansas State University.

In his role as Marketing Coordinator, Tanner spearheads content creation, social media management, and strategic marketing initiatives, all aimed at advancing the mission of Digital Health KC and propelling the digital health community forward.

Before joining the team Tanner’s career included time spent in local television and digital marketing. During that time, he developed skills in copywriting, brand development, graphic design, videography, and organic marketing. He is looking forward to utilizing these skills and his love for Kansas City to empower the robust digital health community that’s emerging in the region. 

When Tanner isn’t writing LinkedIn posts, you’ll most likely find him at the dog park with his Great Pyrenees, Mabel. His passions include film, hiking, making homemade pizzas, and exploring Kansas City’s local music scene.