Advisory Council

Marcia Angle is an environmental advocate and preventive medicine physician, who has published and worked in the area of international reproductive health. She was the medical director at IntraHealth, focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, for two decades. In North Carolina, she served as Medical Director of the Orange County Health Department and taught environmental epidemiology at Duke University’s School of the Environment.

Angle currently serves on the Board of Directors of three non-profit organizations: E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, Nature and Culture International, and the Southern Environmental Law Center. She serves on advisory councils for Duke University’s Superfund Research Center, The North Carolina Conservation Network, and Reserva La Esperanza.

Angle earned a BA from Harvard University, an MD from Duke University, and an MPH from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Dr. Bates is an executive leader and impact-driven strategist with 20 years of experience designing original portfolios; building cross-sectoral partnerships; and activating public and political networks to generate support, policies and financing for health and development priorities – in the US and abroad. She currently serves as the Director of Strategic Partnerships & Initiatives at Pivotal Ventures, an incubation and investment company founded by Melinda French Gates, and leads the company’s efforts to build a well-resourced and active ecosystem of individuals and organizations working together to advance social progress. Nicole joined Pivotal Ventures after more than a decade at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where she led the foundation’s global advocacy and communications strategy for child health, including global immunization and polio eradication. Nicole previously served as the Director for Government Relations at the Global Health Council and Deputy Director for Public Policy at the Center for Community Change. Nicole began her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a Presidential Management Fellow, and worked for Senator Edward Kennedy on domestic policy. Nicole earned her doctorate and master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed undergraduate studies with high honors at the University of Virginia.

Leah Devlin is a Gillings Professor of the Practice at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She works with faculty, students and staff throughout the School to effectively talk with state leaders and residents about the many ways the School can and does serve North Carolina.

Prior to joining the School, Devlin served as state health director from 2001 to 2009, after also serving as deputy state health director. She previously served as chief of the chronic disease prevention and control section at the NC Department of Health and Human Services. She also served as Wake County Health Director for ten years.

Devlin serves as a board member for Healthy Wake 2000, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science and on the Central Region board of Wachovia Bank and the Community Advisory Board for WUNC 91.5. She is also a member of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, the Women’s Forum of North Carolina and president of the North Carolina Public Health Association. She has co-chaired the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force, and served as past-president of the Raleigh/Wake County Dental Society and the North Carolina Association of Local Health Directors. Devlin was a 1993 scholar in CDC’s Public Health Leadership Institute and served as a member of the Health Steering Committee of the National Association of Counties from 1993-96.

Devlin’s honors include 1994 Health Director of the Year, Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award, North Carolina Public Health Association’s Rankin Award, the Poe Center for Health Education’s President’s Award, and the 2008 UNC Distinguished Alumni Award.

Devlin earned a bachelor’s and dental degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s of public health from Carolina’s School of Public Health.

Subhash Gumber is a practicing physician and entrepreneur. He has been Medical Director of Raleigh Medical Group Gastroenterology for about the last 20 years and has overseen its growth to be the largest Gastroenterology private practice with five Endoscopy Centers in the Research Triangle region. He has served on the North Carolina Medical Board, Raleigh Medical Group Board, North Carolina Indian-American Physicians Board and is a member of the Global Leadership Council at UNC-Chapel Hill. His interests include music and travel.

Gumber received his MD degree from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and training in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Harvard Medical School. Prior to attending medical school, he obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at Washington State University and worked at Brandeis University. He is board-certified in gastroenterology and hepatology.

Don Holzworth serves as the Executive in Residence at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health, as well as Chairman of the School’s Advisory Council. He is also Chairman of the Health Decisions, Inc., a women’s health clinical research organization. He serves on the board of Veritas Collaborative a specialty behavioral hospital system serving patients with severe eating disorders, and on the board of UNC’s Senior Alliance Accountable Care Organization. He was the 2018 recipient of Triangle Global Health Champion award.

Holzworth is the former Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Constella Group, a leading global provider of public health policy and implementation, as well as clinical development services, operating in more than 60 countries. The company was sold to SRA International in 2007. He was also the Founder and Chairman of Expression Analysis, Inc., a genomic services company, which was sold to Quintiles (now IQVIA) in 2012. He also served as Executive Chairman of a UNC spinout, Bivarus, Inc., a patient-centered analytics company sold to Press Ganey in 2018.

Holzworth earned a BS in systems analysis and an MS in environmental science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He also has advanced graduate training in biostatistics from North Carolina State University.

Richard Kelly’s career has spanned three decades in the Consumer Products, Healthcare and Manufacturing sectors. He currently serves as Executive in Residence at Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond, mentoring students in both corporate leadership and entrepreneurship. Kelly also is currently advising CEOs and Boards of companies in the areas of finance, strategy, operations, and innovation. He serves on the Board of Directors of World Pediatric Project, a nonprofit linking worldwide pediatric surgical, diagnostic, and preventive resources to heal critically ill children in developing countries. His current passion is to improve an individual’s wellness by making healthier food choices available and affordable.

Kelly is the former CEO and Co-Founder of Nutriati, Inc, a venture capital supported plant-based Ingredient Technology company helping leading brands and food manufacturers develop great-tasting and healthy products. Prior to founding Nutriati, Kelly was CEO of Worldwide Sourcing Advisors LLC (WSA), an advisory firm that provides supply management, operations and business development expertise to public, private, and not-for-profit organizations. WSA’s clients include food & beverage, packaging, and life science companies. Kelly also served as Vice President at consumer products giant, Altria Group. Under his leadership, Fortune 50 Altria was ranked as a leading company by the AT Kearny’s Assessment of Excellence in Procurement. Kelly co-sponsored the Altria Worldwide Sourcing Team which involved synergy activities and strategic sourcing with Kraft, General Foods, Oscar Mayer, Miller Brewing, St. Michelle Winery, and Philip Morris International. A thought leader in the area of partnerships, he was a contributing author to the acclaimed book Next Level Supply Management Excellence: Your Straight to the Bottom Line Roadmap.

Kelly earned an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a BS with Honors in Health Policy and Management from the Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Stacie is the CEO of Couplet Care, LLC, a University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health spin-out, postnatal infant bassinet designed to reduce the risks of infant drops, maternal pain and nursing inefficiencies.

In 2011, as CEO and president, Stacie co-founded Veritas Collaborative, a Specialty Healthcare System for the Treatment of Eating Disorders. Today, Veritas Collaborative is a National Healthcare System for the Treatment of Eating Disorders and has served over thousands of male, female, and other-gendered patients and their families with 500+ employees in three Southeastern states at the inpatient, residential and partial hospitalization levels of care.

Prior, she founded Carolina House, a well-respected residential eating disorders program in Durham, N.C., after recognizing the need to fill an important gap in service for college-age students after serving as the eating disorders specialist for Duke University Counseling and Psychological Services. She currently serves as VP on the Board of Directors for The Caring House in Durham, and on the board of the North Carolina Telehealth Network Association, a UNC spin-out providing secure broadband networks to N.C. hospital systems. Stacie is a passionate advocate for equitable access to behavioral health and health care services.

Lee Phillips is a seasoned innovator and brand strategist with 30 years’ experience in Europe, the US and Asian markets. He has previously worked in senior marketing roles for global brands including Vodafone and Harrods and has led creative agencies in Tokyo, London and Miami. For the last 15 years, he has specialized in the health sector, leading branding and consumer product innovation projects for organizations including US healthcare giant Humana, global telehealthcare company Tunstall, and major US health systems and providers. Phillips is an expert in consumer engagement and behavior change marketing and pioneered population health management programs in the UK’s NHS, where his exploits saw him inducted into the CorpComms 100 Club, an organization that recognizes the top-performing corporate communicators in the UK. In addition to co-founding Bluedoor Group, a digital health innovation and growth agency based in Chapel Hill, NC, he is a Co-founder and Fellow of The Institute of Healthcare Design Thinking, and a Co-founder of the non-profit Digital Health Institute for Transformation (DHIT).

An entrepreneur at heart, Lee is on the board of several start-up companies in the health sector advising them on their product development and commercialization strategies. He serves as Executive Director of the Lampidis Cancer Foundation and also co-founded the first conveyor-belt sushi bar chain in the UK in 1994.

A fluent Japanese speaker, Lee holds a Masters and BA (Hons) degree in Oriental Studies from Cambridge University in the UK. Following a brief appearance on Masterchef, he is now a frustrated chef whose culinary genius is completely lost on his two sons.

Laura Helms Reece is Chief Executive Officer of Rho, a contract research organization specializing in high-quality medical research in conjunction with their partners in the public and private sectors. Prior to being named Chief Operating Officer in 2006, Helms Reece acquired a broad range of work experiences at Rho, including serving as Director of Regulatory Affairs, Associate Director of Biostatistics, and Senior Statistical Scientist.

After receiving her doctor of public health in biostatistics, Helms Reece was a Senior Statistical Scientist supporting phase I-III clinical trials in oncology at AstraZeneca. She has also worked at GlaxoWellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) as a statistical consultant designing studies and performing analyses for market research.

Helms Reece is a Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Gamma Sigma graduate of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. She earned her master’s of public health and doctor of public health in biostatistics from the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health.

Jimmy Rosen is Chief Executive Officer of READDI, Inc. a new organization created to pursue novel antiviral drug development in advance of the next pandemic. READDI was initiated as a collaboration among the University of North Carolina (UNC)-Chapel Hill, the UNC Eshelman Institute for Innovation (EII) and the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), and plans to expand its programs and partnerships to include philanthropic organizations, industry leaders, and innovators around the world

He is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Artizan Biosciences. He previously served as Deputy Director, Program-Related Investments, at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He was previously a Partner on Intersouth’s life sciences investment team. He began with the firm as an intern in 2005 while pursuing his graduate degrees; joined full-time in 2007, and became a Partner in 2009. Prior to joining Intersouth, he spent 15 years in clinical, research and financial positions in the health care and biotechnology sectors.

Rosen’s research experience includes programs at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, the National Cancer Institute, Duke University Medical Center and its Comprehensive Cancer Center. He also managed and monitored clinical trials at a privately held contract research organization, which led to FDA-approved products. Rosen spent several years as an equity research analyst at Brean Murray & Co., covering biopharmaceuticals, genomics, generics, drug delivery and medical device companies. Prior to his research and Wall Street functions, he spent five years in Emergency Medical Services as a mountain search & rescue and ambulance medic.

Jimmy currently serves on numerous boards and advisory committees, including the Board of Visitors for NCCU, the board of Florida BIO, and the Oversight Committee for the Duke-Coulter Translational Partners Program. He is also a frequent lecturer at Duke, UNC and NCSU. In 2010 Jimmy was awarded the Eisenhower Fellowship for which he designed and executed a program to evaluate the prospects for health care innovation in China and Southeast Asia.

Jimmy holds a BA from Duke University and an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business where he was a Carolina Venture Fellow & recipient of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Award for Excellence. He received his MSPH from the UNC School of Public Health.

Virginia Sall is a co-founder and director of the Sall Family Foundation. She has studied and worked in not-for-profit organizations for over 30 years. Her focus is on complex local-to-global organizations addressing global health and poverty, conservation and the environment—especially where these intersect to support healthy, sustainable lives for people in the developing world.

Sall currently serves on the board of directors for CARE USA, Environmental Defense Fund and World Wildlife Fund as well as the board of advisors for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. She is a co-founder of Cary Academy, an innovative middle and high school in North Carolina. Sall volunteered for La Leche League to help mothers in her community breastfeed their babies; she also served on the board of La Leche League International, chaired the organization and represented La Leche League International at the United Nations. She has served on the board of the School of Nursing Foundation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sall has worked as a systems programmer, software developer, technical consultant and statistical software trainer. She holds a BA in physics from Rice University and studied biostatistics at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health.