NEOMED President Jay A. Gershen, D.D.S., Ph.D., Honored as Akron/Canton NSME Executive of the Year

His acceptance speech is transcribed below:

Good evening, and thank you for that warm reception.

Thanks Joe!

You have been a great friend of the University and it’s an honor to follow you as last year’s Executive of the Year winner.

As if I wasn’t already overwhelmed, and quite surprised to receive such a prestigious honor by the National Sales and Marketing Executives, your introduction humbles me as much as the award itself, especially in a place filled with so many accomplished people. So, I extend my congratulations to all past honorees of the Accent on Excellence awards as well as to my fellow honorees this evening.

As NEOMED’s origin, present and future are so heavily tied to the Akron/Canton region, I feel as though we, as a community, are being recognized and have come full circle. There are so many of you here who live the daily lives of sales and marketing executives, who thrive in environments where “getting to yes” is no easy task.

I applaud the difficult yet amazing work you do…the research, the cold calls, the planning, the ideation, the engagement and the presentation all, well before the ask or negotiation even begins.

I marvel at the resilience you display…your willingness to take risks, the way you handle rejection and continuous objections, the iterative process all, until you get the sell or the deal done.

I appreciate how you make a community thrive …understanding the needs of its residents and businesses alike, providing products and services to meet their needs, and developing value propositions that engage them to do business.

So, upon being notified that I was receiving the National Sales and Marketing Executives – Executive of the Year Award, I asked myself:

Why me?

Or even better…

Why not some of NEOMED’s very own …such as John Wray and Maria Schimer for they are builders and negotiators, who have made possible $165 million in new buildings on our campus using “zero state capital funds.”

The buildings include our 177,000-square-foot, mixed-use facility called the NEOMED Education and Wellness Center, or NEW Center for short; our multi-unit, residential Village at NEOMED; and our Graduate Research and Education building…All were funded through public-private partnerships with local developers including Signet, Welty and Ruhlin.

Why not Jeffrey Susman and Sonja Harris-Haywood and their teams?

They have helped extend our Partnership for Urban Health into a national model for urban health pathways. They lead a program that attracts students to pursue primary-care specialties such as family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics and geriatrics. These students will practice in underserved communities when they finish their education.

Or how about Walter Horton and Elliot Reed?

They have grown our incubator to include over a dozen biomed startups. And just this month, they won a Regional Innovation Strategies Challenge grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Those dollars will support the REDIzone’s Pharmaceutical Proof of Concept Center, which will help dozens more – small to medium sized companies – in our region to accelerate their drug therapies toward human clinical trials.

Then there are those who are redefining services …like Charles Taylor together with associate Rick Kasmer.

They recently developed a Pharmacy of the Future, negotiating a partnership with Ritzman Pharmacy to build this pharmacy, which will open soon to provide patient-centered, population-based, holistic care to members of the community.

And when I think of the way sales and marketing executives engage people and influence decision makers …I think of Rich Lewis who has left his mark on nearly every major University initiative dating back to 1983.

From policy to people, to process and prosperity, Rich has the uncanny ability to position us with the right proposition for the right person. He has also worked steadily with our Board of Trustees to provide guidance and insight of the needs and opportunities for which our University must be fully engaged.

If total funds is the ultimate benchmark…then you must know Daniel Blain and our Foundation Board, for they have already reached nearly 75% of our recently announced Shine On campaign goal of FORTY MILLION DOLLARS!

This, our largest and most comprehensive fundraising effort ever, ensures NEOMED will continue to advance students, advance innovation and research, and advance this community’s health.

Any complex business needs stewardship …and our very own Michelle Mulhern enables us to manage relationships internally as well as engage our external partners who support us and ensure that we all are resourced to move forward.

And speaking of partnerships …many of you have loyal, supportive, fully engaged customers and partners…And NEOMED, is a lot like you.

Ours are clinical and university partners; hospitals and health centers, alliances and organizations; private companies, public – officials and agencies; medical associations and advocacy groups; students and alumni, and trustee and foundation board members, many of whom are here tonight.

It may sound a bit cliché, but I say all of this to suggest that I wouldn’t be on this stage this evening if it wasn’t for a large group of people; and while my remarks would be much longer if I began to mention the great work of our students, staff and faculty … great work is the luxury that any executive has when one enables a culture of critical thinking, where all can thrive … a “do something” environment.

Our vision as the premier community-based interprofessional health sciences university is inclusion of the people and the community in which they reside; understanding the needs of the underserved and collaborating with them; training future practitioners across health care disciplines; and working strategically with partners and supporters to serve them.

This is our life’s work.

In our globally diverse health care world, we must still act locally. Creating innovative health care solutions, increasing access to care, incentivizing students and providing pathways for them, and interprofessionally training them for population-based care: these are large responsibilities. However, they are responsibilities for which we are prepared because we have a great team a community of caring, competent and collaborative people.

They are the reason why NEOMED is recognized as one of Northeast Ohio’s best places to work.

We are an interdependent group united with a collective passion for our underserved communities.

We have a unique responsibility of developing students as health care professionals, and making them more available for the communities of the underserved.

We are also unique in that we serve at the crossroads of two dynamic sectors – higher education and health care and that these sectors are in the process of major organizational, cultural and economic change.

As a result, we have to use 21^st century business principles to keep medical education affordable for our students, to generate revenue streams and remain vibrant for our community’s health and economy, and to advance innovation and research at the epicenter of Northeast Ohio’s healthcare hub.

So being recognized as executive of the year makes sense when I think of all that our team does.

For the fact that the award comes from a national sales and marketing association, serves as validation to us at NEOMED, that our team’s forward-thinking and use of such principles as diversity, equity and inclusion; public-private partnerships; entrepreneurship, incubation and commercialization; disruptive innovation; multiple, one-to-one collaborations; and creative workforce development – all  are looked upon with the utmost appreciation by peer groups in and outside of our sector.

So I thank you for our team. As I am honored to be part of such an amazing group.

I accept the recognition as one that we all can own.

Thank you.

And enjoy the rest of your evening.