The Team

A former U.S. Army General, he serves as Chair National Leadership Advisory Council, the National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military (NIAHM); Military community advisor for National Endowment of the Arts Military Healing Art’s Creative Forces program, and senior Policy Fellow on Arts & Military, Americans for The Arts.

Dr. Shaver received her MD degree from Georgetown University in 1989, completed her general surgery internship at Tripler Army Medical Center in 1990, and Neurosurgery residency at University of Pennsylvania in 1996. She was assigned to Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center until 2006. From 1996-2006, she was also on staff at Medical College of Georgia.

Subsequently she joined a private practice Neurosurgery Group in Augusta, GA. Clinical and basic science research interests include mechanisms and treatment of subarachnoid hemorrhage, traumatic subdural hematoma, sports-related concussions in adolescents and pharmacogenetics of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of CopernicusMD and Consultative Genomics

Hani El Shawa, PhD currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Consultative Genomics, a molecular pathology practice with laboratories in Houston and Atlanta. Prior joining to Consultative Genomics, Dr. El Shawa held the roles of Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer for Alpha Genomix Laboratories, a large scale molecular diagnostic facility in Atlanta.

He graduated from San Francisco State University with his B.S. in Biology and M.S. in Physiology and Behavioral Biology with honors. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside in Neuroscience where he received several grants and awards to research the effects of prenatal ethanol exposure on intraneocortical circuitry, cortical gene expression, and behavior. Prior to joining Alpha Genomix Laboratories, Dr. El Shawa was an Assistant Professor at the American University of the Middle East as well as Adjunct Faculty for the University of California, Riverside and California State University, Dominquez Hills. He is the co-first author on various high impact peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. El Shawa is an Affiliate Science member of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics as well as a member of the Society of Neuroscience and the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology.

Joseph R. Shaver, MD received his MD degree from Georgetown University in 1989, and subsequently completed an internal medicine residency (1992) as well as a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship (1996) at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. Since 1996 he has been a critical care intensivist and pulmonologist at Doctors’ Hospital, Augusta, GA, in the Joseph M. Still Burn Center ICU. Research interests include cytokine-mediated inflammation in asthma and infectious aspects of burn patient management.

Hunter Smith spent 13 years in the US Army as a Medical Service Corps Officer until he finally left service as a Major in 2018. His most applicable service is during war-time or emergency situations. He deployed twice to Baghdad, Iraq in 2005-2006 and 2007-2009 where he first served as a Medical Platoon Leader and Executive Officer for 8-10 Cavalry of the 4th Infantry Division, and Division Patient Administration Officer of the 4th Infantry Division Surgeon’s Section.

More recently he ran all MEDLOG operations for the 36th Infantry Division of the TX Army National Guard during the Hurricane Harvey response in 2017 to the Texas coastline. He has worked in finance for two years in the molecular laboratory space. He holds a Master of Business Administration from University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Wofford College.

Philip Kent currently serves as External Affairs Director for CopernicusMD and Consultative Genomix where he works extensively with insurance carriers and other payors in the molecular pathology lab space. He has more than 18 years combined experience in public relations and business development in both the healthcare and technology sectors.

After completing college where he played Division I baseball, he started his career in business development and enterprise sales for a start-up fiber-optics technology company that eventually sold to a larger corporation during the dot-com era, then began his own telecommunications/technology company of which he also developed and sold.

After starting yet another technology company, he seized on the opportunity to utilize his technology expertise in the insurance sector, became insurance licensed and developed a cyber liability insurance platform. He expanded his insurance knowledge further into health and benefits at which point he started his own insurance consulting business/agency that he manages today.

Dave Patel, is a CPA with dynamic combination of medical, business, financial, and technology expertise. Prior to pursuing his dream of being an entrepreneur, Dave acquired his professional experiences from world-class companies such as Deloitte & Touche, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and KPMG. Dave’s success in Fortune 50 companies, Big 4 accounting firms, multi-million-dollar outpatient diagnostics centers and durable medical equipment business ownership allows him to contribute as a key influencer, high-level strategist, and a visionary.