Faculty & Speakers
PFF Summit Keynote Speakers
Karen Mancera-Cuevas
Dr. Karen Mancera-Cuevas is the Senior Director of Health Equity at the National Health Council where she collaborates with a variety of national patient advocacy organizations on health equity policy, research, and program priorities. She has a professional background which includes previously working in leadership positions at academic centers emphasizing clinical, public health, and community-based participatory research at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University. Additionally, she has engaged with the public in state-wide governmental public health efforts in Illinois. Her more than 25 years of professional experience also encompasses varied non-profit and policy-level settings. Programs developed under her leadership addressed chronic and rare disease health disparities in diverse communities of color, specifically targeting women and children at the community-level.
She has Master’s level degrees in Public Administration (MS) and Health Policy (MPH) from DePaul University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Additionally, she earned her Doctorate of Public Health (DrPH) from Walden University and is a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES). Dr. Mancera-Cuevas is Immediate Past Chair for the Public Health Education and Health Promotion Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA), Chair for the Coalition for National Health Education Organizations (CNHEO), is Associate Editor of Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP), and Regional Committee Trustee for the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE).
James Fraser, PhD
James Fraser studied Biology as an undergraduate at McGill University. His Ph.D. work at UC Berkeley under Dr. Tom Alber focused on the relationship between protein conformational dynamics and enzymatic catalysis. He moved to UCSF to start his lab in 2011. Currently, Professor Fraser is Chair of the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. His lab’s work spans across various disciplines, including structural biology, deep mutational scanning, and drug discovery. He is also known for his commitment to open science, serving on the board of ASAPbio for many years. He recently started OpenADMET, an organization with the mission to build open predictive models of drug safety and toxicity to more reliably, cheaply, and effectively treat disease.