The Nightingale
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Kimberly MacPherson is the executive director of health management and distinguished teaching fellow at the Haas School of Business. She is also the faculty program director for health policy and management at the U.C. Berkeley School of Public Health and the codirector for the Berkeley Center for Health Technology. BCHT is a research and education center that works on topics around balancing affordability, equity, and innovation. Kim focuses on health system strategy, healthcare workforce, health tech, and coverage and adoption of biotech and medical devices.

At UC Berkeley, where she joined the faculty in 2006, MacPherson teaches a variety of graduate level courses at both Haas and SPH, including Healthcare Finance, Healthcare Strategy, Healthcare in the 21st Century, Trends in Biotech/Pharma, Commercializing Biotech, and Unlocking Digital Health Innovation. In May 2020, she was honored with the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching. MacPherson brings over 30 years of health industry experience spanning leadership roles in operations, management consulting, strategic/business planning, and product development.

She is a frequent speaker and moderator at conferences and organization-sponsored meetings/events. She is the immediate past chair of the board of trustees for Saint Francis Memorial Hospital (part of Dignity Health/CommonSpirit) in San Francisco, where she served for 12 years until the recent acquisition by UCSF. She holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley and an MPH from the School of Public Health at U.C. Berkeley.

Mikhail Shneyder is the founder and chief executive officer of Nightingale Education Group, a mission-driven organization focused on innovative nursing workforce development across its entire professional continuum, from prelicensure academic programs to graduate studies to reskilling and upskilling through continuing education.

Shneyder served as the first president of Nightingale College, a higher learning institution dedicated to closing education equity gaps and creating geographic, socioeconomic, and demographic access to the nursing profession throughout the United States. A registered nurse for more than 25 years, Shneyder has a wealth of management experience in postsecondary education for health professions and healthcare delivery services. He is a published academic author, conference speaker, and guest lecturer, specializing in strategic planning, organization development, forecasting, and management.

Shneyder holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

LCDR Gideon Esuzor is a program manager for the U.S. Secret Service (USSS). He advises the chief medical officer on resiliency, mental health, and strengthening agency crisis response and medical readiness for mission-critical operations supporting the president, vice president, and other USSS protectees.

Prior to joining the USSS, Esuzor served as a deputy liaison for the Office of Health Security’s USPHS Commissioned Corps Affairs (UCCA) within the Department of Homeland Security.

Before his work with DHS, Esuzor served as the mental health memorandum of agreement program manager for the Commissioned Corps Program in the Defense Health Agency (DHA). In that role, Esuzor supported the DHA’s mission of providing medical care for the DoD’s 9.4 million eligible beneficiaries through the defense health program. Esuzor oversaw strategic efforts and mission priority placement of public health officers with mental health expertise within the DoD.

Esuzor also served as a drug investigator in the Food and Drug Administration, conducting inspections and investigations of drug-producing firms in the Southeast. In addition, Esuzor served six years in the U.S. Air Force Reserve as an aeromedical evacuation flight nurse and aeromedical staging clinical nurse. In 2014, he provided timely transport and clinical care to members of the U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. In 2017, he led a 17-member team comprised of nurses and medical technicians to support medical evacuation missions and provide care for patients during deployment to Qatar.

Esuzor is a licensed psychiatric mental nurse practitioner. He has clinical experiences in emergency medicine, intensive care, coronary care, postanesthesia care, and cardiac electrophysiology.

Dr. Christina (Christy) Dempsey is the CEO of Christina Dempsey Enterprises, LLC and the former chief nursing officer for Press Ganey Associates.

Dempsey is a registered nurse with over four decades of healthcare experience, regularly speaking and publishing nationally and internationally on nursing, perioperative and emergency services, patient flow, medical practice operations, supply chain, and physician/hospital collaboration. Dempsey has served as adjunct faculty for the Missouri State University School of Nursing and holds a doctoral degree in nursing practice from Quinnipiac University, master’s degrees in business and nursing from Missouri State University, and certifications in perioperative nursing and executive nursing practice.

She is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and serves on the Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City board of directors, the Nightingale College board of managers, the board of Magnit Global, LLC, and previously on the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL) board, the AONL Foundation Board, and as president of the Missouri Organization of Nurse Leaders. Additionally, she serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Nursing Administration and Journal of Patient Experience.

In 2018 and again in 2020, Dempsey was named one of the top 50 safety experts in the United States by Becker’s Hospital Review. In 2024, Dempsey cochaired the ANA Nursing Administration Scope and Standards revision workgroup redefining nursing leadership. Her book, The Antidote to Suffering: How Compassionate Connected Care Can Improve Safety, Quality, and Experience, was released in 2017 and continues to be a resource for clinician practice, patient experience, and caregiver education.

Jason Woody is a senior managing director at Palm Ventures in Greenwich, Connecticut. In this role, Woody focuses on the firm’s private equity investments.

He previously worked as an associate at Dubilier & Company, a Stamford-based private investment firm that specializes in middle-market companies. After gaining his BS from Cornell University and an MBA, summa cum laude, from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, Woody started his investment career as an analyst for Chase Securities Inc.’s acquisition finance group.

Monica Rivera is a physician executive and growth leader with extensive experience scaling healthcare organizations across clinical delivery, public-sector programs, and venture-backed innovation. She began her career developing telehealth programs to expand access to care in rural Mexico, grounding her work in equity-driven, scalable care models.

She currently serves as chief growth officer at Watershed Health, where she leads market expansion, payer and provider partnerships, and enterprise growth strategy. Rivera is also a venture partner at Nina Capital, advising early-stage healthcare companies on strategy, go-to-market execution, and scale.

Previously, Rivera held senior leadership roles across healthcare systems, startups, and benefit management organizations. She led clinical services and urgent care operations at Mass General Brigham, and most recently served as head of solutioning and RFP strategy for UnitedHealthcare’s Medicaid business, where she shaped enterprise solutions strategy and led complex, multistate growth initiatives.

Her professional focus includes alternative sites of care, workforce development, and behavioral health, with a continued emphasis on improving access to care, advancing public health education, and strengthening engagement for providers and patients.

Rivera holds a medical degree from Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey and a master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, where she serves on the teaching faculty.

KT Waxman brings a wealth of healthcare industry experience from the academic and field perspective to the Nightingale board.

In addition to serving on the Nightingale board, Waxman has worked as director of the Western States Simulation Alliance for nearly 20 years. There, she develops faculty training programs and leads seven states in unified, collaborative simulation skills. She has served as editor in chief of the Nursing Administration Quarterly since January 2020. For the last four years, Waxman has been a professor and director of the DNP program at the University of California, San Francisco, where she directs the nursing school’s simulation program among other responsibilities.

Waxman previously served as the associate professor and director for the executive leadership DNP program at the University of San Francisco for 13 years.

She received both a Bachelor of Science in healthcare management degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of La Verne. Waxman also earned an associate degree in nursing from Napa Valley College and a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree at the University of San Francisco.