John Friend has practiced law in his native Arizona for over 28 years where he has concentrated his focus on health care. John is recognized as an expert in health care reform and transformation. Prior to helping form Value Stream Partners, Mr. Friend served as lead designer, implementer and CEO/Executive Director of Arizona Connected Care, one of the first MSSP accountable care organizations. Arizona Connected Care, known as AzCC, was one of three organizations chosen as pilot development sites.

Marc graduated from the University of Arizona with a BS in Exercise Science and Sports Medicine. He began his professional career as an Orthopedic Medical Device Consultant; later becoming Arizona Distributor for Depuy Synthes, a Johnson and Johnson Company. Marc brings twenty-plus years of market leadership and unique insights by combining a deep understanding of sub-specialty orthopedic care delivery and device manufacturer logistics. Marc knows first hand how quality providers with appropriately aligned incentives can greatly impact transformation of health care.

Stuart Katz is a business administration professional. He was most recently associated with the Orthopaedic Service Line at Tucson Medical Center where he directed and managed all aspects of the day-to-day operations of the TOI SLA, LLC for all in-patient and out-patient surgical and medical orthopaedic patients. During his tenure, the hospital performed approximately 6,500 orthopaedic surgeries annually with net revenues exceeding $61 million.

Jay Katz is a retired orthopaedic surgeon who was most recently affiliated with the Tucson Orthopaedic Institute, where he was a managing partner for 8 years, and Catalina Orthopaedic Surgery, also in Tucson. As a consultant with the Zimmer Corporation, he was part of the development team charged with designing a new Patellar Femoral Joint. He also was instrumental in conducting training courses including II Incision Total Hip Arthroplasty, Quad-sparing Total Knee Arthroplasty, Uni-knee Arthroplasty and Patello-Femoral Arthroplasty.

Olivia is a graduate of Arizona State University and the W.P. Carey Graduate School of Business. As a health care transformation company, VSP is focused on many Strategic Initiatives. Olivia focuses on developing and incubating new business opportunities, models, and partnerships with an overarching goal of creating new tools to help healthcare providers become more efficient in delivering quality care. Areas of focus include technology, clinical services, and transformative models.

Jason is principally a process and system engineer with a unique perspective and training not traditionally found in healthcare. You'll find Jason fusing manufacturer principles, hospital LEAN process, with physician care pathways. The unlocked value generated becomes instrumental to aligning and incentivizing cost transformation across the care continuum.

James graduated from Northwestern University with degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Music Cognition. He discovered he likes working with both people and data and recently completed his MBA at the University of Arizona with a concentration in Management of Information Systems. James handles all things data and analytics for VSP. He likes envisioning the best way for data to communicate with users through intuitive dashboard design.

Cheri brings over 17 years of experience in Human Resources and Office Administration to organize and assist the executive group. In addition, she also focuses on helping meet regulatory requirements and financial impacts for clients who are proactively engaging in clinical and administrative redesign to meet the emerging challenges of patient care within an evolving U.S. health care system.