Strategic Advisory Council

Shumeet Banerji, PhD

Mr. Banerji served as a senior partner of Booz & Company, (now Strategy&), from May 2012 until his retirement in March 2013. Previously, Mr. Banerji served as Chief Executive Officer of Booz & Company from July 2008 to May 2012. Prior to that, Mr. Banerji served in multiple roles at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company and predecessor to Booz & Company, while based in offices in North America, Asia and Europe, including President of the Worldwide Commercial Business from February 2008 to July 2008, Managing Director, Europe from 2007 to February 2008 and Managing Director, United Kingdom from 2003 to 2007.

Mr. Banerji has advised public and private sector entities around the world, serving clients in the financial services, telecoms, technology and media, consumer products and retail, resources, steel, and chemicals industries. He has advised diversified conglomerates, investors, and governments. Typical issues have spanned the entire senior agenda, including corporate strategy, senior organization, board performance, transformational change, operational performance improvement, M&A, and compensation.
He is a frequent speaker at key economic and business conferences around the world including the World Economic Forum and the Global Economic Symposium. For the last few years he has focused on leadership issues in the aftermath of the financial crisis. He is the author of numerous articles and is co-author of Cut Costs and Grow Stronger.

Mr. Banerji serves on the Board of Directors of Hewlett-Packard Company, the Panel of Senior Advisers of Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) and the Dean’s Advisory Board of the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. He was a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business before joining the firm.

Dallas Hack, MD, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired)

Veterans Science Strategy Advisor (Consulting)

Dr. Dallas Hack M.D. served as the Director of the US Army Combat Casualty Care Research Program and Chair of the Joint Program Committee for Combat Casualty Care from 2008 to 2014 and as the Senior Medical Advisor to the Principal Assistant for Research and Technology, US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command from 2014 to 2015. He coordinated more than 70% of the DoD trauma research to improve battlefield trauma care of those injured in combat. During this time, the Department of Defense funded more Traumatic Brain Injury research than any organization because of the increasing awareness of the massive burden of Traumatic Brain Injury in the military. He has held numerous military medical leadership positions including Chief of Clinical Services at Fort Knox, KY, Commander of the NATO Headquarters Healthcare Facility, and Command Surgeon at the strategic level during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. COL(R) Hack received numerous military awards including the Bronze Star, two Legion of Merit awards, and seven Meritorious Service Medals and was inducted as a Distinguished Member of the Military Order of Medical Merit. He has a BA from Andrews University, a MPH from Johns Hopkins University, a MD from Loma Linda University, a MSS from the US Army War College, and a CPE from the Certifying Commission in Medical Management. He was recognized as the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year by Loma Linda University in May 2015. After retiring from military service, Dr. Hack has consulted with numerous organizations to advance research in Brain Health and transition the progress to improved clinical practice.

Sean Hill, PhD

Sean Hill is  Scientific Director of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. Hill also serves as the co-Director of the Blue Brain Project and co-Director of Neuroinformatics in the European Union funded Human Brain Project (HBP) at the École Poly­tech­nique Fédérale de Lau­sanne (EPFL).

Dr. Hill has extensive experience in building and simulating large-scale models of brain circuitry and currently supervises and leads research efforts exploring the principles underlying the structure and dynamics of neocortical and thalamocortical microcircuitry. He also serves in management and advisory roles on several large-scale clinical informatics initiatives around the world. 

After completing his Ph.D. in computational neuroscience at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, Dr. Hill held postdoctoral positions at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, then joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where he served as the Project Manager for Computational Neuroscience in the Blue Brain Project until his appointment at the EPFL. His research interests include the use of biologically-realistic models to study the role of emergent phenomena in information processing, network connectivity and synaptic plasticity in the central nervous system, from the neocortical column to the whole brain, and across different arousal conditions including waking and sleep.

Steve Hyman, MD

Steven E. Hyman, M.D. is director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as well as Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. From 2001 to 2011, he served as provost of Harvard University, the University’s chief academic officer. In that role he helped shape the Broad Institute and Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. From 1996 to 2001, he served as director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where he emphasized investment in neuroscience and emerging genetic technologies, as well as the establishment of DNA collections to facilitate genetic studies at large scale. He also initiated a series of large clinical trials with the goal of informing practice.

Hyman is president-elect of the Society for Neuroscience, editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience, and was founding president of the International Neuroethics Society. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies where he serves on the Governing Council and Board of Health Science Policy, and chairs the Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders, which brings together industry, government, academia, and voluntary organizations. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Hyman received his B.A. summa cum laude from Yale College, a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Cambridge, which he attended as a Mellon fellow, and an M.D. cum laude from Harvard Medical School.

Stephen Kennedy Smith

Mr. Stephen E. Kennedy-Smith, Jr. is a Founding Partner of KSS Realty Partners. Mr. Kennedy-Smith serves as a Member of the Technology Advisory Board of Gridline Communications Holdings, Inc. and as Member of Strategic Advisory Board of RAPID Pharmaceuticals AG. Mr. Kennedy-Smith has been Chairman of the Advisory Committee at Mainland Resources Inc. since March 2010.

Mr. Kennedy-Smith has been a Director of Med-Design Corp. since September 23, 2003. He is an active member of the Kennedy family financial advisory board. He founded and chairs the Social Media company and Kennedy Smith Sammaweera, a real estate investment and development business. He has delivered keynote presentations at the annual conferences of the Family Firm Institute and the Family Office Exchange – two major family business organizations.

He served as Deputy Campaign Manager for Senator Edward Kennedy during his presidential and senatorial campaigns. He also served on the staff of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees, and taught negotiation at Harvard University Law School. He is a three-time winner of Harvard’s Danforth Award for Excellence in Teaching and a recipient of the Lyndehurst Foundation prize for social and artistic achievement. Mr. Kennedy-Smith holds an M.A. from Harvard University, a J.D. from Columbia University, and an M.A. Ed. from Harvard’s School for Education.

Zaven Khachaturian, PhD

Zaven Khachaturian, PhD, is the President of the Campaign to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease by 2020 [PAS2020] Inc.(www.pad2020.org). He is also a senior science advisor to the Alzheimer’s Association; the Editor-in-Chief of Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. He is generally acknowledged as the “Founder – Chief Architect” of the extramural research programs on the neurobiology of aging and Alzheimer’s supported by the National Institution on Aging (NIA) / National Institutes of Health [NIH]. Formerly he served as Director of the Office of Alzheimer’s Disease, responsible for coordinating all Alzheimer’s disease-related activities NIH-wide, as well as the Associate Director for the Neuroscience and Neuropsychology of Aging Program at the NIA/NIH.

Jessica Wolfe, PhD, MPH

Senior Clinical Advisor (Consulting),
Trauma Research Programs

Dr. Jessica Wolfe has been a behavioral researcher, neuropsychologist and executive in health sciences and public health for over 30 years. She is currently a senior consultant to ESC (formerly Executive Service Corps), focusing on non-profit strategy and management and professional Research Associate at Harvard Medical School, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Prior to that, she served as Senior Research Advisor to Spaulding Hospital Rehabilitation Network’s Institute of Lifestyle Medicine and Senior Research Program Advisor to Partners Healthcare System’s Center for Connected Health where she focused on clinical and research productivity involving wellness and technology innovation.

Jessica helped found the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Center for PTSD where she subsequently developed and directed the National Center’s Women’s Health Sciences Division. There, she led competitively funded, large scale, research initiatives in war trauma, military sexual assault, and Gulf War illnesses. She has over 70 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Jessica received her Doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University. She completed her Master’s in Public Health from Harvard University (HSPH). Other interests include interactive health technologies, user-centered design (UX), neuroimaging in PTSD and traumatic brain injury (TBI), and stress adaptation across the lifespan.

Thomas P. Oberst

Thomas P. Oberst brings 35 years of computer systems experience in high tech and financial services, most recently as the CTO of Advanced Strategic Technology. He is providing vision and technical leadership in the area of Big Data and Cyber Security in support of Cohen Veterans Bioscience’s mission.

His career has spanned 20 years in high tech working, mostly in research and product development for startups which were later purchased by Hewlett Packard and EMC. His more recent career was spent working in the Enterprise Architecture and Technology Group at Fidelity Investments, where he helped design, develop, and deploy some of the most advanced systems used anywhere in Financial Services.

Tom has expertise in computer and server architecture, system design, development, systems engineering and deployment of secure, extremely scalable, globally deployable information infrastructure.

Tom earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from Union College, and Master Degrees in Computer Science and Business from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Harvard Business School.