Kannact Leadership

• Krishna RaoChief Executive Officer

  

  Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kannact since inception in August 2012. Krishna has an undergraduate in physics and an MBA. He started his technology career as a senior business analyst for Hewlett Packard and then left to become one of the early founding members at Credence and oversaw finance, M+A activity, and was involved in the IPO. Krishna later served as the CFO at Mitsubishi Silicon, raising over $1 Billion for expansion. Before Kannact, Krishna served as COO at Summit (acquired by Fiserv) where he oversaw the development and launch of their first home banking platform.

• Jeff MertenChief Corporate Development Officer

  

  Jeff played PAC-10 soccer for Oregon State University and graduated with a BA in History from the University of Oregon. From there he returned to Corvallis to co-found the Indoor Sports Parks. Taking his entrepreneurial way of thinking into the insurance world he worked for AFLAC for 7 years where he received both the Top-10 award (RSC) and was part of the President’s Club (RSC), developing the successful broker coordinator role for the company, nationally, to drive sales through insurance brokerage firms.

• Jeff BrizzolaraChief Wellness Officer

  

  Jeff Brizzolara, PhD, MPH, is Chief Wellness Officer at Kannact and has been developing well-being programs and leading health management organizations for nearly three decades. As a thought leader and subject matter expert in the areas of health coaching, digital health, and corporate wellness, Jeff has dedicated his academic training and professional endeavors to improving the health status of employees and returning a positive ROI for businesses and corporations. Dr. Brizzolara currently serves on local, national and university-affiliated health and wellness advisory boards.

• Nandan RaoChief Operating Officer

  

  Nandan previously founded GovTech firm, Virtual Lab, that enables impact evaluations for public health interventions for organizations such as The World Bank and UNICEF. Before that, he was Head of Engineering at venture-backed machine-learning startup Relink Labs and taught machine learning and causal inference as an Associate Professor in the MSc. Data Science program at Barcelona School of Economics. And before all the software and statistics, he made movies.

  He has an MRes in Economics from Pompeu Fabra University, an MSc. in Data Science from Barcelona School of Economics, and a BFA in Film and Television Production from New York University.

• Andrew GilchristMedical Director

  

  Dr. Andrew Gilchrist, MD is a board-certified Internal medicine physician based in Eugene, Oregon. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington, went to medical school at the University of Nevada School of Medicine and did his internship and residency at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, Iowa. He has over 25 years of experience in the practice of both primary care and hospital-based medicine. In addition, he has served in leadership roles including terms as chief of staff at McKenzie-Willamette Hospital and president of the Lane County Medical Society in Eugene.

  Dr. Gilchrist is a first generation American with deeply held British roots. In his spare time he enjoys drives in his vintage British cars, motorsports, and traveling with his family. He is an avid runner and makes an effort to run two marathons every year.

• Lee StrandburgDirector of Pharmacy

  

  Dr. Lee Strandberg is Professor Emeritus, Pharmacy Economics and Public Health Oregon State University and was Director, Managed Care Pharmacy for Samaritan Health Plans. He was appointed by Governor Kitzhaber to the Oregon Health Policy Board, Medicare-Medicaid Integration of Care and Services Work Group which wrote part of the Coordinated Care Organization (CCO) organizational and reporting structure.

  He has served as a health care management consultant to US government agencies, insurance companies, various HMOs and private sector corporations. Included among these are the US Government's Congressional Budget Office, Coors Company of Colorado, Oregon's Medicaid Program, the Teamsters Union and the US Veterans Administration.

• Karla OsegueraDirector of Finance and Administration

  

  After earning her Finance degree at Oregon State University, Karla has worked with Kannact to strengthen processes across the organization’s financial and administrative departments. Her professionalism and business mindset has added value and structure to Kannact’s growth and development.

  More recently Karla has also completed her MBA in Organizational Leadership and has been able to implement the knowledge and experience that this program provides into Kannact’s Finance department.