It is with great pleasure that I am happy to announce that Jim St. Clair will be joining LFPH as our new Executive Director. While I have been honored to head the organization, LFPH needs full-time executive leadership in order to thrive, and I can’t imagine a better person to take us to the next level.
In July 2020, LFPH set out to build a global open source community of technology and services companies, public health authorities, epidemiologists and other public health specialists, privacy and security experts, and individual developers. Looking back at all our accomplishments, it is evident that we are creating great value, but there is still much work to be done.
Jim brings exactly the mix of experience that LFPH needs – time in government at HHS, deep industry connections, and strong technology capabilities. I have worked with Jim for many years as he has bridged the divide between healthcare and blockchain, and have always been impressed with his knowledge and drive for change.
Most recently, Jim and I have served together on the steering committee of the Good Health Pass Collaborative, working together to bring a diverse set of organizations to agree on common frameworks for sharing COVID certificates and passes. This gave me an opportunity to see his leadership and diplomacy skills in action. He has been an active participant in the COVID Credentials Initiative since the very beginning, and the community there has easily come to respect his passion and knowledge within this space.
We have also had the pleasure of crossing paths through Hyperledger and ToIP, giving Jim familiarity with the Linux Foundation overall and many of the other partnership opportunities available within the LF. He already has some great ideas on how the overall scale of the LF can help LFPH grow and thrive.
His experience working at HIMSS and with other organizations such as ISO, IEEE, and HL7 means he not only brings connections across the entire healthcare industry, but a set of connections to the global healthcare and standards-setting communities that LFPH will be involved with in the future. He has a deep understanding of the trends on where the market is going, and I cannot wait to see what he achieves.
Please join me in welcoming him by hopping on our Slack and sending him a message. And of course, I know he will welcome your thoughts and ideas for how to take the successes we’ve had with LFPH over the past year and grow them even further.