MMF board elects new officers and members
The Minnesota Medical Foundation (MMF) elected four new officers, including one who is new to the board, and five other new members to its board of trustees at the foundation’s annual meeting on October 27.
The newly elected officers, who will serve two-year terms, are:
- Chair Mary K. Stern, CFA, of Minneapolis, CEO of MKS Associates and the former president of Sit Mutual Funds. Stern joined the MMF board in 2001 and most recently served on the Executive Committee and chaired the Investment Committee. A longtime supporter of medical research at the University of Minnesota, Stern replaces John M. Murphy Jr., who also joined the MMF board in 2001 and is a senior partner with Somerset Asset Management.
- Vice chair Thomas Olson, of Wayzata, Minn., executive vice president of the Business Bank and co-managing director of Prime Mortgage, a division of the Business Bank. A University of Minnesota graduate, he has served on the Mortgage Bankers Association of Minnesota board for more than 10 years, including one year as president. Olson and his wife, Meredith Olson, have established the Carol Olson Memorial Diabetes Fund in memory of Tom’s sister, who suffered from type I diabetes. A certified public accountant, Tom Olson holds a B.S. in business from the University and joined the MMF board in 2007.
- Secretary Susan Gunderson, of St. Louis Park, Minn., CEO of LifeSource, a nonprofit organization that coordinates organ and tissue donation. Gunderson has been an MMF board member since 2006. Before joining LifeSource in 1989, she was an administrator at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. She has also served on the Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation, United Network for Organ Sharing, Association of Organ Procurement Organizations and the Memorial Blood Centers.
- Treasurer Eric Neetenbeek, J.D., of Eden Prairie, Minn., president and CEO of Minnesota Masonic Charities, the philanthropic arm of Minnesota Masonry. Neetenbeek, who earned his juris doctor at the William Mitchell College of Law, is a new trustee as well. He has worked in investment management and trusts and has served on several boards, including those of St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth, Minn., and the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation. He was Grand Master of the Masons of Minnesota in 1996-97.
In addition to Neetenbeek, the following trustees were elected to serve four-year terms on the MMF board:
- David Cannom, M.D., of Los Angeles, Calif., a world-renowned expert in treating ventricular arrhythmias who is returning to the board having previously served from 1999 to 2007. Cannom founded Los Angeles Cardiology Associates and is a clinical professor of medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine and medical director of cardiology at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He served as president of the Heart Rhythm Foundation and the North American Society for Pacing and Electrophysiology and as governor of the American College of Cardiology in California.
- Mark Eustis, of Minneapolis, president and CEO of Fairview Health Services, a large nonprofit health system that includes the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview. Eustis earned a master’s degree in hospital and healthcare administration at the University of Minnesota. Before returning to Minnesota in 2007, he served as president of Regional Ministry Operations at Ascension Health in St. Louis, Mo. Prior to that, he was president of Ascension’s Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic States Operating Group. Eustis’s career also includes leadership roles at BJC HealthCare in St. Louis, Mo.; the Detroit Medical Center; and St. John Health in Detroit.
- Beverly Grossman, of Minneapolis. Grossman is a member of the University of Minnesota Medical School Dean’s Board of Visitors, a group of accomplished community leaders that advises Medical School Dean Deborah E. Powell, M.D., on the school’s strategic direction. She is also an advocate for research and patient care focused on Alzheimer’s disease. In 2007, she honored her husband, Bud Grossman, by making a significant gift to establish the N. Bud Grossman Center for Memory Research and Care at the University of Minnesota, supporting Alzheimer’s disease research by renowned physician-scientist Karen Hsiao Ashe, M.D., Ph.D.
- Selwyn Vickers, M.D., of Golden Valley, Minn., is an accomplished surgeon and a nationally recognized leader in pancreatic cancer research. Vickers joined the University of Minnesota in 2006 as the Jay Phillips Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery. He is also a member of the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota. Before coming to the University of Minnesota, he was chief of the gastrointestinal surgery section at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. His a member of the board of governors of the American College of Surgeons, the board of trustees of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract and the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins Medicine.
- Winston Wallin, of Edina, Minn., chief executive emeritus of Medtronic, Inc., is a supporter of lifelong learning and scholarship as well as cancer research. He established the Winston R. and Maxine H. Wallin Land-Grant Chair in Cancer Prevention with his wife, Maxine, and played leadership roles in establishing the Masonic Cancer Center and the John H. Kersey Chair in Cancer Research at the University of Minnesota. Wallin chairs the Dean’s Board of Visitors and served as a special adviser to the University of Minnesota’s health sciences programs in the early 1990s.
The Minnesota Medical Foundation board of trustees includes both medical and non-medical community leaders along with the vice chair of the University’s Board of Regents, the president of the University, the senior vice president for health sciences, the deans of the Medical School and the School of Public Health, the chairs of the Basic and Clinical Sciences Councils and the president of the Medical Alumni Society.
