- Peter Hartzler, Senior Software Architect
- Heather Holder, Community Manager
- Philip Horger, Engineer
- Tasha Jaeger, Designer
- Adam Kleger, Director, Life Sciences Partnerships
- Danielle Leach, Director of Partnerships
- Amir Lewkowicz, Vice President of Partnerships
- Eric Lindsey, Principal, Life Sciences
- Brian Loew, CEO
- Beth McNaughton, Vice President of Community
- John Novack, Director of Communications
- Anthony Sheetz, Senior Systems Engineer
- John Taylor, CFO
- Walter Wlodarczyk, Chief Technology Officer
Peter Hartzler, Senior Software Architect
Peter is a member of the team that writes the software behind Inspire. Peter is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and draws on over 25 years of software development experience to help ensure that Inspire is as stable, secure and maintainable as possible. Peter's previous experience includes hands on work with an encyclopedic array of information technologies, in roles including maintenance developer, systems analyst/architect, consultant, team manager, and business owner. When not coding, Peter keeps his eye on the Northern Virginia skies, in case it might be a good day to go flying.
Heather Holder, Community Manager
Heather is a community manager, helping to keep things running smoothly within the online communities at Inspire. Heather has a BA from Columbus (GA) State University. Previously, she worked in recruiting and HR; and has moderated and been involved in many online communities. In her free time she can be found riding and competing horses, and volunteering at a therapeutic horsemanship center.
Philip Horger, Engineer
Philip started his career at an early age, sticking a key into a 120 volt electrical outlet on the outside his family's house before he could walk. From then on, he was bound to a life of software development and a deep connection with machines that is only rivaled by his ability to communicate with animals through body language and vocalization.
Philip is a jack-of-all-trades software engineer at Inspire, an ecstatic supporter of open source techologies and ideologies, a hobbyist FOSS programmer on the side, and is planning a local community-run mesh network in his town.
Tasha Jaeger, Designer
Tasha is responsible for the look, feel, and usability of Inspire's Web sites and print collateral. Previously she worked through the dot-com crash at Testmart.com, where she also acted as the liaison between the marketing and engineering departments. Tasha has a BA in Computer & Video Imaging from Cogswell Polytechnical College. When not creating graphics, HTML, and CSS, she can be found creating in a variety of other media, including stained glass, leather working, sewing, and cooking.
Adam Kleger, Director, Life Sciences Partnerships
Adam has over 20 years experience the healthcare space, including more than eight years as an outpatient physical therapist, and over seven years supporting pharmaceutical marketing and market research functions with such companies as Protocol Publications, ListenLogic Health and Verilogue. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, and masters degree in physical therapy from Temple University.
Adam has a keen interest in connecting patients with rare diseases in the social space, fueled by simultaneous rare cancer diagnoses in 2007 for both his wife and mother-in-law. Adam lives outside Philadelphia, PA with his wife, three children, and dog. He enjoys family time, classic rock music, and playing hockey.
Danielle Leach, Director of Partnerships
Danielle came to Inspire with over 15 years experience in the health nonprofit industry. Danielle has worked in leadership positions at the American Cancer Society, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance and Strang Cancer Prevention Center in cancer control, program development and implementation. While overseas for six years in Latin America, she served as an international development consultant for CARE, Catholic Relief Services, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and PLAN International, working on AIDS-related programming and resource development training.
Danielle is also a dedicated volunteer and advocate for cancer and children's issues. She is the founder of the Mason Leach Superstar Fund at Children's National Medical Center, in memory of her son, Mason, who died of pediatric medulloblastoma in 2007. Danielle also serves on several boards and committees related to children's issues and health in the community. She holds a Master of Public Administration degree in Health Policy and Management from New York University.
Amir Lewkowicz, Vice President of Partnerships
Amir Lewkowicz is Co-founder and Vice President for Partnerships at Inspire. Amir is leading Inspire's efforts in partnering with patient advocacy groups as well as with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies.
Prior to Inspire, Amir was a Director of Channel Management at Sphera, a leading provider of Web hosting automation software, and a Senior Account Manager at Triangle Technologies, a company that specializes in creating strategic alliances between Asian and non-Asian technology companies. Amir received his BA from The George Washington University and his MBA from Babson College. It was at Babson where he became fascinated with social media and decided to make social media his career. Amir lectures at Babson and Olin about entrepreneurship and his experiences in launching and growing a company.
Eric Lindsey, Principal, Life Sciences
Eric is a sales management executive who has considerable experience in the medical device, healthcare information and pharmaceutical industries. He has worked for such companies as Patient Point (formerly known as Healthy Advice Networks), IMS Health, PDI, and Stryker Medical. His areas of expertise include sales management, marketing, strategic planning and new business development.
Eric has a bachelor's degree in health care administration/business from Stonehill College. He and his family live in New Jersey.
Brian Loew, CEO
Brian created Inspire in 2005 with the goal of accelerating clinical trial recruitment through the use of safe, trusted online social networks, organized by medical condition, for patients and their caregivers. Brian believes that patient contributions to medical progress have been historically underappreciated, and great progress in medical research will result from involving patients and fully valuing their contributions.
Previously, Brian was responsible for technology strategy for The Washington Post, where he developed innovative products and acted as a technology liaison between the newspaper and washingtonpost.com. Brian has been an Internet entrepreneur since 1994 when he founded worldweb.net, a content management software company that created and launched over 100 websites for major publishers including U.S. News & World Report, Hachette Filipacchi, Time Warner, and The Washington Post Company.
Brian has degrees in physics and economics from The George Washington University. He is a regular author and speaker on topics related to e-health, patient empowerment, and healthcare social media.
Beth McNaughton, Vice President of Community
Beth, who has been with Inspire since 2006, oversees Inspire's online patient support communities. Beth has been participating in online support communities since 2002 when she went seeking other military girlfriends and spouses when her now husband was deployed. The friends that she found there piqued her interest in online communities in general and she began participating in other hobby-centered groups where, based on her contributions, she asked to be a moderator. In 2006, the opportunity to turn this "hobby" to a career became a reality when she joined Inspire. Now, she manages the help desk, community moderation team, as well as Inspire's projects and relationships with nonprofit and life sciences partners.
Prior to Inspire, Beth worked for SRA International, a large Washington, DC‐area government consulting firm, where she was a project manager for one of the firm's largest EPA contracts, EnergyStar, and responsible for implementing and managing a help desk system to support all of the involved government clients and their customers. Prior to SRA, Beth was a project manager and customer relations expert for worldweb.net. Beth has over 12 years of experience with customer and client relations, and has been actively involved in participation and moderation of online social networks for nearly a decade. She holds a BA in English from The George Washington University. She has been quoted in the national media on topics related to expertise in managing online groups and social networking.
John Novack, Director of Communications
John comes to Inspire with a background in newspaper reporting and in healthcare specialty publishing and communications. John was director of marketing communications and strategy for patient safety software company Quantros, Inc., of Milpitas, CA, and medical market development director at EBSCO Publishing, Ipswich, MA. John was also group publisher at healthcare information company HCPro, of Marblehead, MA.
John is a past board member of the Specialty Information Publishers Foundation (SIPF). He was a board member and officer of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) in the AHCJ's formative years. He has spoken and written on healthcare social media, online community building, and specialty publishing, for the AHCJ and the Specialized Information Publishers Association, among others. His interests include running, traveling, reading, music and Boston sports teams.
Anthony Sheetz, Senior Systems Engineer
Anthony graduated from Virginia Tech in 1996 and joined the IT department at the Washington Post Newspaper. While there, he rose to manage the Messaging Infrastructure group. After leaving the Post, he worked at Zurka Interactive, managing the web infrastructure of other small businesses. He built unique browser-based applications for the likes of Balducci's and the Naval Research Lab, and he also wrote the core code of StartUpHire.com, Zurka's last major client before Anthony joined Inspire.
Anthony enjoys playing with his two children, bicycling, reading, and solving problems using silicon.
John Taylor, CFO
John comes to Inspire after five years as CFO of CodeRyte, Inc., a Bethesda, MD-based medical coding software company. John helped CodeRyte grow annual revenues over 400% during his tenure. Prior to working for CodeRyte, John was Senior Vice President for Consumer Markets at both Qwest Communications and LCI International. Over nearly a dozen years he served in several sales, marketing and business strategy roles at MCI Communications, including Vice President of Partner Marketing. He is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College.
Walter Wlodarczyk, Chief Technology Officer
Walter co-founded Inspire with Brian Loew and Amir Lewkowicz. As Chief Technology Officer, he has been responsible for the technology behind Inspire since the company's inception. Walter has over 10 years of experience in system design and engineering. Prior to Inspire, Walter worked in research and development at worldweb.net, the maker of an enterprise content management software system. He was also a software engineer for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, where he contributed to the development of systems that facilitate collaboration between biotechnology firms. Walter holds degrees from the College of William and Mary and Fordham University. He lives in New York City. His interests include photography and urban art.
