First Friday
Virtual Lunch Chats
with Healthcare Professionals
The Rankin College of Business hosts First Friday Virtual Lunches with Healthcare Professionals each semester. Speakers in this series will talk with students about their experiences, careers and opportunities in the field of healthcare administration. Lunches will take place virtually on Zoom at noon.
Students that RSVP and attend will receive a gift certificate for lunch.
Speakers:
February 23, 2024, at noon- Melissa Yandell & Stephen Bowman
2024 Speaker Bios
Melissa Yandell
Assistant Professor, UAMS, Phd, MHA
Melissa Yandell is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in the Health Policy and Management Department of the College of Public Health. Melissa graduated from UAMS having completed her Master of Health Administration in 2015. She completed her PhD at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, MS, where her dissertation was on burnout in resident physicians. Before joining as faculty, Melissa worked for Baptist Health for over 8 years, ending her practice career by serving as the Associate Designated Institutional Official where she helped create four accredited physician residency programs on the Baptist Health North Little Rock campus that now are training over 100 physician residents. Melissa serves as the faculty liaison to the Arkansas chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Stephen Bowman
Associate Professor, UAMS, Phd, MHA
Stephen Bowman rejoined the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences as the MHA Program Director in 2021. Steve previously served on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Walden University and National University where he served as MHA director and faculty liaison to the San Diego Organization of Healthcare Leaders (local ACHE chapter.) His professional experience includes more than 15 years in public health practice with the Washington State Department of Health where he held management positions, including director of the Office of Community Health Systems, director for the state’s tobacco prevention and control program and manager of the trauma designation, EMS and trauma registries and statewide quality improvement programs. He received his PhD in 2006 in Health Services Research from the University of Washington where he also completed his MHA. Steve’s research has focused on emergency health systems, injury prevention, acute care injury outcomes, and occupational injury surveillance and identifying new methods for capturing occupational injuries from secondary data sources. In addition to quantitative research, he brings expertise in qualitative and mixed methods research.
2023 Speaker Bios
John Whiteley
Senior Vice President Financial Planning, Analysis and Ambulatory Operations
Texas Health Resources
John Whiteley is the Senior Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis and Ambulatory Operations for Texas Health Resources, a $5 billion in revenue not-for-profit healthcare system based in Arlington. In addition to overseeing the planning and budget process, he is the financial executive for Texas Health Physicians Group, Virtual Care, and Urgent Care functions as well as supporting service lines and business development activities. John has been with THR for over 30 years and has served in various finance and accounting roles including Vice President – Finance Officer at Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital, Texas Health Dallas and as the finance leader for THR Real Estate Operations. John has led THR through the design and implementation of a new planning and budgeting systems and process designed to reduce effort and improve efficiency in a very complex environment. Prior to healthcare he had a brief stint in the financial services industry.
John holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a major in finance from Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, Arkansas. He is a CPA and is a member of the AICPA and TSCPA as well as the Healthcare Finance Managers Association and the Healthcare Academy – a national roundtable of healthcare finance executives. He serves on many boards in his role at THR, and currently serves as chair of the THR employee retirement investment group and the benefits advisory group. In the community, John has served as treasurer at his Church and is currently the treasurer of the Arlington Economic Development Corporation.
John and his wife Traci (also a graduate of SAU) of 36 years moved to Arlington right after college where they have raised two sons and a daughter and have two grandchildren. John was born and raised in rural western Kansas and credits that upbringing with instilling a sense of work ethic and family. He is an avid sports nut and enjoys bird hunting and golf. His biggest sports passion is watching Kansas Jayhawk basketball and has been fortunate to attend three final fours with Kansas winning two of them. While basketball is his favorite sport to watch, he is very proud of the fact that he played baseball at SAU and was part of the 1987 team that finished third place in the college world series.
