Faculty
Our adjunct professors work at some of the best healthcare organizations in Boston, and they hold a wide range of titles, such as executive director, registered nurse, director, manager, and chief information officer. These exceptional leaders bring their valuable experience into the classroom with engaging discussions, case studies, and site visits. They also leverage their professional networks to coordinate guest lectures and site visits.
Full-Time Faculty
Mona Al-Amin, PhD, MPH
Professor Al-Amin's earned her PhD from Temple University in Risk, Insurance, and Healthcare Management. Her expertise and passion are in hospital performance, hospitalists, and staffing levels. She has developed the concept of sustainers, which are healthcare organizations with sustained superior performance.
Her research is published in top journals such as Health Services Research, Health Care Management Review, and Journal of Hospital Medicine. She teaches Health Systems I: Healthcare in the US as well as Healthcare Operations Management and Performance Improvement, where she shares her knowledge of the healthcare field with her students.
Professor Al-Amin's research interests include organizational theory, organizational structure, Value Based Purchasing, and organizational performance. In recent research projects, she has investigated the relationship between hospital level factors, such as staffing levels with hospital performance. She is currently working on research projects to investigate the determinants of COVID-19 mortality rates.
Richard H. Gregg, MA, MBA
Professor Gregg career has focused on the strategic management of healthcare organizations, both in the field and in academia. Beginning in 1976, he was a management consultant to healthcare organizations, then served as director and CEO of the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, the largest yoga and holistic health center in the United States. Since coming to Suffolk in 2001, he served as the executive director of the graduate program in philanthropy and media, taught in the MPA Program, and served as the program director and chair of healthcare administration. He developed the Healthcare Internship Program, the Healthcare Mentor Program, the Healthcare Travel Seminar and the Distinguished Guest Lecture Series. His areas of particular interest and expertise are leadership, innovation, strategy development and implementation, and organizational learning and change. In 2022-2023, while on a reduced teaching load, he served as the Interim Chief Executive Officer of Community Health Programs (CHP) in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. CHP is a federally qualified health center that serves more than 30,000 patients and family services clients.
As an environmentalist, Professor Gregg was a leader in the "Idle-Free" movement that encourages drivers to stop idling in order to protect our health and environment. He served as chairman of the "Idle-Free" Massachusetts Campaign of the American Lung Association, and his efforts to reduce motor vehicle air pollution resulted in a Massachusetts law—"An Act to Improve School Campus Air Quality"—that limits engine idling on every school property in the Commonwealth. The law was signed by Governor Deval Patrick in 2008 and ensures cleaner, safer air for the 1,000,000 young people who attend school and everyone else that works at and visits the schools. Professor Gregg was honored with the Healthy Air Award from the American Lung Association, and he was named as a "Climate Champion" by Clean Air Cool Planet, a non-profit organization that promotes solutions to global warming.
Peter Martelli, PhD, MSPH
Dr. Peter Martelli’s research focuses on organizational errors and the interdisciplinary application of models, such as High Reliability Organizing (HRO), to promote system safety and reliability. He has worked on various aspects of these issues both in healthcare settings and in other industries, including wildland fire and emergency response, oil exploration, and civil and industrial infrastructure. He is an Advisory Board member and former Co-Director of the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California-Berkeley, where he has worked globally at the cutting-edge of HRO and strategic error management.
Recent international projects include studies of patient safety in Georgia Republic, performance improvement in Ethiopia, cardiovascular disease in Guinea-Conakry, chronic kidney disease in Honduras, and several others. From 2021 to 2023, Dr. Martelli was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Georgia Republic, affiliated with Georgian American University.
He is a recipient of both the Dean's and the Graduate Student Association's Teaching Awards, and was the Academy of Management's Healthcare Management Division 2024 awardee for Excellence in Teaching.
Before joining Suffolk, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the VA Center for Organization, Leadership, and Management Research, an Exchange Scholar in Health Policy at Harvard University, and a research coordinator in the Scientific Policy and Quality Department at the American College of Physicians.
Peter E. Rivard, PhD, MHSA
Professor Rivard has devoted much of his career to improving healthcare quality and efficiency. During the first half of his career, he managed ambulatory care services, served as a hospital division administrator, and held health policy and program development roles. He then pivoted to research and teaching, earning a PhD in management in 2006 and conducting organization-studies-based research on patient safety. Today he continues that work, with projects on leadership and on high reliability. His research has been published in several top-tier journals, including Health Care Management Review, Health Services Research, and Medical Care Research and Review. Before joining the Suffolk faculty, Prof. Rivard was a postdoctoral research fellow at what is now the VA Boston Healthcare System’s Center for Healthcare Organization & Implementation Research (CHOIR) and Instructor in Health Policy and Management at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Professor Rivard has been a Suffolk faculty member since 2008 and he served as Chair of Healthcare Administration from January 2018 through June 2021. As chair, he played a major role in the growth of the department and its programs, including accreditation of the MHA Program, development of a new MHA curriculum, and development of the online MHA Program.
Erin E. Sullivan, PhD
Professor Sullivan’s expertise and passion are focused on how to build leaders, teams, and culture in healthcare, with a particular emphasis on strengthening frontline leaders in primary care.
Her research is published in top journals such as the Journal of Healthcare Management and the Journal of Health Organization and Management. She teaches Leadership, Ethics, and Organizational Change in Healthcare and the MHA Capstone, where she shares her knowledge of the healthcare field with her students. She has substantial teaching experience in the areas of leadership and organizational change and in case-based teaching and learning.
Professor Sullivan’s current research projects address physician leadership, the impact of COVID-19 on the primary care workforce, and patient safety and physician burnout. In addition to her teaching and research, Professor Sullivan serves on the editorial board of the Case Research Journal.
Professor Sullivan joined Suffolk University after working as the research and curriculum director at the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care. During her tenure at Harvard Medical School, she was also a lecturer within the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.
Lecturers
Anne Marie Conway
Professor Conway brings more than 30 years of clinical development experience in rare diseases—enzyme replacement and gene & cell therapies—along with academic nursing research experience in gastroenterology, neurology, and oncology. Most recently, she was Clinical Head of Biologics at PTC Therapeutics where she led the clinical development team for AGIL-AADC gene therapy leading to an MAA submission.
Prior to that Conway was VP of Clinical Operations at Agilis Biotherapeutics, responsible for clinical development operations and pharmacovigilance. Before joining Agilis, she founded AMC Consulting, LLC, which provided clinical development support to companies. She also worked at Shire Human Genetic Therapies (HGT) and Transkaryotic Therapies (TKT) where she held increasingly senior leadership roles including VP of Clinical Development Operations.
Degrees
MHA, Suffolk University
BA in Nursing, Boston University
Marissa Seligman
Professor Seligman teaches Big Data Analytics for Health. She is Principal Consultant and Director for Data and Advanced Analytics Tools at Optum Insights, Life Sciences in Boston. In this role, she serves as the primary point of contact for data license clients and provides direction and support in content and uses of Optum Life Sciences' claims data and clinical data assets, including variables derived from natural language processing (NLP) data. Prof. Seligman was originally trained as a pharmacist and she holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Northeastern University. Prior to her work at Optum Insights, she worked for many years in the clinical education field, including as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at a medical education company in Virginia and Chief, Clinical and Regulatory Affairs and Compliance Officer at DBC Pri-Med in Boston.
Degrees
Doctor of Pharmacy, Northeastern University
BS, Pharmacy, Long Island University
Elizabeth A. Turner
Lecturer of Healthcare Administration
Professor Turner teaches Legal Environment of Healthcare and Performance Improvement and Patient Safety. She also co-teaches Leadership Ethics in Health Organization with Professor Nelson.
She is a nurse-attorney whose practice focuses on health care law. She has more than 30 years of healthcare experience in both clinical and administrative roles, including the areas of healthcare policy and regulation, quality assurance, and program design and evaluation. She has worked in the public and private healthcare sectors, including the Medicare and Medicaid programs, managed care organizations, private insurers, and state agencies. She has a particular interest in healthcare regulation, access to health care services, professional practice issues, including related employment matters.
Professor Turner is respected for her expertise in the areas of healthcare practice, regulation, and licensure issues. She has worked with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH), and the various state licensing boards on professional practice and controlled substances matters. She represents individual practitioners, healthcare facilities, and programs and organizations. With a strong interest in public health and health policy issues, she has worked with agencies and practitioners providing healthcare services to the homeless, mentally ill, and indigent.
Professor Turner is a member of the American Association of Nurse Attorneys and has served on the Board of Directors of the New England Chapter. She lectures extensively, both locally and nationally, on professional practice, regulatory compliance, and health policy issues, and she has authored several related articles and references. She is a founding partner of Snyder, Turner, Phillips & Ober, LLC, the first all nurse-attorney law firm in the country, located in the Boston area.
Degrees
BS, Merrimack College
JD, Suffolk University
MPH, Boston University
Lawrence General Hospital School of Nursing