In March 2024, Lisa Asare was appointed as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the NJ Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority, the first and only such state authority in the nation, established to address maternal and infant health with a specific focus on addressing disparities.  In this role, she serves as a member of Phil Murphy’s cabinet.

With over 25 years of service within state government, she has served in senior leadership roles within the Departments of Health and Human Services, where she provided oversight of the state Medicaid program, mental health and addiction services and family health services.  She also served as the Department lead on First Lady Murphy’s Nurture NJ maternal health initiative, where she contributed to the NurtureNJ strategic plan, addressed the social determinants of health through multi-sector collaboration, and leveraged additional state, federal, and philanthropic funding to address emerging issues.

She serves as the Immediate Past President of the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) Board and received the 2023 HRSA Maternal and Child Bureau (MCHB) Director’s award.

Christine Ivery is dedicated to addressing inequities in healthcare and mitigating issues within the Black infant and maternal mortality crisis. Her passion is to help all walks of life through disease and disparity prevention, as well as to make an impact in the communities she serves.
As Founder and CEO of Public Health Jawn LLC, Christine provides consulting and coaching to various organizations within the field. As an extension to work at PHJ, she connects a community of professionals through in-person collaboration and networking as well as, increasing awareness of critical health topics on her podcast, Public Health Gems.
Christine serves as a Program Officer at the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute (NJHCQI) where she secures implementation of the program objectives and cultivates networks to effectively address barriers that affect maternal health outcomes. Christine instructs as a Children’s Health Adjunct Professor at Thomas Jefferson University and has previously lectured as a Public Health Adjunct Professor at Lasalle University.
Christine has presented at local and national forums such as the American Heart Association, University of Pennsylvania, Health Connect One, American Public Health Association, March of Dimes, Association of Maternal Child Health Programs (AMCHP), and shared a 2022 TEDx Talk entitled “Igniting Change in the Black Maternal Mortality Crisis".
Christine serves as a Community Health Planning and Policy Development (CHPPD) Governing Counselor for the American Public Health Association (APHA), and Advisory Board member on the Black Caucus of Health Workers. She is a proud New Jersey Birth Equity Funders Alliance Advisory Board Member, Philly Birth Fund Board Member, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated Social Justice platform member, and ForbesBLK member. Christine has been awarded by the APHA CHPPD 2022 Excellence in Collaboration Award, recognized as a 2023 Drexel University 40 Under 40 Honoree and inaugural recipient of the 2025 March of Dimes Philadelphia Salute to Women Health Equity Award.
Christine holds a Bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science- Kinesiotherapy from Norfolk State University, a Master's degree from Drexel University in Public Health, Health Education Specialist Certification (CHES), and is currently a Doctorate in Public Health student at Morgan State University.

Roy Wade is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in the Division of General Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Wade’s research focuses on decreasing disparities in health caused by exposure to childhood trauma. Prior to attending medical school, Dr. Wade earned a PhD in Microbiology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, using classical genetics approaches to examine the respiratory chain physiology of environmental bacteria. Dr. Wade earned a medical degree from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in 2007 and completed pediatric residency at the University of Virginia in 2010. Dr. Wade’s career aspirations were further informed by my experience as a Minority Health Policy Fellow at Harvard Medical School where he also earned an MPH in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2011. Dr. Wade completed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar’s program at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Master’s of Science in Health Policy in 2013. Securing a Stoneleigh Foundation early career development award, Dr. Wade’s initial work has focused on developing more sensitive childhood adversity measures and promoting the adoption of trauma-informed approaches among health and social service organizations. In conducting this work, Dr. Wade has authored several papers including a qualitative study of adverse childhood experiences amongst urban youth published in Pediatrics in which he found that urban economically distressed youth endorsed a broader set of childhood stressors than those included in the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study and in many cases used contextually specific language to describe these experiences. In a separate study examining data from a survey of adverse childhood experiences and health outcomes amongst Philadelphia adults published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, Dr. Wade found that many of the broader experiences endorsed by young people in his prior qualitative studies were strongly associated with poor health outcomes and certain populations particularly impoverished adults with significant childhood adversity were at increased risk for poor health outcomes such as substance abuse problems and mental disorders. This work received local and national media coverage including stories on National Public Radio and in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Dr. Wade’s research interests also include examining the mechanisms through which significant childhood adversity translate into poor health throughout the life course and negatively impact offspring. Through his work, Dr. Wade plans to translate research on the science of childhood adversity and toxic stress into effective strategies to improve community level systems of care in economically distressed communities.