Naji N. Abumrad, MD, FACS
Chairman, OR International

Dr. Abumrad is the Chairman of the Board of OR International and its co-founder.

Dr. Abumrad serves presently as Professor and Chair of Surgery at Vanderbilt University. He had previously served as Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Acting Dean of the Health Sciences Center with responsibilities for managing the University Hospital as well as the Medical School. He also served as Chairman of Surgery at the North Shore Health System in New York.

For more than two decades, he has supervised a state-of-the-art research laboratory, continuously funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). His work has generated over 250 publications in such prestigious peer-reviewed journals as Science, Nature, and Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has served on the Board of several Journals and has chaired NIH study sections and an NIH-sponsored consensus conference on Clinical Research.

Dr. Abumrad received his medical education at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and at the State University of New York in Syracuse, NY where he joined the faculty. He was also Professor of Surgery, Medicine, and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt in Nashville.

Jonathan Weiner
Managing Director/CEO

Mr. Weiner is the co-founder and CEO of OR International.

Prior to forming OR International, Mr. Weiner was a Director and head of the New York office of Computer Sciences Corporation's Healthcare Practice (formerly APM). Mr. Weiner led consulting engagements in strategy, organization and operations improvement working principally with academic medical centers, specialized children’s hospitals and integrated delivery system clients.

Mr. Weiner was a Principal (Partner) at McKinsey & Company where he served for fifteen years. He participated in the corporate strategy practice, the financial institutions practice as well as working with healthcare clients in strategy and organization consulting assignments.

He was the Assistant Director of the New York City Bureau of the Budget for health and social services and was Executive Director of the New York State Moreland Act Commission on Nursing Homes.

Mr. Weiner has a BA in economics from Harvard.

Belle Horwitz
Managing Director

Ms. Horwitz is responsible for ORI’s operations, marketing and finance. She was a Vice President at IBM leading its Finance Industry Consulting Practice in the Americas that consulted with financial service companies in business transformation, Internet enablement, marketing and IT strategy.

She ran Citibank’s $3.0 billion mortgage originations business in the Northeast and led acquisition of credit card portfolios for the bank’s Credit Card Division. At Merrill Lynch, she was a Vice President in the real estate division and small business division responsible for new program development.

Murray F. Brennan, MD, FACS,
Board Member, OR International LLC and
Chair of the Advisory Committee

Dr. Brennan has the Benno C. Schmidt Chair in Clinical Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He was Chairman of the Department of Surgery from 1985 until he stepped down in June 2006.

Dr. Brennan has lectured throughout the world and authored or co-authored more than 800 scientific papers and book chapters, as well as a book on soft tissue sarcoma. Over the years, he has served as Director of the American Board of Surgery, Chairman of the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer, President of the Society of Surgical Oncology, and President of the American Surgical Association, the oldest and most prestigious surgical association in the United States. Dr. Brennan is currently Vice President of the American College of Surgeons. He has also been awarded Honorary Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and England, the Royal Austral-Asian College of Surgeons, and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and Canada. In 1995, Dr. Brennan was honored with membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2000 he received the American College of Surgeons' highest award, the Distinguished Service Award.

David L. Helfet, M.D.
Board Member, OR International LLC Orthopedic Lead,
ORI Advisory Committee

Dr. Helfet is currently Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and Director of the Combined Orthopedic Trauma Service at both the hospital for Special Surgery and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

He has published and lectured extensively on orthopaedic trauma, especially on fractures of the pelvis and acetabulum, complex fractures of the upper and lower extremity, mal-unions, and non-unions. His expertise has been well-recognized, he has received such visiting lectureships as the Presidential Guest and Watson Jones Memorial Lecture of the British Orthopaedic Association, and has been the recipient of many honors and awards including the Philip D. Wilson Jr. Teaching Award.

Samir Melki, M.D., PhD

Dr. Melki, an authority on laser vision correction, is a senior instructor with the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, where he teaches physicians from around the world. He is currently an attending Physician at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He is also on the clinical faculty at Harvard Medical School. He has performed more than 5,000 LASIK, LASEK, and PRK procedures and has authored two textbooks on the subject. Several surgical instruments bear his name for his innovative designs. Dr. Melki’s role in refractive surgery has been recognized by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery for his award-winning technique of M-LASEK. His clinical practice also encompasses corneal and complex cataract surgery. Dr Melki is the founder of the Boston Eye Group with an extensive ophthalmology practice. He also serves at UKSH’s Shepton Mallet facility in the UK.

Marinos Soteriou, M.D.

Dr. Soteriou is a cardio-vascular surgeon and the founder and Director of the American Heart Institute in Cyprus. The American Heart Institute has the lowest mortality rates and among the lowest lengths of stay for cardiac bypass surgery cases among cardiac centers participating in the European Association of Cardio Thoracic Surgery data base.

Claire Mailhot, RN, F.A.A.N.

Dr. Mailhot is the Director of Business Development and Strategic Planning at the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University. She has oversight on Lucille Packard’s specialty program in cardiac services. She was head of peri-operative services at the Stanford University’s Hospital and Clinics.