As we commence a new year and our new series of deep dives into segments of the luxury market, it seemed appropriate to start with one of the most important and truly relevant luxuries of all – wellness.
The pursuit of wellness, the condition of good physical and mental health, has become an operative and redefining value of many aspects of luxury lifestyle, be it food and beverages, hospitality and travel, fashion, technology or home, work place and interior design.
From a corporate standpoint, employee wellness has a great effect on productivity and healthcare costs. Some analysts say that an increasing number of businesses in the United States are less competitive globally primarily because of ballooning healthcare costs.
Please join us for what promises to be an enlightening and important conversation with leaders from three different and significant aspects of and opportunities in the wellness equation.
Christopher Boynton is the Region Vice President for the American Diabetes Association’s Northeast region. The mission of the American Diabetes Association is to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes. As Executive Director and Region Vice President for the past 10 years, Chris and his team of 23 dedicated individuals have grown and developed special events, Type 1 and Type 2 programming and community involvement across the New England area in support of the Association’s vision of a life free of diabetes and all its burdens. Previous to the American Diabetes Association, Chris served as the Vice President of Development at the American Cancer Society for 11 years and is a proud University of Connecticut alumnus.
Fred Nazem, CEO of Rejuvenan Global Health, is an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, one of the earliest venture capitalists, and a corporate architect who has founded, operated or financed several multi-billion dollar corporations. He has been building highly disruptive, industry-leading healthcare and technology companies since the early 1970’s when he established several private venture capital partnerships, including Nazem & Company.
As the Founder and Managing Partner of Nazem & Company, Mr. Nazem either started, financed or guided over two hundred companies in the information technology, telecommunications, healthcare and digital media sectors. Many of these companies have become leaders in their industries, some 60 of them went public, and more than two-dozen have grown into multi-billion dollar enterprises.
Mr. Nazem’s career has been marked by a strong affinity for the digitization of healthcare services. Among his many contributions to the healthcare field, he is credited for having co-led a group of 12 investor-entrepreneurs who enabled the formation and commercialization of MRI technology. He founded Cirrus Logic (OTC:CRUS), a leading semiconductor company, Blue Bird Bio (OTC:BLUE), a gene therapy company and Genesis Health Ventures, (NYSE:GHV), a leading eldercare company. He also backed companies like Universal Health System (NYSE:UHS), a leading for- profit hospital system, and Oxford Health Plans, (OTC: OXHP), a company he initially financed as a VC, then later stepped in as Chairman, leading a successful turnaround when Oxford experienced operational and financial difficulties in the late 1990’s.
For the past decade, Mr. Nazem has been a passionate advocate for the digital delivery of highly personalized regenerative medicine in a consumer-centric environment. He is currently the CEO of Rejuvenan Global Health, an early stage epigenetics company focused on commercializing the revolutionary findings of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Telomere biology.
Mr. Nazem currently serves on a limited number of boards, including Columbia Presbyterian Hospital’s Science and Technology Advisory Board, the Chinese American Medical Association, and the GenapSys Corporation, a cutting-edge gene sequencing enterprise.
A scientist turned financier, Mr. Nazem holds a B.S. degree in biochemistry from Ohio State University, an M.S. degree in physical chemistry from the University of Cincinnati, an M.B.A in finance from Columbia University, and has done doctoral work in quantum physics at Washington University.
Among many honors, he is the recipient of the Fulbright One to World award and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for his contributions to the American economy.
Christopher Sidford, MD is the Founder and Medial Director of multi-award winning Black Bag. Highly regarded by peers and patients alike, Dr. Christopher Sidford is a board-certified physician in Emergency Medicine with over twenty years’ experience at leading medical institutions.
Before founding Black Bag, he was an attending physician with the world-renowned Lahey Clinic. He started his career at Boston City Hospital, where he graduated from the hospital’s “knife and gun club,” the residency program for emergency physicians.
A U.S. Navy officer, Dr. Sidford served as faculty member of the Emergency Medicine Residency training program in San Diego before traveling overseas. The Mojave Desert and the Arctic Circle were just some of the locations that challenged Dr. Sidford to teach and practice emergency medicine in remote and difficult conditions.
Upon returning to the United States, he joined the faculty at Brown University, where he taught emergency medicine and served as attending physician at Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Sidford providied emergency medical support for NATO troops during amphibious operations at the Arctic Circle.
He is a fellow with the American College of Emergency Medicine, and volunteers at IMEC International Medical Equipment Collaborative), an organization dedicated to providing third- world nations with millions of dollars’ worth of used medical equipment.
Dr. Sidford received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, in 1982, from St. Lawrence University and his medical degree from Albany Medical College, in 1987.
He is a member of the Advisory Board of The Luxury Marketing Council of Connecticut-Hudson Valley.