2025 Winter: Tailored Education: Helping Every Student Across the Finish Line

Dr. Fornari is a Professor in Science Education, Occupational Health and Family Medicine. She is an Associate Dean of Educational Skills Development, Zucker SOM (ZSOM) at Hofstra Northwell and is the Vice President of Faculty Development at Northwell Health organization for the 23 hospitals. Her faculty development role at both institutions is designed to align the UME, GME and CPD continuum. Serving in these roles for the past 15 years allows her to bring UME curricular innovations originating at the ZSOM to Northwell GME programs and recruit educators from GME to participate in faculty development and teaching at the Zucker School of Medicine.

Recognizing a need for additional faculty development to align UME and GME education, in 2016 she created and admitted the inaugural cohort to a Masters of Health Professions Education degree program. As Program Director, she supported high level faculty development for faculty who desire an advanced degree in education. She has developed and implemented continuing professional development opportunities for faculty: “Just in Time Teaching (JiTT)”, which is an international downloadable App for iOS and Android and supports technology assisted faculty development that is evidenced based and meets the needs of geographically dispersed faculty and trainees, Advanced Teaching, Learning and Assessment Skills (ATLAS) workshops, an educational research curriculum, “Educational Research Skills Development (ERSD)” and system-wide “Chief Resident” curriculum course, all of which include interactive didactics and experiential components to assure skill-building is occurring in real-time.

Dr. Fornari is co-editor of two manuals published by the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE), entitled Active Learning Strategies for Large Group Teaching and Mentoring in Health Professions Education: Evidence -Informed Strategies Across the Continuum. These are web-based manuals available to the medical education community that has been very well received nationally and internationally.

An interest in health humanities and reflective practice as a core competency has supported successful implementation of health humanities curriculum across UME, GME, and CPD at the ZSOM and Northwell Health Organization. She is currently co-leading a AAMC/NEGEA Special Interest Group (SIG) on Health Huminites as Teaching and Learning tool.

Dr. Fornari is actively engaged in obtaining external funding and implementing novel programs to transform medical education across the continuum. In 2014, Dr. Fornari was awarded a 2-year grant, Mentoring and Professionalism in Training (MAP-IT), funded by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation that focuses on developing mentoring skills in interprofessional clinicians to achieve humanistic relationships with trainees, colleagues and ultimately patients across the continuum of medical education. This program continues annually (2024 marks cohort #10) under the Office of Academic Affairs at Northwell Health. This program has expanded to a new interprofessional professional development program, MAP-IT 1.5, Flourishing: Character, Caring and Practical Wisdom under the sponsorship of the Kern National Network (KNN).

Dr. Fornari obtained her EdD, Higher Education, College Teaching and Academic Leadership at Columbia University, Teachers College in 2001. Her research interest was focused on curriculum to support ethical decision making for healthcare professionals. Her interest in ethics education has continued and she obtained a Graduate Certificate in Clinical Bioethics form Hofstra University in 2018 and received certification in 2021 as a Healthcare Ethics Consultant (HEC-C). In 2024 she will complete certification as a Coach by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). In 2020 she was appointed to be an International Fellow (FAMEE) of the Association of Medical Education of Europe (AMEE).

Dr. Desai joined the AMA in October 2021 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he served as a Chief Resident and was the Myron L. Weisfeldt Professor of Medicine, Director of the Osler Medical Residency, and Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Medicine.

He is an accomplished clinician, researcher, educator, and administrator with appointments in Pulmonary and Critical Care, General Internal Medicine, as well as with the Carey School of Business. Before Hopkins, he was Director of the medical ICU at the Medstar Washington Hospital Center, the largest hospital in Washington D.C.

Dr. Desai has been widely recognized for his accomplishments in academic medicine, clinical practice and health systems administration. His research focuses on generating high-quality data to inform policy and practice in medical education. He has authored over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including series of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Desai was also awarded the highly acclaimed Professors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Desai grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in bioengineering and a Bachelor of Economics from the Wharton School of Business in healthcare management. He earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed his residency and subspecialty fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where is also served as a Chief Resident. Dr. Desai is also a senior advisor for McKinsey & Company, where he also worked as a consultant for variety of industries in the US and in Southeast Asia. Dr. Desai lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife and twin boys.

Jean Klig, MD, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, where she is Director of the Clinical Learning Coaching Program. Her primary role is to lead clinical skills remediation and clinical learning support for all students across the affiliate hospitals. A longstanding commitment to faculty development includes over 15 years as faculty for the Harvard-Macy “Program for Educators in the Health Professions” course and founding faculty for the Association of Medical Educators of Europe “Essential Skills in Medical Education: Clinical Teaching” course, in addition to leading an array of local and international faculty development workshops on medical education, coaching, and clinical skills remediation.

Marc Triola, MD is a professor of medicine, the associate dean for educational informatics, and the founding director of the Institute for Innovations in Medical Education (IIME) at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. IIME combines education strategies with new informatics solutions to connect patient care and education at NYU Langone in a research and innovation initiative that is translational, empowers transformational change in our school, and benefits our patients. Dr. Triola’s research focuses on the use of AI tools to efficiently personalize education and give new insights to programs and coaches. His lab develops new learning technologies, AI-driven educational interventions, and defines educationally sensitive patient and system outcomes that can be used to assess training.

Dr. Inna Lindner received her B.S degree from the University of Miami. Inna then continued her studies, earning a Ph.D. in Microbiology/Immunology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She begun her career as an educator in 2006. Inna takes great joy in helping students navigate the complexities of medical education and to inspire future physicians.