Ilisa Bernstein, PharmD, JD, FAPhA, is Interim CEO and Executive Vice President at the American Pharmacists Association (APhA). She is responsible for leading the development and implementation of APhA’s strategies, policies, and programs, and guiding APhA as the voice of pharmacists in all practice settings. Prior to this position, Dr. Bernstein was Senior Vice President for Pharmacy Practice and Government Affairs at APhA.

She has over 30 years of experience advocating for pharmacy and patients at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where she has held several senior leadership positions. Prior to joining APhA, Dr. Bernstein was deputy director of FDA’s Office of Compliance in the Center for Drug Evaluation & Research, leading policies, compliance, and enforcement in areas including drug compounding, supply chain security, drug manufacturing and quality, drug shortages, and post-market drug safety. Dr. Bernstein also served as director of pharmacy affairs for FDA and senior advisor for regulatory policy in the Office of the Commissioner. She started at FDA as clinical pharmacology reviewer of investigational and new drug applications.

Previously, Dr. Bernstein was senior associate director of worldwide regulatory affairs for Pfizer and completed a post-doctoral clinical residency at the National Institutes of Health. She earned her Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Michigan and her Juris Doctor from American University Washington College of Law.

Rafael Saenz received his Pharm.D. from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, and his Master of Science in Pharmacy Administration from the University of Wisconsin, while concurrently completing the Pharmacy Administration Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin Hospital.

Between 2011 and 2019, Rafael served as the Chief Pharmacy Officer at the University of Virginia (UVA) where he oversaw the pharmacy enterprise for the health system. In this role, Rafael led an expert team that successfully deployed clinical pharmacist services throughout the system, implemented LEAN medication distribution workflows, oversaw a $250M drug expense budget, increased the department’s revenue to attribute to over 45% of all medical center net revenues, and created several new business lines for UVA including a full service specialty pharmacy. Further, Rafael led the expansion of pharmacy residency programs at UVA, tripling the availability of positions during his tenure.

Prior to UVA, Rafael served as Pharmacy Operations Manager for UPMC in Pittsburgh. In this role, he had oversight for clinical unit-based pharmacy services and retail operations, before switching his focus to the pharmacy practice sites within UPMC’s international ventures in Palermo, Italy and Dublin, Ireland. Rafael has deployed clinical services, information technology systems, created supply chains, met regulatory and accreditation requirements, implemented best practices in medication use safety, and launched new pharmacy business initiatives domestically and internationally.

Rafael has served the profession through active membership in state and national pharmacy organizations. He has served on workforce and education committees with various organizations aimed at increasing the pharmacist and technician scope of practice. In 2015, Rafael was appointed to the Virginia Board of Pharmacy and served as Chair of the Board from 2018-2019.

Anne L. Burns, BSPharm, RPh, is responsible for the Association’s strategic initiatives focused on advancing pharmacists’ patient care services in team-based care delivery models, as well as payment for pharmacists’ services, collaboration with other health care practitioner organizations, and health care quality. She leads the Association’s practice initiatives on pain management and the opioid crisis, and also works on APhA’s medication management, medication safety, Health IT, and credentialing and privileging programs. She has served on many medication management, quality, and prescription drug misuse and abuse advisory councils. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA), the National Advisory Board for the National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, and the Council for Credentialing in Pharmacy.

She joined APhA in 1997. Prior to APhA, she served on the faculty at The Ohio State University (OSU) College of Pharmacy. She received her BS in pharmacy from OSU and completed the Wharton Executive Management Program for Pharmacy Leaders.

Mallery Hobbs is responsible for the information technology infrastructure; network operations and the information security controls for the organization. In this role, she serves as an advisor on IT infrastructure initiatives and provides strategic leadership on technology matters.

She has 30 years of professional information technology experience in IT infrastructure, information systems, database management and data analysis. Prior to this role, she served as the Senior Director, Information Technology, providing oversight and guidance on the organization’s enterprise information systems and network.

Before joining APhA, she served in a data management role for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), which promotes and support public higher education, academic quality, access, inclusion and facilitates educational innovation. Previously, she served in various computer/data analyst roles providing statistical analysis for books and publications for the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), a philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for students for private colleges and universities and Meharry Medical College, a global academic health sciences center advancing health equity through innovative research, transformative education, and health services.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Tennessee State University.

Antonio Ciaccia is chief strategy officer for 3 Axis Advisors (3AA), a consultancy that partners with private and government sector organizations to solve complex, systemic problems, and propel industry reform through data-driven advocacy.

Ciaccia and 3AA were instrumental in exposing the drug pricing distortions and supply chain inefficiencies embedded in Ohio’s Medicaid managed care program, which led to the discovery of $244 million in hidden PBM spread pricing in just one year. This set off a tidal wave of national scrutiny and reform, and their more recent data analyses have exposed new ways in which middlemen abuse a lack of transparency, poor incentives, conflicts of interest, and unchecked power to undermine patient care and siphon value out of the healthcare system.

Ciaccia is also a co-founder of 46brooklyn Research, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the transparency and accessibility of drug pricing data for the American public. He previously served as the government affairs director at the Ohio Pharmacists Association, where in addition to his work exposing PBM waste, he also advanced pharmacist provider status to a point where four out of five of the state’s Medicaid managed care plans redesigned incentives to elevate the role of the pharmacist as a clinical service provider.

William M. Ellis, MS, RPh was named Executive Director of BPS in 2011. From 1997-2011, Mr. Ellis served as CEO and Executive Director of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Foundation. He was the Executive Vice President for the Pennsylvania Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists from 1986-1997.

Ellis also served as the elected Chair of the Council on Credentialing in Pharmacy (CCP) from 2012-2015; CCP provides leadership, guidance, public information, and coordination for the profession of pharmacy’s credentialing programs. In 2014, he was appointed a commissioner to the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) and was elected as the 2016 Chairman. The NCCA helps to ensure the health, welfare, and safety of the public through the accreditation of a variety of individual certification programs that assess professional competency. The NCCA is an administratively independent resource recognized as the authority on accreditation standards for professional certification programs.

After receiving his pharmacy degree from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (PCP), where he served as the chair of the College’s Board of Visitors. He completed an executive residency with the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists in 1986 and earned his Master of Science degree in health education from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia in 1994.

Shannon Morrison, CPA, is responsible for all aspects of the financial affairs of APhA and the APhA Foundation, including banking, investment programs, financial management, budgeting, long-range planning and forecasting, financial analysis, and internal control systems. She also has responsibility for the fiscal and operational oversight of the Association’s office building and related office lease operations, as well as APhA’s Administrative Services and Information Technology Departments. She was previously Associate Vice President of Finance for APhA, having joined the organization in 2008 as Assistant Controller. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Greater Washington Society of CPAs, and a graduate of Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD.

Mary Warner is responsible for leading the publication and strategic direction of the Association’s periodicals, books, news, and related communication efforts and for APhA’s relationship with its publishing partner, Elsevier. Prior to joining APhA, Mary was with the American Geophysical Union publications program, where she was responsible for managing the peer review, editorial processes, business management, and strategy for AGU’s19 peer-reviewed journals, including serving as the primary contact with vendors providing copyediting, production, and content hosting. Prior to AGU, she served as Director of Special Publications at the American Chemical Society, where she responsible for editorial and business management of a group of scientific journals, magazines, and directories. A chemist by training, she worked as an environmental analytical chemist at the Research Triangle Institute before moving into the publishing world.

Warner is a Certified Association Executive and an active volunteer with the Council of Science Editors. She earned a BS in chemistry and biology from Eckerd College and an MS in analytical chemistry from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Prior to joining APhA, Dr. Zlott worked for 10 years as a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist with the National Cancer Institute’s Immunotherapy, Surgery, Endocrine Oncology, and Thoracic/GI Malignancy Branches at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He was part of the team that developed and administered the first Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy given to treat B-cell cancers. Dr. Zlott was also the Director of the NIH PGY2 Oncology Pharmacy Residency Program and a clinical investigator on more than 40 NCI-sponsored clinical trials, examining new and innovative ways to treat cancer. While at NIH, he served for 5 years on the National Cancer Institute’s Institutional Review Board. Dan has served two terms on the Board of Trustees of the American Pharmacists Association and has also chaired numerous committees with the Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association. He is a graduate of the University of California San Francisco and completed his PGY1 Pharmacy Practice Residency there before moving to the NIH, where he completed his PGY2 Oncology Pharmacy Residency.

Brian E. Lawson, PharmD, assumed the role of Associate Executive Director in 2021 after having joined BPS nine years previously as Director, Professional Affairs and subsequently serving as the Senior Director. Dr. Lawson is responsible for developing relationships with the healthcare community to promote the value of BPS board certification. He monitors the professional pharmacy landscape and seeks collaborative relationships in the U.S. and around the globe, and currently serves as the staff liaison to the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Task Force on Addressing Structural Racism in Pharmacy. Lawson was named the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy inaugural Global Executive in Residence in 2019.

Prior to BPS, he was the Associate Director, Governance for APhA with responsibilities related to the activities of the Board of Trustees, the House of Delegates, policy development, profession-wide awards, and Board elections. In 2008, he was named the first Knowlton Center Executive Resident in Association Management and Leadership at the APhA Foundation and earned his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from West Virginia University. He is a former president of the WVU School of Pharmacy Alumni Association and serves on the School’s Leadership Council as well as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.