Board of Directors

OHSU’s Board of Directors typically meets four to five times a year in public session. Notice, including the docket and related materials, will be available on this page. Videos of public meetings are also posted on this page.

ORS 192.690 gives the board authority to meet in private session, as needed, to discuss “sensitive business, financial or commercial matters of the university not customarily provided to competitors.”

Recordings: Public meeting recordings are hosted on Echo360 or OHSU's YouTube channel.

Closed captioning: Open this closed captioning link in a separate window while the meeting streams in your main window.

Public Comment: Sign up to provide verbal comments by filling out all fields of this form 48 hours in advance of the meeting time.

ArchiveView public meeting presentations and recordings.

Public meeting schedules

Board of Directors

2026:

Jan. 30
Time TBD

April 24
Time TBD

June 26
Time TBD

Sept. 25
Time TBD

Oct. 30
Time TBD

 

2027:

Jan. 29
Time TBD

April 30
Time TBD

June 25
Time TBD

Sept. 24
Time TBD

Oct. 29
Time TBD

Finance and Audit

2026:

Jan. 30
Time TBD

April 24
Time TBD

June 26
Time TBD

Sept. 25
Time TBD

Oct. 30
Time TBD

 

2027:

Jan. 29
Time TBD

April 30
Time TBD

June 25
Time TBD

Sept. 24
Time TBD

Oct. 29
Time TBD

Meet the board

Susan King, M.S., RN, CEN, FAAN, Chair

Susan King, member of the OHSU Board of Directors.

Emergency Staff Nurse

Former Executive Director of the Oregon Nurses Association

Susan King is a lifelong resident of Portland, Oregon. She has invested in both a professional nursing career as a clinician, administrator, lobbyist, health policy adviser and advocate — as well as a community activist on civic issues such as housing, neighborhood preservation and development, and election of leaders at the city, local, state and national level.

She is a graduate of the University of Oregon School of Nursing and holds a master’s degree in nursing from OHSU.  In 2011, she was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing for her work on authority for nurse practitioners.

Her career in nursing has included delivering care to patients and families, and help shaping health care delivery and policy at the state and national level. She has experience holding regulatory and policy positions within Oregon as well as nationally.

From 1989 to 2017, King led the Oregon Nurses Association focused on the nursing workforce, promoting authority for nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists, addressing standards for hospital staffing and improving access to care for all. 

King currently practices as a staff RN in a large Portland-area emergency department.

Justin Hurley Braswell, M.B.A., Vice Chair

Justin Hurley

Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Rubicon Investments Corp.

Justin Hurley Braswell is a seasoned professional with nearly 30 years of experience specializing in health care, government office and corporate commercial markets. As Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Rubicon Investments Corp., a fourth-generation Oregon family business, he leads real property development and portfolio management, leveraging his executive expertise to drive efficiency and innovation in large-scale projects.

Before his role at Rubicon, Hurley Braswell oversaw a $500 million-plus real estate portfolio and 50-plus construction projects annually, including executing a strategy in health care real estate development and physician specialty integration with a major regional health system in Southern Oregon.

Honored with the Better Bricks Award (2012) and named among the Urban Land Institute’s Top 100 Global Real Estate Professionals, Hurley Braswell has also received multiple accolades in health care design. Committed to sustainability, he has completed 10 LEED-certified projects in the past decade and is a strong advocate for trauma-informed and inclusive design, a focus of his latest book, "Inclusive Design: Developing Environments for Every Individual."

Hurley Braswell holds a B.S. in innovation and leadership (Southern Oregon University), an M.B.A. (Western Governors University) and a certificate in Governing Family Enterprises (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University).

Christopher Abbruzzese

A professional photo of Chris Abruzzese.

Senior Vice President

Chris is a Senior Vice President in the Robertson Stephens Portland office. Chris brings extensive experience in risk management, investment and operational due diligence, portfolio construction, investment strategy, and capital markets transactions.

Prior to Robertson Stephens, Chris co-founded Rain Capital and was the firm’s Chief Investment Officer. He was also Director of Research and Analytics and Director of Alternative Investments at Arnerich Massena, Inc. In his roles, he provided management and oversight of the analytics group and had primary responsibility for sourcing new investment managers. In addition, Chris was responsible for the strategic direction of the firm’s research efforts and investment strategy and chaired the firm’s Investment Committee.

Previously, Chris was Executive Director at JP Morgan, serving as a risk manager in the firm’s Global Prime Services division. He also served as Managing Director Principal at Bear Stearns & Co, where he held various positions in the firm’s Global Credit and Global Clearing Services Risk Control departments. In 1995, he started Bear Stearns’ Sovereign Risk Control unit.

Chris holds an M.I.A. in International Finance from Columbia University and a B.A., in International Affairs from Lewis and Clark College.

James A. Carlson

James A. Carlson, senior advisor

Director and Co-Founder, Incite Strategic Partners

James Carlson is a seasoned health policy expert and executive with more than 30 years of experience in public affairs, health care finance, business and strategic leadership. He is the director and co-founder of Incite Strategic Partners, a rapidly growing Portland-based company that provides group purchasing, e-procurement, and workforce solutions to thousands of post-acute care and senior living organizations across the United States. He also serves as a strategic adviser on health care finance to the American Health Care Association.

Previously, Carlson served for over two decades as President and CEO of the Oregon Health Care Association, retiring in 2020. During his tenure, the organization grew more than sevenfold in size and influence, and Carlson guided Oregon’s post-acute care sector through significant reimbursement system changes and regulatory reforms. Earlier in his career, as associate director of government affairs for the Oregon Medical Association, he played a key role in advancing major Medicaid, rural health and public health legislation. He began his professional path as a staffer for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Carlson is a fourth-generation Oregonian and a graduate of the University of Oregon.

Shereef Elnahal, M.D.

Headshot photo of Shereef Elnahal, M.D.

President, OHSU

Dr. Shereef Elnahal became OHSU’s sixth president on Aug. 11, 2025. He is a leader and expert in health care delivery in large, integrated health systems, with a career focused on serving vulnerable communities.

Before joining OHSU, he was appointed by President Joe Biden to serve as Under Secretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He led the largest integrated health system in the nation alongside a team of nearly 400,000 professionals, delivering world-class care to 9 million enrolled veterans. Accomplishments include:

  • Overseeing the largest expansion of veteran benefits and care in a generation, enrolling more than 800,000 new veterans into health care, and upgrading coverage for more than 900,000 veterans.
  • Improving overall care productivity by 9% in two years.
  • Advancing care access for women veterans, including extending maternity care coordination benefits for up to one year after birth for veteran mothers to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality risks, and enrolling more than 50,000 new women veterans into health care over the last year.
  • Implementing a new policy in which the VA covers the costs of care for any veteran in suicidal crisis. 
  • Placing record numbers of homeless veterans into permanent housing.

Before his role at VA, Dr. Elnahal served as President and Chief Executive Officer of University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. University Hospital is a Level I trauma center, the principal academic medical center for Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and New Jersey’s only public hospital. Dr. Elnahal led University Hospital through the COVID-19 public health emergency and turned around the hospital’s finances.

Before that, he served as New Jersey’s 21st Health Commissioner, responsible for running the state’s four psychiatric hospitals. He made strides in improving quality, patient safety and outcomes for New Jersey’s most vulnerable patients requiring mental health inpatient hospitalization.

Dr. Elnahal received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his M.B.A. with Distinction from Harvard Business School. His perspective on the American health care system's COVID-19 response, including on matters of health equity, has been featured on national media outlets including CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and Fox Business Network.

Claire Irvan

Claire Irvan

Claire Irvan has been employed at OHSU for over 21 years. She is a financial coordinator for the Adult and Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant and CAR-T program. She is responsible for establishing global case rates for transplant, helping to secure single case agreements for CAR-T, and ensuring services have been authorized by insurance companies.

Betsy Johnson

A professional photo of Betsy Johnson.

Senator Betsy Johnson is served 21 years in the Oregon Legislature before running unsuccessfully for Governor in 2022.

She received her undergraduate degree in history from Carleton College in Minnesota. With few job prospects related to history, Betsy attended night classes at Lewis & Clark College’s Northwestern School of Law. During the day, she worked in the County Jail as the recognizance officer for the Multnomah Circuit Court.  She obtained her law degree but has never practiced law.

Instead, she was a commercial helicopter pilot and flew fixed-wing aircraft. It was flying helicopters – especially over Mount St. Helens – during pre and post eruption periods – that taught Betsy how to focus when the going gets tough.

The law degree she earned has not gone to waste. It taught her how to analyze legal concepts and the importance of giving people a fair shake in the system. She and her husband, John Helm, own Transwestern Aviation Inc. in Scappoose.

Every school lesson, every job that Betsy has had, continued to inform her work as a State Legislator and later, her community engagement in post-elected public service.

On a personal note, Senator Johnson’s parents, the late Samuel S. Johnson and Becky Johnson were both heavily involved in the public, philanthropic and political life of Oregon. Her father served in the legislature; her mother on numerous education boards & commissions. Both were veterans of World War II.

Maria I. Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H.

Maria Rodriguez

Dr. Maria Rodriguez is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and the medical director for Oregon's Reproductive Health Program. She is the director for the Center for Women's Health and Center for Reproductive Health Equity

She completed medical school and residency at OHSU (2004, 2008), a fellowship in family planning at UCSF (2010), and an M.P.H. at UC Berkeley (2010). Following her fellowship, she spent five years working for the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. She serves as chair of Oregon’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee and as co-chair on the Medicaid Advisory Committee.

Dr. Rodriguez provides OB-GYN care at the Center for Women’s Health and is a physician-scientist. Her research focuses on the intersection of reproductive health, policy and economics.

Malik Seals

Malik Seals

Malik Seals is a first-year graduate student in the M.D./Ph.D. program at Oregon Health & Science University. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Alabama and went on to earn graduate degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Emory University.

Seals is a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, a recipient of a National Medical Fellowship, and a former Albert Schweitzer Fellow.

At OHSU, he has served on the student council and remains active in patient advocacy through the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. He is also deeply committed to mentoring underrepresented students pursuing careers in STEM.

Sadhana Shenoy

A professional photo of Shenoy Sadhana.

Sadhana has been a resident of Oregon since 1985. She earned her graduate degree in Computer Science from the Oregon Graduate Institute in 1990. She also holds undergraduate degrees in Accounting and Business. She held an Oregon Certified Public Accountant license.

Sadhana worked in various companies as a software engineer and accountant. Most recently Sadhana was the CFO and COO of a transit startup (GlobeSherpa), raising funds, managing budgets, finances and operations, and ultimately enabling a sale of the startup to a major automotive manufacturer. She continued to lead the unit as CFO and COO, overseeing business systems, human resources and operations.

In 2018 Sadhana was appointed Chair of the Oregon PERS (Oregon Public Employees System) Board, and served 2 terms there.

She has served on Boards of educational, environmental and entrepreneurial non-profits.

Sadhana enjoys hiking, gardening and the outdoors in Oregon. She and her husband Sunil enjoy the company of their 2 daughters and 4 grandchildren who live nearby.

Sue Steward

Sue Steward headshot

Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians Citizen and Tribal Board Member

Sue Steward currently serves the 43 tribes of the Northwest as the Deputy Director at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB). She served NPAIHB from 2018 through 2020 as the CHAP Project Director. Before that, she served a small Alaska Tribal Health Organization as a federally certified primary midlevel provider from 2000 to 2018, and as the Community Health Aide Program (CHAP) Director from 2008 to 2018.

Her education includes a B.S. in health administration and a graduate degree in health leadership. She served as the Alaska CHAP Directors Association Chair for four years and the Vice Chair for three years, and also served on the Alaska Area CHAP Certification Board for two years.

In 2005, Steward was a recipient of the IHS Director’s Award for her contributions to the revised Alaska Community Health Aide Manual. She currently serves as the Cow Creek delegate to the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) and to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).

She is grateful for the many experiences she has enjoyed in her professional career. Her husband of 40 years is her best friend and a great support. Their two sons have rich experience with the Navy, Air Force, and Alaska Militia and volunteer firemen. Their oldest now serves their tribe as the Cultural Coordinator and is completing his B.S. in Indigenous studies. Their youngest son is an Alaska Air National Guard Staff Sergeant, 4N031/Aerospace Medical Technician and works in the local hospital as an ER tech. He is currently completing his B.S. in homeland security/emergency management.

  • Email: ohsuboard@ohsu.edu 
  • Mail:

    Oregon Health & Science University

    Attn: Board of Directors

    3225 SW Pavilion Loop MC: L101

    Portland, OR 97239
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