Leigh Bleecker is the Assistant Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer for Duke Raleigh Hospital, a Campus of Duke University Hospital, Duke Regional Hospital, and Duke Lake Norman Hospital. She has been a part of the Duke Health Finance team since 2002. Leigh has also had the privilege of serving as Interim President of Duke Raleigh Hospital on two occasions.

Prior to joining Duke Health, Bleecker worked as a financial consultant with OSI Systems in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a native of North Carolina, originally from Fayetteville.
She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MBA and MHA from Georgia State University.

In 2007, Bleecker received the Triangle Business Journal’s 40 under 40 award and was named CFO of the Year in 2012. She is active in community outreach and serves on several community boards, including current board member of Urban Ministries of Wake County, member of Holt Brothers Foundation, former treasurer and board chair of InterAct of Wake County, and former NC Commissioner of Tryon Palace. Bleecker began volunteering in 2001 as a camp counselor for Camp Sunshine, a summer camp for children with cancer and still serves in that role today.

Andrew Gross, MD, is a neurologist/neuro-ophthalmologist who started his career at Lake Norman in 2014 in his hometown of Mooresville, North Carolina. He has served on and chaired several committees as well as Chief of Staff before being appointed as the initial Chief Medical Officer of Duke Health Lake Norman Hospital.

He has among the longest histories with the hospital where he had his first job as a pharmacy technician at the age of 15. Dr. Gross practices general inpatient and outpatient neurology with focus on neuro-ophthalmology and aviation medicine. He is also an aviation medical examiner and serves as a neurological consultant to the FAA. His family is local, and he often shares patients with his father, a family physician, and his sister, an optometrist. He enjoys spending time with his wife and two small children.

Dr. Gross earned his medical degree from West Virginia University School of Medicine and completed his residency at New York University and Harvard/Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary for his neuro-ophthalmology fellowship.

Leigh Whitfield is an accomplished healthcare communications and marketing executive with more than 30 years of experience in strategic planning, hospital operations, brand development, and community engagement. She has a proven track record of leading high‑impact initiatives that enhance the patient experience, strengthen stakeholder relationships, and support organizational growth.

Prior to joining Duke Health Lake Norman Hospital, Leigh held senior leadership roles at Lake Norman Regional Medical Center and Davis Regional Medical Center. In these roles, she led comprehensive marketing and communications strategies, managed crisis communications, and directed community outreach efforts that elevated organizational visibility and trust.

Leigh is actively engaged in community service and governance, serving on the boards of several nonprofit and community organizations, including United Way of Iredell County and HealthReach Community Clinic. She previously served as vice chair of the Mitchell Community College Board of Trustees and as a member of the Mooresville Graded School District Board of Education. Her leadership and community contributions have been recognized with multiple honors, including the Sara Haire Tice Women in Leadership Award.

Leigh holds a Master of Business Administration from Gardner‑Webb University and a Bachelor of Arts in Radio, Television & Motion Pictures from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

With 35 years of nursing experience, Miranda has a proven track record of leadership at Duke University Hospital, where she has successfully optimized patient flow and placement processes, leading to significant improvements in operational efficiency and patient care. Previously, she served as a Nurse Manager over the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) where she oversaw day-to-day operations while ensuring high-quality care for critically ill patients.

Miranda previously served as COD of Patient Flow at Duke University Hospital, focusing on optimizing the Transfer Center and Patient Placement processes for a Level 1 Trauma center across three facilities with 1600 beds.

Priscilla Ramseur, DNP, RN, CNOR, NEA-BC, serves as Chief Nursing Officer of Duke Raleigh Hospital, a Campus of Duke University Hospital. She is responsible for providing leadership, management and fiscal control for patient care services, with the goal of achieving excellent patient care utilizing the principles of quality management systems while maintaining a culture of collaboration and interdisciplinary teamwork, and continuing to strengthen patient and team satisfaction.

Prior to her current positions, Ramseur served as the associate chief nursing officer, clinical operations director, nurse educator and staff nurse in perioperative services at Duke University Hospital for 25 years. She was also a staff nurse at Duke Regional Hospital.

Ramseur graduated with a bachelor of science degree in nursing from North Carolina Central University, as well as a doctor's of nursing practice, master's of science in nursing and post-master’s certificate in nursing administration from Duke University. She is a certified nurse executive and operating room nurse. She has received awards from NC Great 100 Nurse, Duke University School of Nursing MSN Program as Leadership Preceptor, Triangle Healthcare Heroes - Health Care Manager, Chi Eta Phi, Pi Chapter Nursing Legend Award and Duke University Friends of Nursing in perioperative nursing.

She serves on the Board of Directors for InteAct, North Carolina Organization of Nurse Leaders and Leadership North Carolina Triangle Regional Council. She is affiliated with the Central Carolina Black Nurses Council, NC Nurse’s Association, AONL, AORN, Chi Eta Phi Sorority Inc. - Pi Chapter Sorority, Inc. and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc. – Durham Graduate Chapter.

Kristie Barazsu is an experienced healthcare executive with over 20 years of progressive leadership experience in hospital operations, patient flow, and support services. In April 2025, she was appointed President and COO of Duke Health Lake Norman Hospital after serving in the interim role during the transition of Lake Norman Regional Medical Center into Duke Health, with the completion of the hospital acquisition April 1, 2025.

Kristie most recently served as the associate chief operating officer at Duke University Hospital, overseeing Emergency Services, Patient Flow, and Support Services, including a Level 1 trauma center and Life Flight operations. She has a demonstrated history of success in driving operational efficiency, reducing labor costs, and enhancing patient care delivery. Her leadership has led to multimillion-dollar savings, improved patient throughput, and system-wide adoption of innovative operational structures. She has also played a pivotal role in pandemic response and hospital integration efforts.

Prior to Duke, Kristie held several leadership roles at Michigan Medicine, including Surgical Services Administrator and Psychiatry Hospital Services Administrator. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Management from Albion College and an MBA from Eastern Michigan University.

Mark B. McClellan, MD, PhD, is a doctor and an economist whose work has addressed a wide range of strategies and policy reforms to improve health care, including payment reforms to promote better outcomes and lower costs, methods for development and use of real-world evidence and approaches for more effective drug and device innovation.

McClellan is a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where he developed and implemented major reforms in health policy. McClellan has served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. He was also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of economics and medicine at Stanford University where he directed the Program on Health Outcomes Research.

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A nationally recognized leader in academic medicine, Mary E. Klotman, MD, is executive vice president for health affairs at Duke University, dean of the Duke University School of Medicine, and chief academic officer for Duke Health.

Klotman was appointed as Duke’s first executive vice president for health affairs in June 2023 and assumed her new role on July 1, 2023. She was named dean of the School of Medicine in January 2017 and was appointed to a second five-year term in 2022. Prior to her appointment as dean, Klotman served with distinction as chair of the Department of Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine for seven years.

Klotman earned her undergraduate and medical degrees from Duke University. She completed her internal medicine residency and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine at Duke before joining the faculty as assistant professor of medicine. She joined the National Institutes of Health in 1991, where she was a member of the Public Health Service and trained and worked in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology under the direction of Robert C. Gallo, MD.

Before returning to Duke in 2010, Klotman joined Mount Sinai School of Medicine where she was the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine and served as chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases for 13 years. She was also co-director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute, a program designed to translate basic science discoveries into clinical therapeutics for newly emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. 

A pioneering physician-scientist, Klotman’s research interests are focused on the molecular pathogenesis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1 (HIV-1) infection. Among many important contributions to this field, Klotman and her team demonstrated that HIV resides in and evolves separately in kidney cells, a critical step in HIV-associated kidney disease. Most recently, her group has been defining the role of integrase-defective lentiviral vectors for the delivery of an HIV vaccine.

Klotman is a councilor of the Association of American Physicians and past president of the Association of Professors of Medicine. She was elected to membership in the Academy of Medicine in 2014. Klotman is a former president of the Duke Medical Alumni Association and received a Duke University School of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Award in 2015.

Leigh Bleecker, MBA, MHA, is the Assistant Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer for Duke Raleigh Hospital, a Campus of Duke University Hospital and Duke Regional Hospital. She has been a part of the Duke Health Finance team since 2002. Leigh has also had the privilege of serving as Interim President of Duke Raleigh Hospital on two occasions.

Prior to joining Duke Health, Bleecker worked as a financial consultant with OSI Systems in Atlanta, Georgia.  She is a native of North Carolina, originally from Fayetteville.

She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MBA and MHA from Georgia State University.

In 2007, Bleecker received the Triangle Business Journal’s 40 under 40 award and was named CFO of the Year in 2012.

She is active in community outreach and serves on several community boards, including current board member of Urban Ministries of Wake County, member of Holt Brothers Foundation, former treasurer and board chair of InterAct of Wake County, and former NC Commissioner of Tryon Palace. Bleecker began volunteering in 2001 as a camp counselor for Camp Sunshine, a summer camp for children with cancer and still serves in that role today.

Michael Spiritos, MD, is the Chief Medical Officer of Duke Raleigh Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Health System. Spiritos’ specialties include internal medicine, medical oncology and hematology. He joined Duke Raleigh Hospital as chief of medical oncology in 2007, PDC Wake County representative in 2008 and chief medical officer in 2013.

Spiritos graduated from Harvard University in 1978 and completed his medical degree at Cornell University Medical College in 1983. He completed his internship in medicine at the New York Hospital and his fellowship in hematology-oncology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul Vick is the Associate Vice President for Government Relations at Duke University Health System. He has headed Duke Health’s government relations office since its inception in 1999. He has more than three decades of experience in government relations and public policy work at the federal, state and local levels, including a three-year stint in Washington, DC, as chief of staff to United States Senator (and Duke University President) Terry Sanford.

During his career at Duke, Vick was director for nine years of Duke University’s Office of Government Relations and Community Affairs and has held several other university positions overseeing local, state and federal relations, alumni affairs, and special events. He has served as an elected official at the local level as well as an appointed member of numerous state and national boards. He spearheaded the creation of Project Medical Education, as a coalition of America’s leading medical schools and hospitals working together to inform Congress about medical education, and served for four years as its executive director.

A 1966 graduate of Duke University, he holds a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A. Eugene Washington, MD, MPH, MSc, is Chancellor Emeritus at Duke University. An internationally renowned clinical investigator and health policy scholar, Dr. Washington has been a leader in assessing medical technologies, developing clinical practice guidelines, and establishing disease prevention policies, particularly in women’s health. The thread that runs throughout all of this work is improving quality of healthcare and eliminating racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes. His research and numerous publications have greatly impacted the practice of medicine in prenatal genetic testing, cervical cancer screening and prevention, noncancerous uterine conditions management, and reproduction-related infections. His executive leadership has inspired academic health systems to adopt public health principles as core to their mission. His service to the nation through professional and government boards and committees has emphasized the importance of health equity and community engagement in health policy and public discourse.

Dr. Washington has held academic leadership positions and senior executive posts in three prominent academic health systems. Previously, Dr. Washington was the Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke University, where he also served as President and CEO of the Duke University Health System from 2015-2023. Dr. Washington was appointed as Chancellor Emeritus in 2023. Just prior to Duke, Dr. Washington served as Vice Chancellor of Health Sciences, Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Chief Executive Officer of the UCLA Health System. At the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Dr. Washington served as Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost. There, he co-founded and directed the Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations, one of the first centers of excellence conducting research on health services for minority populations. Before joining the faculty at UCSF, Dr. Washington was an epidemiologist and clinical investigator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

Dr. Washington is known as one of the most vocal proponents in the U.S. of Academic Health Systems adopting health improvement as their ultimate mission, beyond the traditional missions of research, education and patient care. At Duke University, he initiated and led the transition of Duke Medicine to Duke Health, which is today demonstratively more focused on socio-economic determinants of health and building healthy communities. At UCLA, Dr. Washington consolidated disparate and widespread projects into a comprehensive and organized community engagement entity that magnified the impact of these activities. And at UCSF, he strengthened the institution’s commitment to service by building lasting partnerships with the community and by creating alignment across the entire enterprise.

Dr. Washington has also impacted the national health and healthcare agenda through his thought leadership. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) (now the National Academy of Medicine) in 1997 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014. He chaired the Boards of Directors of both the California HealthCare Foundation and The California Wellness Foundation, served on the Board of Trustees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was a director of Johnson and Johnson. Dr. Washington is founding Chair of the Board of Governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a national research organization authorized by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.

Rhonda Brandon is the Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for Duke University Health System.

In her role, Brandon oversees efforts to advance a world-class workforce that positions the health system to meet our long-term strategic goals. She is a key driver of our initiatives to improve performance measurement, professional development and our work culture. She offers trusted counsel to senior staff, advocating on behalf of all of our employees.

Brandon was most recently the Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for BJC Healthcare in St. Louis, MO. She joined BJC Healthcare in 2006 as Vice President of Human Resources for Missouri Baptist Medical Center and was named Vice President of Operations for BJC’s Shared Services Human Resources team in 2010.

Prior to her service to BJC Healthcare, Brandon served as Vice President of Human Resources for Colonial Pipeline Company and prior to that, as Director of Human Resources and Global Information Technology for Nike. She is a cum laude graduate of Hampton University (BA, mass communications) and American University (MS, organization development.)

Kevin W. Sowers, MSN, RN, FAAN, is the President of Duke University Hospital. Sowers joined Duke University Hospital in 1985 as a staff nurse in oncology and has been in leadership roles within Duke University Health System over the last 20 years.Prior to becoming president, Sowers served as the Chief Operating Officer for Duke University Hospital from 2003 to 2009. He received his BSN from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio and his MSN from Duke University School of Nursing. Sowers is accountable for the operations of the 957-bed academic teaching hospital with over 10,000 faculty, staff and volunteers. He is responsible for driving organizational excellence and implementing the strategic plan of the organization in collaboration with the Duke Health physician group. Sowers is internationally known for his lectures and writings on the issues of leadership, organizational change, mentorship and cancer care. He is currently on the Board of Directors for University Healthcare Consortium and the Counsel of Teaching Hospitals. He is adjunct faculty at Duke University School of Nursing, Duke University Fuqua School of Business and UNC School of Public Health. He has also served in leadership roles with the American Heart Association, Susan G. Komen and a variety of leadership roles at the national level within the Oncology Nursing Society.  

Christopher Plowe is an acclaimed scientist and malariologist recognized internationally for his groundbreaking work on the molecular epidemiology of drug-resistant and "vaccine-resistant" malaria.

Prior to coming to DGHI in 2018, Dr. Plowe was the Frank M. Calia, MD Professor of Medicine and founding director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Maryland. His malaria research group at the University of Maryland oversaw research in Africa, where he helped establish field research sites in Mali and Malawi, and in Asia, where he is a frequent traveler to new field sites in Myanmar.

While much of today's research on malaria focuses on developing new drugs or vaccines that might save lives in the future, Dr. Plowe's strategy aims to save lives right now by developing new tools to help countries eliminate malaria. His team is using molecular and genomics approaches to track the emergence and spread of drug resistance and to map the "silent reservoir" of malaria parasites responsible for transmission of new infections. He is also working to develop a vaccine that will be effective against genetically diverse malaria parasites that have shown the ability to escape the effects of first generation malaria vaccines.

Dr. Plowe received his MD degree from Cornell University Medical College and his MPH at the Columbia University School of Public Health. He completed his residency at St. Luke's Hospital in and his clinical infectious diseases fellowship at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

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Edward Buckley, MD, is Vice President for Duke-NUS Affairs. He is also Vice Dean for Education at the Duke University School of Medicine, a role he has served in since 2008, and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology.

As Vice Chancellor for Duke-NUS Affairs, he has been involved with the development of the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School (Duke-NUS) education program since 2001 and currently co-chairs the Duke-NUS Academic Committee.  As Vice Dean for Education, Buckley provides administrative oversight for all of the education and degree granting programs for the School of Medicine. These include all aspects of the medical student program, Physicians Assistant Program, Doctor of Physical Therapy, Pathology Assistant Program, Clinical Research Masters degree and the Clinical Leadership Masters degree. He is also responsible for the Office of Curriculum, Financial Aid, Registrar, Admissions, Library, and the Medical School Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure process. 

Buckley is the James P. and Heather Gills Professor of Ophthalmology and the director of the pediatric ophthalmology fellowship program at Duke. He is a renowned expert in pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus and has trained over 45 clinical and 10 research fellows.

Buckley has served as president of the American Association of Pediatric Ophthalmology  and Strabismus (AAPOS), chair of the American Board of Ophthalmology, chair of the Section of Ophthalmology of the American Academy of Pediatrics, president of the American Orthoptic Society, and is the current editor-in-chief of the Journal of AAPOS. He has received the Life Time Achievement Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and AAPOS.

Buckley received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and his medical degree from Duke University. He completed an internship in medicine and a residency in ophthalmology at Duke before performing a two-year fellowship in pediatric ophthalmology and neuro-ophthalmology at the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. He returned to Duke in 1983 as assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology.

Dexter Nolley, MEd, SPHR, is Interim Chief Human Resources Officer of Duke Raleigh Hospital.Nolley has more than 20 years of experience in human resources, including employee relations, mediation, performance management, team building, and training and development. He joined Duke Staff and Labor Relations in 2000 and most recently was Divisional Chief Human Resources Officer for Duke Primary Care.Nolley holds a bachelor of arts degree in communication from Mercer University and a master of education in counseling degree from Georgia Southern University; he is also a member of the Society for Human Resources Management.

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