Who We Are

Our LHI Team | Board of Directors

Thelma King Thiel, RN, BA

Cofounder and Chair of LHI. Thelma has been in the liver health education arena for over five decades following the loss of her infant son Dean to biliary atresia. She formerly ran the American Liver Foundation and Hepatitis Foundation International for a combined 30 years.

Malki De Silva, MPH

Treasurer, Secretary, and Cofounder of the Liver Health Initiative, Malki has a background in advocating for primary prevention and health education/literacy. Her other interests include addressing the increasingly relevant social determinants of health through policy and programmatic avenues.

David Pound, MD

Board Member, Dr. David Pound is the President of the Indianapolis Gastroenterology Research Foundation. He has participated in numerous clinical research studies and has contributed to many medical publications. He was honored as an inaugural Fellow of the
American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD) in 2014.

Stuart C. Gordon, MD

Board Member of the Liver Health Initiative, specialist in Gastroenterology and Transplant Hepatology

Jack Lewin, MD

Board Member of the Liver Health Initiative, Chairman of the National Coalition on Health Care, Principal and Founder of Lewin and Associates LLC.

William Schaffner, MD

Board Member of the Liver Health Initiative, Professor of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Kathleen Schwarz, MD

Board Member of the Liver Health Initiative, Pediatric Gastroenterologist.

Guanghao Tao

Board Member of the Liver Health Initiative.

Donna Thiel, JD

Board Member of the Liver Health Initiative, Partner at DLA Piper.

D. Lorne Tyrrell, MD, PhD

Board Member of the Liver Health Initiative, Founding Director of Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology.

Stephany Venero, MA, RD, LDN

Chair-Elect of the Maryland Dietetics in Health Care Communities (MD-DHCC) group. Employed by Kaiser Permanente and maintains a private practice. Board Member of Liver Health Initiative.

Advocates for Prevention

Our Advisory Board, comprised of talented and open-minded leaders, is committed to helping us address the stigma surrounding liver-related diseases while also promoting primary prevention and liver health education.

Timothy M. Block, PhD

President of the Hepatitis B Foundation and Baruch S. Blumberg Institute; Professor and Chair, Department of Translational Research, Adjunct Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Drexel University College of Medicine. Dr. Block is also a Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors.

Sonia Canzater, JD, MPH

MPH Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and the Associate Director of the Infectious Diseases Initiative at the O’Neill Institute, overseeing the Hepatitis Policy Project. Sonia focuses on national hepatitis C (HCV) law and policy issues. She is also a part of the O’Neill Institute’s Addiction and Public Policy Initiative.

Willis Maddrey, MD

Professor Emeritus of Internal Medicine at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and has excelled in a myriad of roles with prominent universities such as Thomas Jefferson University, and Johns Hopkins University serving as a professor as well as Assistant Dean of Post-Doctoral programs and faculty development.

Arun Sanyal, MD

Interim chairman and Professor of Medicine, Physiology and Molecular Pathology – Division of Gastroenterology at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center and chairman of the NIH NASH Clinical Research Network, the Liver Forum for NASH and Fibrosis and leader of the Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health at VCU.

Margarita Teran, MD, PhD

Assistant Vice Dean and Program Leader, Integrated Health Disparities, University of Illinois Extension, College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and Administrative Director of University of North Chicago Abriendo Caminos Program.

Tram Tran, MD, PhD

Chief Medical Officer at Glympse Bio, member of the Board of Directors of Arbutus Biopharma Corp, former Vice President of Medical Affairs, Gilead and former Medical Director of Liver Transplantation at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center.

Sylvia Trent-Adams, RN, PhD

Former Deputy Surgeon General and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, HHS and current Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer at University of North Texas Health Science Center.

Su Wang, MD, MPH

President of the World Hepatitis Alliance, Medical Director of the Center for Asian Health at Saint Barnabas Medical Center and Medical Director of the Chinese Medical Program of Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center.

Zobair M. Younossi, MD, MPH

Robert G. Gish, MD

Medical Director of the Asia Pacific Health Foundation and of the Hepatitis B Foundation. Adjunct Professor of Medicine at University of Nevada Schools of Medicine in Las Vegas and Reno. Adjunct Professor Pharmacy at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UCSD. Clinical Prof. of Med. at Loma Linda Univ and Staff Physician at their Transplant Clinic in Las Vegas.

Special thanks to Dr. Margarita Teran, Dr. Robert Gish, Dr. Arun Sanyal, Dr. Sylvia Trent-Adams, Dr. Su Wang, Dr. Timothy Block, Sonya Canzater, JD, Michael Nimberg, and Dr. Zobair Younossi, LHI’s exceptional team of Advocates for Prevention, for their invaluable guidance and steadfast support of our mission.

Their work helps save lives by promoting a clearer, more understandable appreciation of the extraordinary role the liver plays as the body’s internal command center.

Not only have hundreds benefited from their care, but they have also provided critically important, accessible information to patients, medical students, and the public—helping to fill a longstanding gap in life-saving knowledge.

Because of their commitment to education and prevention, future generations will be better equipped to understand how and why to care for this vital, often overlooked organ.