Building a Cancer Center Brand / CMCA, with Meredith Rae Vehar
Release Date: 01/28/2026
Nasco Healthcare’s Brand Breakthrough: Listen More, Add Less, with Aeron Povey
A Brave New Podcast
Aeron Povey is Vice President of Marketing at Nasco Healthcare, where she leads global marketing and works across product strategy, commercialization, brand, and business growth. With a background spanning both marketing and operations, Aeron built her career on the agency side, working across industries and helping organizations solve complex business challenges before joining Nasco Healthcare. Today, her work is focused on understanding the people Nasco serves and translating those insights into better products, stronger positioning, and meaningful commercial strategies. She is particularly...
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Building The Children’s Minnesota Brand Repost, with Hillery Smith Shay
A Brave New Podcast
Hillery Smith Shay, MBA is chief marketing and experience officer, senior vice president of communications at Children’s Minnesota. Hillery Shay joined Children’s Minnesota in 2021, as VP of marketing and communications and is now chief marketing and experience officer, senior vice president of communications. She provides strategic direction for organizational marketing and communications. She is also responsible for defining and building an organization-wide experience strategy. Ms. Shay brings nearly 25 years of leadership experience in health care and mass communication, with a...
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The Evolution of the Sickbay Brand, with Jennifer Lazarz
A Brave New Podcast
Jennifer Lazarz is Director of Marketing at Medical Informatics Corp. (MIC), where she now runs the company’s entire marketing function as a sole practitioner. Her work spans brand strategy, demand generation, content, and go-to-market execution for the Sickbay Clinical Platform, an FDA-cleared patient monitoring solution used by health systems nationwide. Since joining MIC in 2022, Jennifer has grown the company’s digital footprint from a minimal presence into a full content and demand engine, driving a 6x increase in website traffic and a 400% increase in content output through an...
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Building Trust in Digital Health, with Geoffrey Schiavon
A Brave New Podcast
Geoffrey Schiavon is a marketing leader with more than 15 years of international experience driving growth through B2B2C business models across ecommerce and health tech. His expertise spans performance marketing, customer engagement, strategic partnerships, and go-to-market strategy, helping businesses build lasting relationships and drive sustainable revenue growth. Before joining dacadoo as Head of Marketing & Client Success, Geoffrey spent nine years at Webloyalty, where he held a variety of marketing leadership roles, partnering with leading retailers and ecommerce businesses across...
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Marketing at Scale, with Ashley Buehnerkemper
A Brave New Podcast
Ashley Buehnerkemper is Director of Marketing at VitalSkin Dermatology, where she has led marketing and brand strategy since the company's inception in 2019, growing the platform from its earliest locations to more than 40 today. Her role spans far beyond traditional marketing: as a member of VitalSkin's executive leadership team, she owns the martech stack, performance reporting, and brand governance across a fast-growing, multi-brand dermatology group, with a particular focus on driving tight alignment between marketing and operations. Before joining VitalSkin, Ashley spent 11 years at...
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Where Brand Building & Performance Marketing Intersect, with Kristi Annes
A Brave New Podcast
Kristi Annes is a healthcare marketing executive with more than 15 years of experience building brands and driving growth at some of the most influential companies in health IT. Kristi currently serves as VP of Marketing Strategy at IMO Health, a private equity-backed leader in clinical intelligence and data solutions, where she has spent nearly a decade defining how the company shows up in the market. When IMO Health acquired Melax Tech, she led the marketing integration — unifying teams, technology, and execution to deliver impact from day one. Her path to that role ran through one...
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HubSpot Sensitive Data Update, with Hank Lander
A Brave New Podcast
Product Management and innovation enthusiast, Hank Lander, currently serves as a Group Product Manager at HubSpot, focusing on Customer Data Protections. Hank's expertise lies in launching new products and building product pipelines. Prior to his current role, he was the Director of Product at ZoomInfo and worked at multiple early-stage startups. Hank holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship from MIT Sloan School of Management and a BS in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. What you’ll learn about in this episode: How AI is reshaping sensitive data governance inside HubSpot....
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The Branding Multiplier, with Josh Dougherty
A Brave New Podcast
Josh Dougherty is a brand strategist, speaker, and the founder and CEO of A Brave New, a Seattle-based branding agency that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. They have specific expertise in healthcare technology, hospitals and specialty care providers, and healthcare nonprofits. Josh has 15 years experience building new brands from scratch, refreshing existing brands and building strategies to bring those brands to life in the market. What you’ll learn about in this episode: How your brand can serve as a multiplier of your marketing efforts if you’ve take the time to craft a...
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Service Pivots and Brand Evolution, with Jennifer Sargent
A Brave New Podcast
Jennifer is a seasoned healthcare leader with expertise in leading start-up and high growth organizations, with a proven track record of executing on go-to-market and growth strategies in the employer, payor and provider channels. Jennifer currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Pacify Health, a leader in tech-enabled Maternity Management Solutions. Previously, Jennifer served as General Manager and Chief Commercial Officer for Vera Whole Health, an advanced primary care organization and at Optum as Senior Vice President, Commercial Growth. Jennifer serves as a board...
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Brand Architecture and Healthcare M&A, with Josh Dougherty
A Brave New Podcast
Josh Dougherty is a brand strategist, speaker, and the founder and CEO of A Brave New, a Seattle-based branding agency that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. They have specific expertise in healthcare technology, hospitals and specialty care providers, and healthcare nonprofits. Josh has 15 years experience building new brands from scratch, refreshing existing brands and building strategies to bring those brands to life in the market. What you’ll learn about in this episode: Why branding decisions during mergers and acquisitions shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought. The...
info_outlineMeredith Rae Vehar, MPA, is Director of Communications at Huntsman Cancer Institute. Since joining the cancer center more than 20 years ago, Meredith strives to be an agent of progress and enable others to recognize their potential. She leads a team of creative communication professionals who represent the cancer center through brand management, social media, web content and design, publications, multimedia, and internal communications. This meaningful work is very personal to her, and she sees camaraderie, sincerity, and laughter as key.
Meredith earned her Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Utah in 2018, along with a master’s certificate in health communication. Since 2021, she has served on the steering committee of the Cancer Marketing and Communications Association (CMCA). In 2024, she and her team were honored to host the annual conference in Salt Lake City. She currently serves as Vice Chair of CMCA and will lead the organization as Chair in Spring 2026.
Outside of work, Meredith loves running, hiking mountain trails, and traveling with her two teenagers.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Branding as a “meaning-system”, not a logo: Gain insights into Meredith’s definition of brand as a promise and value system where every employee from valet to clinician embodies the mission, reinforcing consistency and trust across touchpoints.
- Why access to care is a core brand promise in modern healthcare: Understand how programs like Huntsman at Home and affiliate hospital networks expand access across rural and underserved communities, and why access is increasingly central to healthcare brand trust and loyalty.
- How Huntsman Cancer Institute positions itself as the only NCI-designated cancer center in the Mountain West region, while building a national brand through brand, innovation, and patient experience.
- How personal storytelling drives trust in cancer marketing: Learn why Huntsman prioritizes patient stories, caregiver voices, and community narratives to humanize complex science and build emotional connection, especially in high-stakes healthcare decisions.
- The strategy behind Huntsman’s “Speak Up for Cancer Research” campaign, which activates patient and influencers to advocate for cancer research funding – blending advocacy, brand, and impact.
- The role of innovation (AI, robotic surgery, proton therapy) in cancer brand strategy: Discover how Huntsman integrates AI-powered imaging, robotic surgery, and proton therapy into both clinical care and communications to reinforce credibility, innovation, and national standards of excellence.
- How Huntsman manages 320+ active clinical trials, collaborates nationally for rare diseases, and navigates the communications complexity of educating patients while maintaining credibility and clarity.
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