WEBE LIFE FOUNDATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, PH.D - Chairperson
Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen is the Co-Chair, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WeBe Life Inc. A licensed clinical psychologist, she received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Maryland in 1991.
Dr. Van Dahlen is the former Executive Director of The President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide (PREVENTS), a U.S. Cabinet Level Task Force, created by Presidential Executive Order in 2019, to build the first all-of-government and whole-of-nation effort focused on suicide prevention with our Veterans leading the way. As a key element of the PREVENTS effort, Dr. Van Dahlen developed the first national public health campaign focused on suicide prevention.
Named to TIME magazine's 2012 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, Dr. Van Dahlen is also the Founder of Give an Hour® www.giveanhour.org a national nonprofit organization that provides free mental health care to those in need including service members, veterans and their families. Dr. Van Dahlen led the organization as President until 2019.
Michael Akinyele - Treasurer
Mr. Michael Akinyele, MBA, SES, is the Co-Chair, Co-Founder, and Chief Operating Officer of WeBe Life, Inc., a digital health company harnessing the power of WE to improve global mental health and wellbeing. In this role, he is the member of executive management that is responsible for maintaining and driving operational results. He works closely with the CEO and other executive management team members. He is a skilled communicator and effective leader focused on spurring company growth, maintaining key operational procedures, creating new processes and ensuring day to day operational excellence.
He is the former, founding Chief Innovation Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the largest federal civilian agency with a ~$270Bn budget and ~400K employees. He has decades of achievement advancing startups, corporations and government agencies. He is a collaborative leader, product and growth expert, and a health care futurist focused on inventing the future of healthcare .
Randy Phelps, PH.D - Secretary
Dr. Phelps is co-founder and Chief Clinical and Science Officer of WeBe Life Inc. He is a licensed clinical psychologist with 40 years’ experience in mental health service delivery, research and national mental health policy. He worked at the top of the U.S. mental health care system for 25 years as a senior executive of the American Psychological Association (APA) in Washington DC. Dr. Phelps also spent more than a decade working with Give an Hour - a national nonprofit providing free mental health services to U.S. veterans, service members and their families - including as CEO. He has dedicated his career to advocating for mental health access for all persons.
At APA, the largest psychological association in the world, Dr. Phelps was a member of APA’s senior leadership team from 1994 – 2019, serving variously as Senior Advisor for Healthcare Financing, Deputy Executive Director for Professional Practice, and Assistant Executive Director for Professional Issues. He was APA’s liaison to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for a decade and a half, and a member of the VA Committee for Veterans with Serious Mental Illness. He worked closely with the U.S. Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees, including providing testimony to both.
Claudia L. Hinsch
is a partner at Sheppard Mullin in the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Group of the Tax Practice in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.
Claudia advises employers on tax efficient ways to compensate their employees and provide them benefits. Claudia represents private, public and tax-exempt entities on a wide range of employee benefit plans, including qualified retirement plans, cafeteria plans, fringe benefits, health and welfare plans, and nonqualified compensation arrangements. Such advice include plan design recommendations, drafting or reviewing plan documents and participant disclosure and notices, as well as assisting with compliance with benefit plan compliance with the Affordable Care Act, COBRA, Mental Health Parity, the Pension Protection Act, and other applicable sections of ERISA and the Code.
Claudia regularly assists clients with employee benefits issues arising in connection with corporate transactions, such as mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and other strategic transactions as well as on SEC executive compensation disclosures. In this role, Claudia identifies and resolves concerns arising in due diligence and assists with integration after the transaction closes. In particular, Claudia analyzes benefit plans and compensation arrangements for hidden liabilities, including addressing issues relating to sections 409A, 162(m) and 280G of the Internal Revenue Code. Claudia also advises clients on day-to-day plan administration questions that arise, compliance matters arising under ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, and the Affordable Care Act (including how to correct any errors), employment agreements, long-term and short-term incentive compensation plans, retention agreements, severance and change-in-control programs.
Claudia received her B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989 and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1994.
In addition to Claudia’s dedication to her client, she also enjoys being involved in her community. She volunteers for local charity groups and Girls on the Run and has served on the Board of an all girl’s school in Bethesda, MD for the past 11 years, including serving as the chair for the last three years.
Robert L. Gordon III
Mr. Robert “Rob” L. Gordon III is the Senior Strategic Leader for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Innovation at Document Storage Systems (DSS), Inc, a health information software development and systems integration company. Rob is the former Chief Growth Officer of SBG Technology Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of DSS; and previously held senior executive positions in several high tech companies.
In 2010 Rob was appointed the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family where he was responsible for more than $20 billion of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) worldwide military active duty education, employment, counseling and community programs and initiatives affecting over four million military active duty service and family members, and two million retirees. For his DoD service, Rob was awarded the prestigious Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.
An Airborne Ranger, he completed a 26 year career in the U.S. Army, retiring at the rank of full colonel after serving in command and staff positions as an artillery officer, aide-de-camp to General Colin Powell; National War College instructor and graduate; and Academy Professor and Director of American Politics at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. As a White House Fellow from 1992 – 1993, he served as the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Rob earned his BS from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and a Masters in Public Affairs (MPA) from Princeton University, where he specialized in national health policy. He is an advisor to several technology startups focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Veterans health, and city coordinated health care services. Among his awards and honors, Rob is the recipient of the Bernard Gill Urban Service-Learning Leadership Award from the National Youth Leadership Council; Princeton University's Edward P. Bullard Distinguished Alumnus Award; two awards of the Honorable Order of Saint Barbara; and the Franklin Award by the National Conference on Citizenship.
Dr. Shaka Bahadu
Dr. Bahadu possesses nearly two decades of experience in clinical medicine, healthcare operations, and digital health technology startups, having served as a founder and a senior executive of multiple rapidly growing ventures.
Throughout his distinguished career, which has spanned various industries, missions, and responsibilities, Dr. Bahadu earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College, graduating with honors as well as elected First Class Marshall. At Stanford University, he became a Graduate Public Service Fellow with the Haas Center for Public Service, contributing to the Performance Excellence Department of Stanford Hospital while concurrently pursuing his Master of Business Administration and a certificate in public management and social innovation from the Graduate School of Business. As student body president of Weill Cornell Medical College, he successfully led curriculum reform and was recognized with the David Aloian Memorial Scholarship upon earning his Doctor of Medicine.
Dr. Bahadu completed his residency training in internal medicine at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. In recognition of his exceptional clinical acumen and dedication to healthcare operations and technology scholarship, he was offered the position of Chief Residency of Quality Improvement at the Miami VA Medical Center.
Subsequent to his residency, Dr. Bahadu embarked on an entrepreneurial career within digital healthtech startups, initially serving as a healthcare operations expert and business generalist at Medisas Inc. He later transitioned to PicnicHealth, an AI-powered health data company that specializes in the collection, digitization, tracking, and encryption of patient medical records. As Clinical Informatics and Operations Lead, he played a pivotal role in the development of the company's operating system manual and successfully scaled the offshore operations of highly skilled clinicians as well as increasing operational throughput exponentially.
The company he co-founded, Cipher Skin Inc., a motion capture and health data company, became one of Denver's fastest-growing and highly respected companies. Collaborating with his co-founders, he raised over $7 million in seed and series A funding from private investors, including Draper & Associates and Tribe Capital. Dr. Bahadu has held senior executive positions at fintech companies Gusto Inc. and Fathom Inc., where he focused on strategic execution of customer acquisition, retention, and revenue growth within fast-growing enterprises.
Dr. Van Winkle
is currently the Director of Strategic Analytics within Raytheon Intelligence and Space, Raytheon Technologies. She oversees the use of data acrossthe enterprise to inform decisions around business development.
Prior to joining Raytheon, Dr. Van Winkle was a member of the Senior Executive Service within theDepartment of Defense and served in multiple leadership roles across the Department focused on assessing and ensuring the readiness of the military force. She is a recognized leader in interpersonal violence within the military withover 25 years of experience in both direct service and policy.
Dr. Van Winkle led the Department of Defense’s interpersonal violence policies and programs serving as the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on policiesrelated to violence prevention which included: sexual assault prevention and response, suicide prevention, all forms of harassment, diversity management andequal opportunity, and drug demand reduction. In this capacity, she developed andspearheaded the policies and programs, that guided the prevention, response, education, and training, across all forms of interpersonal violence.
Dr. Van Winkle established the DoD Violence Prevention Cell and authored the Department’s first-ever Integrated Violence Prevention policy. She led the Department’s research on the prevalence of interpersonal violence and suicidal behaviors and was theDepartment’s lead for the President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide (PREVENTS).
Dr. Van Winkle has testified frequently before Congress on topics around interpersonal violence, mental health, and suicide prevention. She is a published author on the impact of combat stress on symptoms of PTSD and the impact of deployments on military spouse well-being. She has also authored numerous technical reports and op-eds on mental health and interpersonal violence within military populations.