Our Team
Diane Nguyen
Founding Partner
Satid Thammasitboon
Founding Partner
Dorene F. Balmer
Expert Consultant
Morris Gordon
Expert Consultant
Founding Partner
Founding Partner
Expert Consultant
Expert Consultant
With a decade of leadership steering global health enterprises serving children and women, Dr. Diane Nguyen, PharmD has honed her expertise in uplifting marginalized communities. Early in this journey, she recognized the pivotal correlation between the effectiveness of health initiatives and the proficiency of the global health workforce.
Diane’s journey as an education scholar has been dedicated to bridging knowledge gaps and catering to the unique continuing professional development needs of professionals supporting healthcare delivery in resource-limited environments. Having left her mark in 17 countries across Africa, Eastern Europe, South America, the Pacific Islands, and the United States, she has intricately woven health and education to effect lasting change.
Having completed her training with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree and two post-graduate residencies in Ambulatory Care Pharmacy Practice and Public Health, Diane’s academic foundation is as robust as her real-world experiences. Her journey often positioned her as the sole pharmacist, igniting her passion for interdisciplinary practice. This unique perspective fuels her advocacy for collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches at the nexus of health and education, fortifying individuals and communities for a healthier, flourishing future.
Dr. Satid Thammasitboon, MD, MHPE, has carved a distinguished path spanning multiple facets in health professions education (HPE) through his innovative approaches and commitment to education and scholarship. As the director of Center for Research and Innovation in HPE, his leadership has been pivotal in nurturing research and scholarship, creating an institutional foundation that now boasts international extensions.
Driven by the conviction that impactful scholarship arises from rigorous systematic inquiry as well as cross-disciplinary collaboration, Satid has consistently sought practical solutions to pressing challenges in the HPE sphere. This commitment to pragmatic inquiry not only advances educational practices but also enriches the theoretical knowledge that subsequently informs and inspires the scholarship of others in the field.
Satid’s entrepreneurial leadership propels many successful communities of scholars tackling a broad range of contemporary issues in HPE. The academic prowess he exhibits today is the culmination of years of collaborative learning and practice with a diverse array of multinational, multicultural, and multidisciplinary scholars and experts in the field.
Locally, under his directorship, the Center for Research and Innovation has evolved from its modest roots to become a nexus for scholars both locally and internationally. His initiative in founding the Health Professions Education Certificate program serving a health system across four cities underscores his dedication to nurturing and educating faculty in continuing professional development and educational scholarship. Globally, he co-founded the Global Health Scholarship Community of Practice Program and led the establishment of the Medical Education Research Community in Southeast Asia, showcasing his ongoing commitment to advancing HPE on an international scale.
Highlighting his contributions, Satid was honored with the 2023 Karolinska Institutet Prize for Research in Medical Education (KIPRIME) Fellowship by Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institutet. This elite program recognizes highly promising mid-career medical education researchers from around the world to develop future candidates for the Karolinska Institutet Prize, which is one of the highest honors in the world for health professions education research.
Dr. Balmer’s first career was in pediatric nutrition at CHOP. Mesmerized by the clinical learning environment, she did her doctoral work at Temple University, her post-doc at UPenn and then launched her career in medical education in 2008 at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She moved back to the pediatric space, working at Texas Children’s Hospital as the Assistant Director of the Center for Research, Innovation and Scholarship.
Dr. Balmer returned to CHOP and UPenn in 2015, and in her current role, supports faculty and trainees in their pursuit of educational scholarship. She provides direct consultation and mentorship for PhD candidates at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, for multi-site projects in US, and for numerous faculty and trainees in North America and Southeast Asia. Dr. Balmer’s independent research focuses on identity work and career construction. She has led the field of medical education in longitudinal qualitative research, following individuals (e.g., medical trainees, physician educators) for more than a decade.
Dr. Balmer is an associate editor for the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, serves on the Editorial Board for Academic Medicine, and has over 120 peer-reviewed papers. But she is most proud of her narrative, non-fiction book, acquired by the University of Toronto Press and to be released in 2025, that traces the lives of six aspiring doctors from day one of medical school all the way into clinical practice.
Professor Gordon is a consultant Paediatrician working in the North West of the UK who is still clinically active in general, community and Neurodevelopmental paediatrics. He is a Professor of evidence synthesis and systematic review at University of central Lancashire in North West of the United Kingdom. His work focusses on producing the highest methodological quality reviews of research in a variety of medical and social science disciplines and support true evidence informed deployment to practice in a manner that enhances outcomes and changes policy and practice.
Professor Gordon has a clinical and academic sub-interest in Gastroenterology. He is coordinating editor for the Cochrane Gut with a portfolio of IBD reviews and functional bowel disease reviews of childhood. He has worked on many Cochrane and none Cochrane systematic reviews on various adult and paediatric topics and led to change in national guidance on areas such as IBD and Chronic Constipation. He has been involved on over 40 cochrane reviews and published 150 peer reviewed papers. His H-index is 43 and 5 year H-index is 36 with over 6000 citations since 2020.
He is currently the co-chair methods lead for major national and international guidelines, including the UK BSG IBD and Colonic Surveillance guidance, as well as joint ESPGHAN/NASPGHAN FAPD and Constipation guidance.
He is also the executive chair of the Best Evidence Medical Education Collaborative (BEME), leading the BEME council with hundreds of contributors in dozens of countries active over the last 15 years to produce best evidence in health education topics.
In 2023, he was appointed the co-director of one of 13 institutes within UCLAN university to oversee all research activities, the BEST HR institute. This new institute will support work from ‘bench to bedside’ with a focus on Multi-disciplinary working and support for junior researchers.
He has delivered training and workshops on evidence synthesis and systematic review in over a dozen events to thousands of people across the globe.