About

Billy Oglesby, PhD, MBA, MSPH, FACHE

I lead AI strategy for a university and build on frontier models myself. I am Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives and the inaugural Humana Dean of the Jefferson College of Population Health at Thomas Jefferson University, the nation’s first college of its kind.

I founded Health AI Central, an independent intelligence hub for the health-AI field that runs on more than forty agents I designed, and I am founding Editor in Chief of the Journal of Health AI, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal with a published AI-use policy and humans making every judgment that matters. I chair Intelligent Teaching: AI in Health Professions Education, a national conference whose first edition drew 200 attendees to 50 sessions.

Over 25 years with payers, providers, and life-science companies I have published 50+ articles and reports, given 70+ talks, and helped secure more than $40 million in external funding. I am an NACD Board Leadership Fellow and a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives.

The longer version

The through-line of my work: lead with the use case, not the technology. Twenty-five years with payers, providers, life-science companies, and technology firms taught me that adoption follows from what people need, want, and can actually work with, in classrooms, clinics, and boardrooms alike.

I have been building for the web since high school, starting with raw HTML in the early 1990s when the internet was just arriving. Through my undergraduate years I worked at one of South Carolina’s first digital advertising agencies, designing SEO and UI strategies for clients. The tools have changed; the habit hasn’t.

Before my current roles I was Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs at the Jefferson College of Population Health, where I led a restructuring of online degree programs that added more technology and enabled students to finish faster. As founding faculty at Kent State University’s College of Public Health I built a highly ranked online MPH in Health Policy & Management, and led community health needs assessments and consulted on population health strategies across several health systems in Northeast Ohio. At the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health I led the university’s successful Carnegie community-engaged designation and directed the Kellogg Foundation’s Engaged Institutions Initiative.

On governance: I am an NACD Board Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health, and a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. I serve on the board of the American College of Medical Quality, served on the board of the Ohio Conference of the AAUP, and was president of the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. I completed Cornell University’s Chief AI Officer Program, the AI in Healthcare Program at Johns Hopkins, and the Wharton School’s Advanced Finance Program, and hold an MBA in healthcare strategy, a PhD and master’s in health behavior, and a BS in corporate finance.

I invest in and advise early-stage and mature health AI companies, and I am a member of Wharton Alumni Angels.

Ask me about

• Building the nation’s first College of Population Health
• Running a peer-reviewed journal with AI in the loop and humans at every decision
• Chairing a brand-new national conference on AI in health-professions education
• What forty agents taught me about model selection, cost, and security
• How a university actually decides on AI: the committees, the policies, the people
• Why I invest in health AI companies and what I look for

Principles

• Lead with the use case, not the technology. Adoption follows from what people need, want and can actually work with.
• Humans make every judgment that matters. Automate the volume; keep the decisions.
• Publish the failures. A failure log is worth more than a feature list.
• Build what you ask others to adopt. Strategy written by people who have never shipped anything is just wishful thinking.
• Safety is practice, not posture. Red-team your own work before anyone else does.
• Evidence over enthusiasm. Measure learning, cost and error, and say what you found.

Press kit

• Headshot: download (JPG, 533 × 800)
• 150-word bio as plain text
• How to describe me: “Billy Oglesby is a university AI strategy executive and population health dean who builds on frontier AI models himself.”

Contact

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/billyoglesby