As planning for the new North Carolina Children’s Health system continues, we are excited to mark another milestone by introducing the NC Children’s Board of Directors:
Please view brief biographies for each NC Children’s Board Member below.
The Board includes representatives from Duke Health and UNC Health, along with independent directors appointed by each health system. They will provide leadership and guidance to the NC Children’s leadership team to ensure the successful creation of NC Children’s and support its goal of creating a world-class children’s health system for our state.
While hundreds of leaders and clinicians across UNC Health and Duke Health are involved in our work to create NC Children’s, seating the new NC Children’s Board is an important milestone in the path toward establishing NC Children’s as an independent children’s academic health system. The NC Children’s Board held its first meeting in August 2025 and will meet quarterly.
Jack Bailey, Biotechnology Executive and Independent Board Director
Jack worked for more than 30 years in the life sciences industry. Most recently he was CEO of G1 Therapeutics, a NC-based publicly-traded biotech company that was acquired in 2024.
Prior to that, he spent more than a decade with GSK, including serving as its U.S. President. He spent nearly 19 years with Eli Lilly & Company before that in an array of both domestic and international leadership roles. Jack holds a B.S. degree in Biology from Hobart College in Geneva, NY, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler School of Business.
Throughout his career he has been actively involved in the community and the healthcare sector, having served on the boards of the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the North Carolina Healthcare Quality Alliance. He previously served on the Advisory Board for the UNC-Chapel Hill Eshelman Institute for Innovation and several N.C.-based biotechnology company boards.
Jack was also on the N.C. Governor’s Business Council for many years. Jack also previously served on the board of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), The Joint Commission and the Policy Council at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Denise Bennett, President & CEO, Visions Realized, LLC
With a financial career spanning decades, Denise Shird Bennett, one of the first black female commercial banking relationship managers in the Southeast, served as a trusted advisor and business strategist for top financial institutions across the nation. Her passion is legacy building, by guiding business owners and individuals to build and sustain long-term prosperity. With a notable career including senior-level and executive positions at PNC Private Bank, Wells Fargo, BB&T and First Citizens Bank, she most recently served as Executive Vice President and Triangle Market President at Encore Bank.
Bennett was nominated to the Duke University Health System Board of Directors in 2023, and currently chairs the Compliance and Audit Committee. She is also a member of the Duke University School of Medicine Board of Visitors and Duke Raleigh Hospital Board of Advisors, having served as Chair until 2024. She was recently inducted in the North Carolina Women Business Owners Hall of Fame and made history when bestowed the prestigious and coveted Triangle Commercial Real Estate "Impact Award" on its 25th anniversary in 2024.
Active in her community, Bennett serves on the North Carolina Symphony Board of Directors. Among many others, she previously served on the Board of Directors for the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and the Triangle Commercial Real Estate Women. She is the recipient of numerous distinguished awards and honors, including the Triangle Business Journal (TBJ) Women in Business Award, the TBJ NC Financial Impact Leaders Award, TBJ Movers and Shakers Award, the Business Leader Women Extraordinaire Award, and the Mahogany Dime Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole Living Legend Award.
Bennett is also a published author. Her publications include: “A Chosen Seed: from Mustard Seed to Abundance,” a book that celebrates the centennial wisdom of her 104-year-old grandmother; “Fantastic Customer Service: Inside and Out”; and an anthology entitled “Leadership: Serving and Sowing.” A certified member of The National Speakers Association, she acclaims one of her biggest accomplishments is along with her late husband Ricky – having raised Dion, Ricky Jr. and Clayton, three exceptional young men who are making excellent strides in the corporate community.
Samuel Bowles, Managing Partner, New Republic Partners
Sam Bowles is a managing partner and a member of the board of directors of New Republic Partners. He also serves as a member of the firm’s leadership team and investment committee. Sam brings extensive expertise and experience in the areas of private equity, investment management, capital markets, and mergers and acquisitions.
His prior experience includes roles as a managing director of Threadridge Investment Partners, a fully integrated single-family office and holding company, and as a principal at Carousel Capital, where he sourced and executed private equity transactions and monitored portfolio companies. Sam also worked at Morgan Stanley in the mergers & acquisitions group in New York.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School.
Sam currently serves on the boards of the Charlotte Country Day School and the Kenan-Flagler Business School. He serves as chairman of the investment committee for the endowment of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and chairman of the investment committee for the Mint Museum.
Wesley Burks, MD, Chair, NC Children's Board of Director
Dr. Wesley Burks is a seasoned healthcare executive and academic leader, most recently serving as Chief Executive Officer of UNC Health, Dean of the UNC School of Medicine, and Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. With a proven track record in expanding healthcare networks and fostering research and educational excellence, Dr. Burks is a driver of strategic growth, innovation, and excellence in academic health systems and beyond. Dr. Burks led UNC Health from 2019 to 2025, overseeing the expansion of its network to include 17 hospitals, 20 hospital campuses, and over 900 clinics. His mission-driven leadership is marked by the establishment of new clinical, research, and educational partnerships, with a focus on unifying the statewide system to better serve the people of North Carolina. At UNC Health, he led with an unwavering focus on patients and teammates, creating a world-class workplace culture marked by a strong sense of purpose and belonging.
Prior to his current roles, Dr. Burks dedicated over 30 years to patient care, research, and education, joining UNC-Chapel Hill in 2011 as Physician-in-Chief of the North Carolina Children’s Hospital. As Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Curnen Distinguished Professor, he emphasized pediatric research, rural health initiatives and primary care education. Prior to his current role he was the Executive Dean of the UNC School of Medicine. An internationally renowned expert on allergic disease and food allergies, particularly peanut allergy,
Dr. Burks has led pioneering translational science work on the proteins of peanut and also immunotherapy clinical studies. His foundational work in this area has informed potential treatment regimens that have already been developed and are in current development. Dr. Burks is particularly interested in developing and nurturing new and emerging leaders in academic medicine and healthcare.
Dr. Burks resides in Chapel Hill, NC, where he actively engages with the academic and medical communities. An advocate for healthcare innovation and education, he continues to influence the future of medical practice and training.
Mary Klotman, MD, Executive VP for Health Affairs, Duke University; Dean, Duke University School of Medicine; & Chief Academic Officer, Duke Health
A nationally recognized leader in academic medicine, Mary E. Klotman, MD, is executive vice president for health affairs at Duke University, dean of the Duke University School of Medicine, and chief academic officer for Duke Health.
Klotman was appointed as Duke’s first executive vice president for health affairs in June 2023. She was named dean of the School of Medicine in January 2017 and was appointed to a second five-year term in 2022. Prior to her appointment as dean, Klotman served with distinction as chair of the Department of Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine for seven years.
Klotman earned her undergraduate and medical degrees from Duke University. She completed her internal medicine residency and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine at Duke before joining the faculty as assistant professor of medicine. She joined the National Institutes of Health in 1991, where she was a member of the Public Health Service and trained and worked in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology under the direction of Robert C. Gallo, MD.
Before returning to Duke in 2010, Klotman joined Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where she was the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine and served as chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases for 13 years. She was also co-director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute, a program designed to translate basic science discoveries into clinical therapeutics for newly emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.
A pioneering physician-scientist, Klotman’s research interests are focused on the molecular pathogenesis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1 (HIV-1) infection. Among many important contributions to this field, Klotman and her team demonstrated that HIV resides in and evolves separately in kidney cells, a critical step in HIV-associated kidney disease. Most recently, her group has been defining the role of integrase-defective lentiviral vectors for the delivery of an HIV vaccine.
Klotman is Past President of the Association of Professors of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians. She was elected to membership in the Academy of Medicine in 2014 and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. Klotman is a former president of the Duke Medical Alumni Association and received a Duke University School of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Award in 2015.
Thomas Owens, MD, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer Duke University Health System
Thomas Owens, MD, is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Duke University Health System (DUHS).
With more than three decades of experience at Duke Health, Dr. Owens serves as the principal senior leader overseeing health system operations, working with enterprise leaders across Duke Health to deliver outstanding clinical outcomes and remarkable patient experience across Duke’s network and the full continuum of care, from the hospital to ambulatory settings to care in homes and the community.
In his previous role as Senior Vice President, Dr. Owens managed DUHS-employed physicians, Duke Primary Care, Duke HomeCare and Hospice, Graduate Medical Education, population health management programs, and payer value-based contracts through Duke Connected Care.
As President of Duke University Hospital, our academic medical center was consistently ranked as North Carolina’s No. 1 hospital for quality. In 2021, he and his DUH team opened the 350-bed, Duke Central Tower. In 2020, Dr. Owens played a critical role in leading DUHS’s COVID response, collaborating with state government officials, operational leaders and frontline team members to care for our community, patients, and team during the pandemic.
In partnership with colleagues in the Private Diagnostic Clinic, community practices and the Duke University School of Medicine, Dr. Owens served as DUHS’s lead executive in planning the Duke Health Integrated Practice.
Previous roles at DUHS and DUH include Chief Clinical Officer and Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer and Vice President, Chief of Duke Hospital Medicine Programs, Co-Director of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics Residency programs, and more.
Dr. Owens received his M.D. with honors from the University at Buffalo School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. He completed his Internal Medicine and Pediatrics training at Duke University Medical Center.
Cristy Page, MD, MPH, Interim CEO, UNC Health, and Dean, UNC School of Medicine
Cristy Page, MD, MPH, is a health care executive and distinguished professor of family medicine who delivers excellence through teamwork, partnerships and innovation. She also is a national leader in academic medicine, rural healthcare delivery and workforce development.
She currently serves as Interim CEO of UNC Health and Dean of the UNC School of Medicine. She has previously served as the President of UNC Health Enterprises and UNC Health’s Chief Academic Officer.
As Interim CEO of UNC Health, she leads a statewide network of 20 hospital campuses, 450 clinics, and more than 56,000 teammates working to fulfill the system’s mission to improve the health and the well-being of the people of North Carolina.
The UNC School of Medicine is one of the nation’s leading public schools of medicine, graduating more than 200 new physicians each year. Its over 2,000 faculty includes two Nobel laureates and has generated more than $600 million in research funding annually for the last several years.
Prior to her current positions, she served as UNC School of Medicine Executive Dean from 2019 until 2025, and Chair of the UNC Department of Family Medicine from 2016 until 2019. Page’s leadership extends beyond UNC. As the founder of the Rural GME and Teaching Health Centers,
Page and colleagues have worked to enhance access to care in rural areas across the nation. The consortium has produced extensive research on rural health workforce development and successfully informed policies that support increased access to care.
Mark Wietecha, Manager Director, Manatt
Mark Wietecha is among the nation’s most experienced consultants to children’s hospitals and their pediatric academic missions. He focuses on strategy, governance, and affiliations. Mark’s consulting career spans his current work with Manatt and his prior career at Kurt Salmon, a global consultancy now part of Accenture, where he was a senior partner and chair of the board of directors.
In between his consulting careers with Manatt and Kurt Salmon, Mark was president and chief executive of the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) in Washington, DC, where he served on point as the lead advocate for the nation’s children’s hospitals. While at CHA, he played a critical role during the Covid-19 crisis, working with Congress, the Administration, and the White House in securing over $3 billion in financial relief for children’s hospitals and high-Medicaid providers.
Mark has engaged with all the nation’s top children’s hospitals over his career as a strategic advisor, industry advocate, leadership speaker, and board member. His initial children’s hospital consulting clients include Boston Children’s Hospital, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Texas Children’s Hospital, organizations he has continuously served over 30 years. Beyond the United States, Mark has engaged with such leading children’s hospitals as Great Ormond Street in London, Sickkids in Toronto, Barcelona SJD Children’s, and Fudan Children’s in Shanghai. He is a member and past secretary of CHIEF, the leading international forum of children’s hospital CEOs dedicated to advancing the pediatric academic mission.
He also serves on the board of the Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital in Baltimore, a specialized care facility sponsored by the health systems of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland.
Mark is a former trustee of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Council of Teaching Hospitals board and has served as a prior director on the board of the Children’s Hospital Association, both in Washington, DC. He is a former director and past chair of the board of overseers of UCLA Health in Los Angeles. Mark earned graduate degrees from The Ohio State University and Indiana University, with further post-graduate training at Harvard Business School. He is based in Washington, DC.
