A disruptive and controversial visionary, bestselling author, and popular keynote speaker, Nelson Griswold leads NextGen Benefits, the award-winning national organization that transitions brokers into consultative advisers who work with CEOs and CFOs to move companies into self-funded plans and manage the quality and cost of healthcare. Recently named “Most Influential Industry Organization” in an industry-wide vote, NextGen Benefits empowers brokers to win bigger, mid-market groups from bigger – even national – brokers.

NextGen Benefits Adviser Ed Ligonde, of Nava Benefits in Los Angeles, was honored as 2021 Broker of the Year and a NextGen Adviser has been named a Broker of the Year Finalist six of the past seven years.

CEO Today magazine named Nelson a 2022 Healthcare Awards Finalist. He also was named a Finalist for the 2018 Health Value Awards – Outstanding Consultant Leadership at the World Health Care Congress and was honored with the prestigious Industry Leadership Award by the Voluntary Benefits Association. In 2022, Nelson spent a week with legendary entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson at an exclusive, invitation-only retreat for “disruptive entrepreneurs” on Branson’s private island in the British Virgin Islands.

The Founder & Chairman of ASCEND, the national conference for innovative healthcare advisers and health plan innovation, now in its 9th year. Nelson also chairs the Benefits Adviser Leadership Track for thINc360 – The Health Care Innovation Congress in Washington, D.C.

Before he turned his attention to employee benefits and healthcare, Nelson had a distinguished career as a nationally recognized public policy expert, serving as president of two public policy think tanks, lobbying on behalf of his organizations' free-market agenda, testifying before legislative committees, and appearing frequently on national network TV news programs. He also has a background in radio, as host of a morning drive talk show and a popular jazz radio show.

Eric Barker, RPh, is Chief Growth Officer for True Rx Health Strategists. His expertise in pharmacy benefits strategy and solutions is informed by a career in clinical pharmacy and pharmacy services management. Eric has been a multi-state licensed pharmacist for over 20 years and was board certified in geriatrics and psychiatric pharmacy. In addition to several clinical operations roles, Eric served as a member of a pharmacy and therapeutics committee for a long-term care pharmacy that provided medication guidance decisions for over 100 pharmacies across the country.

Eric regularly speaks at national and regional conferences on various health care and benefits topics. In addition, he has been a preceptor for pharmacy students from the University of Wisconsin, Purdue University, and Butler University, while also teaching graduate pharmacology for nurse practitioners at the University of Indianapolis. He is a graduate of the University of Toledo College of Pharmacy.

Matt Ohrt and Jon Baran have joined forces to start Self Fund Health, a new company designed to help brokers and employers be able to write their own healthcare success stories. Self Fund Health combines traditional TPA, PBM, Direct Primary Care, and Direct Contracts under a single technology platform to dramatically simplify what’s needed for employers to succeed. By implementing similar approaches, progressive employers across Wisconsin have saved 10-30% on overall healthcare costs.

Growing up on a farm in Iowa, Matt learned the value of hard work, integrity, and problem-solving. Throughout his career, Matt has served as an influential executive leader, working for companies such as Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Badger Mining (#1 Great Place to Work in America award), and most recently as the Vice President of HR & Medical Services for Merrill Steel in Schofield, WI. He is a proven transformational leader in the areas of employer healthcare, lean manufacturing, and work culture.

Matt has become known in Wisconsin for his work as VP of HR at Merrill Steel, where he led the company on a five-year healthcare improvement journey to implement a number of healthcare services at no cost to employees and their families, including onsite clinics, a mobile clinic (converted ambulance), physical therapy, chiropractic, MRI, bundled orthopedic surgeries, and a world-class wellness program.

Outcomes included frozen premiums for 6 consecutive years, $5.5M in total cost savings (employees and their families saved $1.7M), reduced pharmacy costs, and reduced STD/LTD/Life costs. Additionally, these efforts had very favorable effects on recruiting and retention.

In 2018 Matt founded the Healthcare Best Practice Group, with about 1,000 employers and 3200 free-market-minded individuals participating.

For his success in providing healthcare solutions for employers: 

• Matt was chosen as the HR Professional of the Year in 2019 by the Central Wisconsin Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM);
• In 2020, Matt received the Healthcare Transformation Award for Wisconsin;
• Also, in 2020, Matt was given the National Employer/Purchaser Healthcare Award, an award previously won by Disney, Boeing, and Walmart.
• In 2022, Matt was selected by the Free Market Medical Association to receive the “Be the Beacon” Award.

Matt recently wrote the book, Save Your Company, Don’t Feed the Beast - The Employer Healthcare Success Formula. Based on his research of six mature employer healthcare success stories in which employers saved millions of dollars, while greatly improving their health plan, Matt developed a practical and understandable guide for all employers to transform their health plans.

Matt and his wife Denise live in Mosinee, Wisconsin, and serve as Champion Foster Parents for Marathon County. They currently have 5 children, ranging from 25 to 5, and are actively adopting children out of the social services system. In 2018, they founded NOAH; a nonprofit foster closet that freely collects, stores, and gives supplies, equipment, toys, and clothing to foster parents in Wisconsin. In 2020, Matt and Denise were selected to receive the Governor’s Foster Parents of the Year award.

Matt’s education includes an AS degree from Highland Community College, a BS degree in Psychology from Western Illinois University, a MA degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Tulsa, and he has completed half of the course credits working toward a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership. Additionally, Matt holds a Healthcare Certification from the Validation Institute, a Lean Manufacturing Certification from the University of Michigan, a Six Sigma Black Belt certification, a Martial Arts Black Belt certification, and he is a graduate of Zappos Culture Camp.

David Rainbolt started his banking career as a financial analyst at Republic Bank in Dallas, returned home to Oklahoma to help establish the predecessor to BancFirst, and became its first chief financial officer in the mid 1980s. He was elected CEO of BancFirst Corporation in 1992, a position he held for 25 years. In 2017, he became Executive Chairman of BancFirst Corporation.

David currently serves as chairman of the Dean McGee Eye Institute and sits on various boards, including the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, the Presbyterian Health Foundation, and the University of Oklahoma Foundation. David is a past chairman of the Last Frontier Council of the Boy Scouts, the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce, the Oklahoma Bankers Association, the Oklahoma Health Center Foundation, the Children’s Center Foundation, and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce.

David grew up in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and was educated at the University of Oklahoma (B.B.A.) and Tulane University (M.B.A.). He and his wife, Kim, have three sons, Adam, Sam, and Jake and two grandsons.

Wendell has more than four decades of experience as a communications professional, going back to his teenage years in Tennessee, where he served as a high school correspondent to his hometown paper, The Kingsport Times-News. His journalism career would later take him to Memphis, Nashville, and finally Washington, D.C., where he covered Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court for Scripps-Howard Newspapers.

Although best known for his career in corporate public relations, Wendell has also served as press secretary to a Tennessee gubernatorial candidate, head of advertising and PR for a large integrated health care system in East Tennessee, a partner in an Atlanta public relations firm, and a state and federal lobbyist.

His first corporate job was at Humana Inc., where he headed the company’s communications department in Louisville, Kentucky. From there he was recruited to Cigna Corporation, where he served in a variety of positions over nearly 15 years in the company’s Bloomfield, Connecticut, and Philadelphia offices. His responsibilities included leading the company’s corporate communications team and serving as chief corporate spokesperson. He also represented Cigna on several industry committees and task forces, including the strategic communications committee at the industry’s largest PR and lobbying group, America’s Health Insurance Plans.
After seeing firsthand how strategic PR and lobbying is used unfairly to tilt the scales toward corporate interests against the people’s interests, Wendell left his corporate career to advocate for meaningful health care reform. He made headlines in 2009 when he disclosed in Congressional testimony how insurance companies, as part of their efforts to boost profits, have contributed to spiraling health care costs and the growing number of Americans without health insurance. He also revealed how insurance companies use their
customers’ premiums to wage multi-million dollar PR and lobbying campaigns to influence public opinion and public policy. Since then, he has spoken at more than 200 public forums and authored the award-winning book, Deadly Spin, An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. His latest offering is an eBook entitled, Obamacare: What’s in for Me? What Everyone Needs to Know about the Affordable Care Act.

Previously, Wendell was a columnist for The Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that produces original investigative journalism. His articles and commentaries have appeared in many publications including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Tampa Bay Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, The Nation, Huffington Post, CNN.com, NBC.com, Democracy Journal, and healthinsurance.org. Wendell has been the subject of numerous articles in the U.S. and foreign media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, and has appeared frequently as a guest on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, PBS, and NPR.

In 2019, Wendell became the president of Business for Medicare for All and Medicare for All NOW!

Since then, he has spoken at more than 200 public forums and authored the award-winning New York Times bestseller, Deadly Spin, An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. He is also the author of Obamacare: What’s in for Me? What Everyone Needs to Know about the Affordable Care Act. His latest book, which he wrote with Nick Penniman, is Nation on the Take, How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It.

Wendell is currently the president of two non-profit organizations, Business Leaders for Health Care Transformation and the Center for Health & Democracy which convenes the Lower Out-of-Pockets NOW Coalition and publishes the newsletter HEALTH CARE un-covered.