About > DI Leadership
DARTNet Institute Leadership & Staff
Board of Directors
John Turner White, IV, MBA, President and Director 
Executive Professor Helzberg School of Management, Rockhurst University (retired). Turner White was executive professor of management in the Helzberg School of Management for fifteen years following a career of over 30 years in business. He retired from active teaching in 2020. He was previously chief executive officer of Union Station Kansas City, Inc., a civic and commercial property development project in Kansas City, Missouri. His primary interests are business turnarounds and reorganizations, entrepreneurship, ethics, business decision-making, and international business. He holds a Master of Management from the International School of Management (2018), a Master of Business Administration as an executive fellow from Rockhurst University (1993) and a Bachelor of Arts in English and philosophy from Colorado College (1971). He was honored as Faculty Member of the Year at the Rockhurst University Festival of Student Achievement in 2016.
Chester Fox, MD, FAAFP, Secretary and Director
Professor of Family Medicine for the University at Buffalo. Chet Fox has been the director share of the upstate New York Patient Powered and Practice-based Research Network. (UNYNET). This PBRN specializes in practice transformation for primary care practices in order to translate evidence into practice. UNYNET has 49 active practices with 175 clinicians and serve a population base of close to 400,000 patients throughout the eight counties of Western New York. It is closely aligned with the Pursuing Perfection Collaborative Western New York which is a Robert Wood Johnson Aligning Forces for Quality community. This gives significant contact all-important organizations and practices within the eight counties. Through this alliance, UNYNET was part of one of the 17 Beacon communities from the Office of the National Coordinator. The PBRN has completed over 48 research projects and has published 68 papers. Dr. Fox is principal investigator on a large NIH study utilizing DARTNet to use computer decision support at the point of care to improve the quality and safety of chronic kidney disease care in primary care offices.
James (Jim) G. Baxendale BS, MS, EMBA, Treasurer and Director
Jim has spent over twenty-eight years in the field of university/hospital technology transfer. He currently serves as the Founder/President of Innovation Transfer, LLC. , consultant to the KU Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation, and Advisory Board member for the UMKC School of Law Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and Courtesy Professor at the UMKC Bloch School of Business Regnier Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Previously he held the position of Director, UMKC Innovation Center Whiteboard2Boardroom program. In that role, he assembled a network of talented individuals to serve as CEO's of newly formed startup companies, cataloged a large pool of innovative technologies from twenty-three bi-state academic and other research organizations to make them known to entrepreneurs and established companies in the bi-state region as licensing opportunities. He also facilitated co-development projects between academic institutions, hospitals and industry and recruited domain experts to assess market opportunities for various innovations and served as a mentor to university and high school students in regional entrepreneurship programs. Jim also served as the Executive Director of the KU Center for Technology Commercialization for the four campuses of the University of Kansas for sixteen and a half years. Jim has held management positions in university/hospital technology transfer offices, medical device firms, hospital laboratories and private clinical laboratories throughout the Greater Kansas City Area. Jim has served as an SBIR/STTR Grant Reviewer for the National Science Foundation. He is a frequent lecturer on technology commercialization at conferences, medical centers, hospitals, and universities He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Technology, a Master of Science degree in Microbiology from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and an Executive MBA from Rockhurst University.
- Lawrence Kleinman, MD, MPH, FAAP, Director
- Kari Stephens, PhD, Director
Staff
Wilson Pace, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Technology Officer
Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine and past Green-Edelman Chair Emeritus for Practice-based Research at the University of Colorado Denver; past Director of the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network. Wilson Pace's research has focused on patient centered health information technology, behavioral change, practice reorganization and patient safety. His patient safety scholarship has included significant work on the further development of databases for collecting patient safety events, a taxonomy for describing safety events and analysis techniques using the taxonomy. He served on the Institute of Medicine's committee studying the recognition and prevention of medication errors, which resulted in the report entitled Preventing Medication Errors. His behavioral change work has involved multiple technology related projects as well as projects studying novel biomarkers to track improved physical activity and diet. Other projects have focused on improving care for depression, post-partum depression, asthma, and chronic kidney disease.
1-800-434-0278, ext. 12; wilson.pace@dartnet.info
Christina M. Hester, PhD, MPH, Vice President of Research
Christina Hester leads and oversees primary care focused research studies in collaboration with DARTNet Institute’s broad network of clinicians and collaborators. Christina has her PhD in microbiology with postdoctoral fellowship training in public health and family medicine research and has served in leadership roles in family medicine research training programs and primary care focused translational and practice-based research projects for over a decade. The goal of her research program is to improve family medicine and primary care and ensure meaningful involvement of clinicians in research. Her work focuses on engaging practicing clinicians in identifying solutions for primary care through practice-based research in real-world practice settings and in supporting primary care clinical teams in adopting innovation derived from research.
Daphne York, Director of Programs and Client Relations
Daphne York has a 25-year career in research following 20 years in business management and accounting. She has a diverse background in research that includes 10 years as a clinical research coordinator at Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, where she worked in public health and multidisciplinary research. After moving to Michigan, she worked as a research project manager at the University of Notre Dame and then spent the next 3 plus years at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine (WMed) as Research Navigator where she guided physicians, faculty, medical students, and residents through the research life cycle.
1-866-290-0618 ext. 5; daphne.york@dartnet.info
Additional Staff
Please see our Contacts page.