Healthcare Surfaces Summit Announces New Board Leadership & Staff Additions
“One of the most important things the Healthcare Surfaces Summit has focused on since it was founded was to build bridges between silos of expertise in our field, and as we continue to do this, we have made some exciting additions to our leadership team,” said Linda Lybert, Healthcare Surfaces Summit’s founder, immediate past president, and new executive director. We are excited about the new additions and changes that will strengthen the Summit’s ability to validate and take innovation to scale, improving patient outcomes, reducing the risk to patients and healthcare workers and increasing our impact on the industry.”
Board of Directors Additions
Darrel Hicks
Board President
Darrel, owner and principal of Darrel Hicks, LLC., will serve as board president. With over 36 years of health care experience in environmental services and infection control, Hicks is a nationally recognized expert and brings a passion for education, training and personal recognition of all environmental services professionals. In addition to training and serving as a consultant to healthcare leaders and building service contractors, he has written and published numerous articles in professional and health care related journals, and his book Infection Prevention for Dummies. Before founding his consulting firm, Hicks served as an environmental services director of a 500-bed hospital for over 16 years.
Debra Harris, Ph.D.
PhD. Board Member
Debra has joined the board of directors for her first term. An award-winning researcher on facility design and organizational effectiveness, Harris holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture from Texas A&M University, with an emphasis on health systems planning and policy. She is a fellow of the Center for Health Systems & Design at Texas A&M and has written over 40 peer-reviewed and trade publications and books. She is an Associate Professor at Baylor University in the Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences where her research focuses on material science and the built environment, in particular healthcare environments, related to the mitigation of healthcare associated illness. As CEO of RAD Consultants, based out of Waco, Texas, Debra specializes in providing research and strategic planning services to the healthcare, education, manufacturing, and government sectors.
Advisory Board Addition
Mary Millard, M.Ed.
Healthcare Surfaces Summit Advisory Board
Joining the Summit’s Advisory Board is Mary Millard, M. Ed. Millard is a survivor of acute septic shock and lives with Pseudomonas Aeruginosa residing in biofilm, a hospital-acquired infection she contracted during open heart surgery. She now speaks to congressional panels, hospitals, infection preventionists, and other groups about sepsis awareness and those living with the resulting chronic infections, and the extreme financial costs for individuals and healthcare facilities.
Staff Additions
Linda Lybert
Executive Director
Lynda, founder, and immediate past president of the Healthcare Surfaces Summit has been appointed by the board of directors to serve as its executive director. Lybert started the organization in 2015 with the goal of gathering multi-disciplinary experts and thought leaders to create a neutral platform to evaluate the critical surfaces issue. This problem is complex with no simple single solution. She believes that bringing all experts and thought leaders together to look at the issue from a holistic and scientific perspective to find multi-modal solutions that work together as a system. Outside of the Healthcare Surfaces Summit, Lybert is the president and owner of Healthcare Surface Consulting.
