Cambridge Health Alliance Names Three New Members to Board of Trustees

Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), an academic community health system serving Cambridge, Somerville and Boston’s metro-north region, has named William Lahey, Mary Jane Kornacki and Claire Laporte, all Cambridge residents, to its Board of Trustees. The new trustees, appointed by Richard Rossi, City Manager of Cambridge, will help CHA fulfill its mission of improving the health of our communities. The existing board membership includes residents from Cambridge, Somerville and Everett, which cover CHA’s primary service area.

Cambridge resident William Lahey is a partner at Anderson & Kreiger, LLP where he focuses on environmental, energy and municipal law. Previously he was a partner at Palmer & Dodge, LLP where he was chair of its litigation department. Mr. Lahey’s clients include energy utilities, renewable energy developers, universities and major airports. His international work includes drafting environmental laws for the Royal Government of Bhutan and coordinating the litigation that successfully stopped offshore oil development in Belize on behalf of Oceana, Inc. His work for Oceana was recognized with the Excellence in Pro Bono Award in 2013 from the Massachusetts Bar Association. He served as chairman of the founding board of Smith Leadership Academy Charter School in Dorchester. Mr. Lahey received his JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School and BS from the University of Wisconsin.

Mary Jane Kornacki, a Cambridge resident, is the founding partner of Amicus, a healthcare consulting company. The focus of her work for over thirty years has been organizational development in healthcare organization including medical groups and hospitals in the US and England. Her firm has helped numerous organizations develop and implement compacts to foster physician alignment. She has collaborated on numerous publications on physician culture, physician morale, medical group dynamics, governance in physician organizations and service improvement in health care. She is the author of, A New Compact: Aligning Physician-Organization Expectations to Transform Patient Care and co-author of, Leading Physicians through Change: How to Achieve and Sustain Results. Ms. Kornacki holds a MS in public health from the University of Massachusetts.

Claire Laporte, a Cambridge resident, is a partner and trial lawyer at Foley Hoag, LLP. She represents clients in complex patent litigation and technology-related matters in a broad range of technical specialties including biotechnology, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and e-commerce. In addition to her trial practice, Ms. Laporte undertakes extensive appellate work, both in representing parties and in filing amicus briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. She also provides strategic patent portfolio counseling services and opinions on patent-related matters. Ms. Laporte received her JD from Harvard Law School and her BA from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs. She clerked with Justice Ruth I. Abrams of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Ms. Laporte currently serves on the CHA Foundation and was formerly a member of CHA’s Patient Family Advisory Council.

The new trustees replace Maxwell Solet and Paula Paris who have completed their terms of service.

Cambridge Health Alliance is an academic community health system committed to providing high quality care in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston’s metro-north communities. CHA has expertise in primary care, specialty care and mental health/substance use services, as well as caring for diverse and complex populations. It includes three hospital campuses, a network of primary care and specialty practices and the Cambridge Public Health Dept. CHA patients have seamless access to advanced care through the system’s affiliation with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. CHA is a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate and is also affiliated with Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard School of Dental Medicine and Tufts University School of Medicine. For more information, visit www.challiance.org.