Payer Keynotes & Gettysburg Battlefield Case Studies Anchor The 2026 OPEN MINDS Executive Leadership Retreat
This Year’s Lineup Turns The “Lead From The Inside Out” Theme Into A Working Executive Curriculum
Gettysburg, PA (August 1, 2026)—OPEN MINDS has set the session and speaker lineup for The 2026 OPEN MINDS Executive Leadership Retreat, September 29 to October 1 at The Hotel Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The three-day program is built for the senior executives of provider organizations and health plans who are responsible for organizational stability amid simultaneous workforce, financial, and payer pressures.
This year’s curriculum is organized around execution, the daily work of turning a sound strategy into results an organization can feel. The core sessions line up against the jobs that decide whether a plan survives: aligning a leadership team, sustaining the clinical workforce, and building the payer and partnership relationships that hold when funding shifts. Case studies drawn from the battlefield at Gettysburg give executives the opportunity to pressure-test those decisions before making them within their own organizations.
Keynotes
Wednesday opens with Anna Keith, Vice President, LTSS Product & Strategy at Centene, one of the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care organizations. Ms. Keith’s 30-year LTSS career runs from case management and the presidency of a community developmental disability organization to health plan product strategy, and her keynote lays out a payer’s blueprint for rebuilding long-term services and supports around care coordination and home- and community-based care for aging and disabled consumers.
Thursday opens with Tad Gary, Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Care, the not-for-profit Arizona managed care organization whose Medicaid and Medicare plans include the state’s health plan for children in foster care and coverage for members with a serious mental illness designation. Mr. Gary’s keynote demonstrates the whole-person care model for high-need consumers while holding cost.
The retreat closes with Monica E. Oss, Chief Executive Officer of OPEN MINDS, on trust as the leadership asset that carries an organization through turbulent conditions.
Executive Seminars
The program opens with two half-day seminars. Kimberly Bond, MS, LMFT, Senior Associate at OPEN MINDS and former Executive Vice President of Center Point, Inc., leads Strategic Planning For Times Of Uncertainty, a working session on the firm’s three-phase method for building and executing a plan when the market will not sit still. Stuart Buttlaire, Ph.D., MBA, Vice President of Clinical Excellence & Leadership at OPEN MINDS and former Regional Director of Behavioral Health and Addiction Medicine for Kaiser Permanente, and Rachel Steinmetz, Executive Vice President & Chief Creative Officer at OPEN MINDS, lead Clinical Excellence Best Practices, a playbook for recruiting, retaining, and measuring clinical workforce performance in a tight labor market.
Additional Highlights Include:
Being An Executive Leader Is A Team Sport: Building Your Executive Team Bench Strength
Luanne Welch, President & Chief Executive Officer of Easterseals PORT Health, where she has led 2,600 team members across North Carolina and Virginia since 2014, joins Benchmark Human Services’ David Ross, Chief Operating Officer, and Eric Weeks, Vice President of Human Resources, for a working session on building leadership bench strength and succession planning for the key executive and critical roles that keep an organization steady.
Adam C. Roberts, MBA, President & Chief Executive Officer of Diversus Health, the largest behavioral health provider organization serving El Paso, Park, and Teller counties in Colorado, and Heather Smith, Founder of Talent Elevated and a former talent leader at Providence St. Joseph Health and Covenant Health System, trace the culture assessment Diversus Health launched in 2023 and the measurable gains that followed over three years in employee retention, employee Net Promoter Score, and leadership trust.
Preparing For The Unexpected: The Little Round Top Case Study & Battlefield Tour
Robert Prosperi, a licensed Gettysburg battlefield guide who spent 17 years as one of two staff historians at Gettysburg National Military Park and led President Jimmy Carter’s 1978 battlefield tour, walks the ground Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain defended, a study in what his decisions under pressure teach executives about strategic thinking and holding the line when the stakes are highest.
Women In Health Care Leadership
An interactive discussion brings together Cecilia Haag, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Thompson; Dorothyanna Coffey, MS, Chief Administrative Officer at The Omni Family of Services; Rochelle Head-Dunham, M.D., DFAPA, FASAM, Executive Director & Medical Director of Metropolitan Human Services District; and Regina Marshall, President & Chief Executive Officer of Advocates, on advancing into and through executive roles. Representing organizations across early childhood and family services, foster care and adoption, public behavioral health, and community-based care, the panelists will discuss their experiences advancing into and through executive leadership roles.
Signature Immersive Leadership Experiences
The retreat’s signature thread runs through Gettysburg itself. Lawrence “Larry” Korczyk, Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Park, leads the Eisenhower Farm tour as a study in command presence. Further experiences trace Pickett’s Charge, follow in Lincoln’s footsteps, and walk the story of the women of Gettysburg.
“We built this year’s program around the work that fills an executive’s week, holding onto good people and sustaining payer relationships, and we asked leaders who have done that work to teach it. Every session is designed so an attendee leaves ready to run the play at home,” said Monica E. Oss, Chief Executive Officer of OPEN MINDS.
OPEN MINDS Circle Members who attend these sessions are eligible to receive credits towards the Leadership & Management Certificate Program.
The full agenda can be found at leadership.openminds.com/agenda.
Registration is now open. It is included for OPEN MINDS Circle Market Intelligence Service subscribers. Non-members can pay and register at leadership.openminds.com.
For more information on any of OPEN MINDS‘ educational programs, upcoming sponsorship opportunities, or media inquiries, contact the Executive Education Events team at events@openminds.com or 717-334-1329.
Premier Partners & Exhibitors
OPEN MINDS institutes are made possible by OPEN MINDS premier partners, Alera Health, Cantata Health Solutions, Core Solutions, Netsmart, PayerTrends, Qualifacts, RECADEMY, Spectrum Healthcare, and Trillium Health Resources.
About OPEN MINDS
OPEN MINDS is a national market intelligence, management consulting, and marketing services firm specializing exclusively in the high-needs consumer market: mental health, addiction treatment, cognitive disabilities, chronic health conditions, elder services, health-related social needs, and adjacent markets within the health and human service field. The OPEN MINDS mission is to provide payers, service provider organizations, pharmaceutical, technology, and scientific firms that serve these consumers with the market and management knowledge needed to improve their organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Learn more at openminds.com.