Board of Directors

Mountain Pacific’s board of directors are fiduciaries for the organization and act in accordance with the fiduciary duties of care, loyalty and obedience. The board is responsible for hiring the CEO; providing strategic direction for Mountain Pacific and creating a policy-based governance system.

The board is composed of directors from Alaska, Hawaii, Montana and Wyoming. Directors serve two three-year terms. Board terms are staggered so not all of the directors’ terms expire in the same year. Board membership represents academia, business, health care facilities, health care information, law, medicine, Medicare beneficiaries and rural health.

 

Dick Brown served as the CEO of a rural hospital and nursing home for 14 years before spending nearly 30 years with the Montana Hospital Association, the last 12 years serving as president and CEO. Over the course of his 45-year career, Mr. Brown has served on many local, state and national boards and special committees to address a variety of health care issues. His work and experiences provide him with a deep understanding of health care institutions, rural health issues, strategic planning, governance and state and federal government relations. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Montana State University-Bozeman and his master’s degree in hospital administration from University of Minnesota Carlton School of Management.

 

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Garet Azama is the chief operating officer at Zephyr Insurance Company. In his current role, Mr. Azama is responsible for the overall internal operations, including marketing, sales and underwriting functions, policies and practices, finance and all management control systems. Prior to his role at Zephyr, he spent over 25 years in the health care insurance industry with Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA). During his tenure at HMSA, Mr. Azama oversaw areas such as corporate budgeting, data analytics, building facilities and administrative services. In recent years he was responsible for sales and account servicing for commercial and Medicare product lines, product strategy and development and compliance efforts related to commercial products. Mr. Azama is a graduate of the University of Hawaii, where he received his bachelor’s degree in accounting. He is a past board member of the Ronald McDonald House Charities in Hawaii and a current board member of the Oahu Region of the Hawaii Health Systems Corporation.

 

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Francis Chan served as the chief executive officer of Hawai’i Health Information Exchange (HHIE) for seven years, retiring in 2024. Under Francis’ leadership, Hawai’i HIE continued to support innovations in care delivery by integrating clinical and laboratory data into medication management, minimized preventable hospital admissions from medication side effects and integrated clinical and social determinants of health data to address health inequity. Mr. Chan and his team were recognized as Healthcare Heroes by the HIMSS Alaska-Hawaii chapter for their contribution to the COVID-19 pandemic, routing COVID-19 lab results to the Hawai’i Department of Health so policy makers and the public could track the progress of the pandemic and take steps to slow its spread.

 

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Bob Janicek previously served as chief financial officer for Mountain Pacific before becoming the chief information officer for RiverStone Health in Billings, Montana. Mr. Janicek has more than 25 years of experience in company management, with 20 of those years spent in the health care industry. A seasoned executive with a proven record of delivering results, he finds success by intersecting new operating models with innovation, process and technology. He received his bachelor’s degree in business administration/information systems from Montana State University Billings.

 

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Shanda Lohse joined Eastern Aleutian Tribes in June 2018 and has served as their medical director since May 2019. She is a member of the Standing Rock Lakota Tribe and has worked in the Alaska Tribal Health System since 2005. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and her medical degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School. Ms. Lohse did her family medicine residency at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a member of the American Medical Association, the Association of American Indian Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians. Ms. Lohse has presented nationally and internationally on integrated primary care teams and systems.

 

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Karen Smith-Hagman is a registered nurse with a clinical background in behavioral health and more than 35 years of experience in managed care with extensive experience in health plan clinical operations, health policy planning, programming, implementation and product development. Ms. Smith-Hagman has served in various senior-level capacities at the New Jersey State Psychiatric Hospital System, CentraState Medical Center, EmblemHealth, Magellan Health Services, HealthNet, Integra and Managed Health Network. Prior to her retirement in 2024 she served as vice president at Blue Cross of Idaho, where she worked with national and select client groups to help find opportunities to improve both clinical outcomes and the health status of group members as well as impacting the health and access to services of rural and frontier populations.

 

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Mariko Selle is the director of health equity and workforce development at Alaska Primary Care Association and has more than 20 years of experience in quality improvement, including nonprofit and rural hospital executive leadership roles. She serves on several boards that focus on improving the lives of Alaskan residents and is the chair of the Alaska Workforce Investment Board. Ms. Selle splits her time between the communities of Anchorage and Unalaska/Dutch Harbor as the maritime director for the Alaska Safety Alliance. She enjoys examining interconnections between the economic and social wellness of communities. Ms. Selle earned her bachelor’s degree in general sciences from the University of Oregon and her master’s degree in public health from the University of Alaska Anchorage.

 

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Mike Tracy is a practicing primary care physician in rural Wyoming with 30 years of patient care experience in both urban and rural hospital systems across the country. In addition to providing primary care to a full patient panel at 307 Health, where he serves as president and co-owner, Dr. Tracy also provides a primary care physician’s perspective to numerous health care industry workgroups. He was recognized as Physician of the Year in 2016 by the Wyoming Medical Society, served as Governor of the Wyoming Chapter of the American College of Physicians (ACP) for four years and was recognized as a Wyoming ACP physician wellness champion. Dr. Tracy received his medical degree from the University of Colorado in 1994 and is a Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) through the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He is board-certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics, completing his dual residency in 1998 through the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York.

 

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Amy Surdam served in the Wyoming Army National Guard and the Hawaii Army Reserves as a family nurse practitioner for over 20 years before retiring. Amy received both her bachelor’s and master’s degree of science in nursing from the University of Wyoming. She now owns and operates a Wyoming-based virtual health company with her spouse but spends much of her time in Hawaii as well. In addition to her service, Amy brings with her a wide breadth of health care knowledge gathered from years in operational and front-line roles across the industry.

 

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A naturopathic physician, Dr. Gary Ferguson is the Director of Integrative Medicine at Tulalip Health System. He is Unangax̂ (Aleut), originally from the Shumagin Islands community of Sand Point, Alaska, and enrolled in the Qagan Tayagungin Tribe. Dr. Ferguson has also served as Director of Outreach and Engagement at Washington State University’s Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health (IREACH), Wellness and Prevention Director for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and CEO of the Rural Alaska Community Action Program. He has a passion for wellness-based and culturally connected approaches to achieving community health, having served as a wellness coordinator and naturopathic doctor for Eastern Aleutian Tribes in Alaska.

 

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Board members do not receive compensation for their services. Board members’ travel expenses are paid when they attend in-person activities.