Board of Directors
David Patrick Nixon
President and CEO
 David Nixon recently joined Informed Medical Decisions as President and CEO. Prior to joining Informed he ran The Nixon Group, a marketing communication firm with more than 40 employees in three U.S. offices.
Mr. Nixon has been a pioneer in the communications industry; creating innovative ways to showcase emerging trends in health policy and drug discovery. Clients included the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, Centers for Disease Control, Public Health Foundation, Partnership for Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
Mr. Nixon's most impressive achievements combined his healthcare and consumer marketing experience to create social marketing campaigns designed to reduce teen tobacco use.
Starting with the Truth® campaign in Florida, which resulted in the most dramatic declines ever seen in teen smoking, Nixon and his team created entirely new marketing models leveraging teen activism and peer-to-peer communications. Under his guidance, The Nixon Group earned a Gold "Creativity in Public Relations Award." GolinHarris, the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) subsidiary that acquired David’s firm in 2002, continues to leverage these strategies for the American Legacy Foundation's national initiatives.
Beyond tobacco, Mr. Nixon has led social marketing campaigns such as MCI's "Library Link”, Seagram's "Talking About Alcohol" and the Burger King Academy drop-out prevention program. His work was instrumental in raising millions of dollars in support and helping thousands of young people stay in school.
As a proponent of public education, Mr. Nixon has also served with and chaired several non-profits dedicated to supporting teachers and students. He also supports, with time and funding, numerous political campaigns and social justice organizations. Mr. Nixon currently serves as chairman of the board of the national Gay And Lesbian Leadership Institute.
Heather L. Shappell, M.S., CGC
Founder and COO
 Heather Shappell is a genetic counselor certified by the American Board of Genetic Counseling. Ms. Shappell completed her graduate training as a Genetic Counselor at the University of Pittsburgh and has focused on hereditary cancer genetics throughout her professional career. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the hereditary cancer patient advocacy organization FORCE (Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered).
Her clinical work with programs at NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center facilities (including the Yale Cancer Center, the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, and the Huntsman Cancer Institute), has provided Heather with extensive experience in genetic counseling for hereditary cancer. In addition to her clinical work, Heather was employed by Myriad Genetic Laboratories, Inc. (MGL), a leading cancer genetic testing laboratory, where she provided hereditary cancer consultation and education to patients, physicians, and Myriad employees about hereditary cancer and genetic testing.
Her employment at Myriad provided Heather with in-depth understanding of genetic testing techniques, and their translation to clinical practice. Through her extensive contact with patients and health care providers throughout the United States, Heather recognized that limited access to genetic counseling expertise was compromising patient care. Her concern about patient access to quality care combined with her expertise in conveying detailed and life-saving information by telephone led Heather to create the first national company to address the problem of limited access to genetic counseling experts.
As Founder of Informed Medical Decisions, Heather’s combined experience in the field of hereditary disease, genetic testing and telephone genetic counseling has enabled her to create new avenues of access to genetic counselors empowering patients and their doctors to make the most informed decisions regarding genetic testing, disease screening, and prevention.
Rebecca Sutphen, M.D., FACMG
 Dr. Sutphen completed
her medical training with highest honors at Temple University School
of Medicine. Dr. Sutphen is one of a handful of individuals with
triple certification in Clinical Genetics, Cytogenetics and
Molecular Genetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics. For
the past 11 years she has been the Director of Clinical Genetics at
the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, the only
NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in the state of Florida.
She is an Associate Professor in the Departments of
Interdisciplinary Oncology and Pediatrics at the University of South
Florida, and the Director of the Family Cancer Genetics Network. She
is a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Guidelines
Panel on Genetics and Familial Cancer Screening which sets the
standard of care for management of individuals with hereditary
cancer risk. Dr. Sutphen has been named to “Best Doctors in America”
annually since 2005 and was also named to “America’s Top Doctors for
Cancer” in 2007. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards
for the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition and the Ovarian Cancer
National Alliance and is a member of the Board of Directors of the
hereditary cancer patient advocacy organization FORCE (Facing Our
Risk of Cancer Empowered, Inc.). Dr. Sutphen also serves as a
consultant to several biotech companies.
The focus of Dr. Sutphen's research is clinical cancer genetic epidemiology, specifically, heritable cancer risk, factors that modify heritable risk, and development of strategies to reduce risk and improve early cancer detection, focusing on population-based ovarian cancer studies. Through a community-based regional rapid ascertainment network she established, Dr. Sutphen and her clinical colleagues identify and confirm all incident epithelial ovarian cancer cases in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater region, with a population in excess of 2 million. Data from these ongoing efforts have demonstrated higher frequency of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations among women with invasive ovarian cancer than previously reported, and a higher contribution of BRCA2 to ovarian cancer than previously known. Dr. Sutphen is currently co-Investigator in a follow-up study to examine the contribution of mismatch repair deficiency genes to ovarian cancer.
Dr. Sutphen is also Co-Principal Investigator of a unique NCI-funded genome-wide analysis to identify genes underlying ovarian cancer. This $7 million effort lead by Moffitt is being performed in collaboration with four other large, population-based studies of ovarian cancer in North America, encompassing 4,000 ovarian cancer patients and 4,000 healthy matched controls.
Dr. Sutphen is also currently leading a $3.5 million NIH-funded study using state-of-the-art proteomics technology to identify and validate biomarkers of ovarian cancer among 1,000 women undergoing surgery for suspected ovarian cancer.
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