Project Grad Akron is honored to have Dr. Cliff Deveny, President & CEO of Summa Health System, as the Honorary Chair for the 14th Annual Achieving Dreams Gala
Dr. Cliff Deveny, President and CEO of Summa Health System, oversees one of the largest integrated healthcare delivery systems in Ohio. Encompassing a network of hospitals, community medical centers, health insurance entity, accountable care organization, Foundation, research and a non-profit teaching facility which offers 20 residencies and fellowship specialty areas of focus. As Summit county’s largest employer, Summa Health is nationally renowned for excellence in patient care and exceptional approaches to healthcare delivery.
Prior to assuming his leadership role at Summa Health in March 2017, Dr. Deveny was Senior Vice President for Physician Services and Clinical Integration at Catholic Health Initiatives in Englewood, Colorado, from 2011 to 2016. After leaving Catholic Health Initiatives, he worked in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he served as President of Locus Health, a company that develops software solutions to enable healthcare organizations to improve their population health efforts.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Deveny spent more than 20 years at Summa Health in a variety of clinical and senior leadership roles, including President of Summa Physicians Inc., Vice President of Clinical Services and Service Lines, and Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Deveny is a clear leader in population health, and an advocate for its vision of increasing the value of care by improving health while reducing costs. In his role at Catholic Health Initiatives he led a population health initiative, establishing 12 regional clinically integrated networks.
Board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Deveny is an experienced physician and healthcare administrator with a proven track record in dealing with complex health system operational and physician alignment issues. Dr. Deveny earned his medical degree from The Medical College of Ohio. He graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, with a bachelor's degree in Chemistry.
From first years to current years, Dr. Deveny has embedded deep roots within the Akron area and continues to be instrumental in growing our ever-evolving communities.
The Emcee for Project Grad Akron's 14th Annual Achieving Dreams Gala is Leon Bibb.
Leon Bibb is a popular newscaster in Cleveland with decades of experience. Although he is retired, he continues to work as an anchor and senior correspondent and commentator at WKYC-TV where he began his distinguished career in Cleveland. He has worked at WEWS-TV5 in Cleveland as well as television stations in Columbus and Toledo.
Mr. Bibb is a graduate of Bowling Green State University where he studied journalism and broadcasting. Early in his career, he worked as a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. He has covered stories throughout Ohio. He has also covered many national stories including the Persian Gulf War. He has interviewed President Barack Obama in a one-on-one interview conducted at the White House.
Leon Bibb has also interviewed President George H.W. Bush at the White House and interviewed Neil Armstrong ten years following the astronaut’s historic walk on the moon. Mr. Bibb also interviewed James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the prison in which Ray was held.
Mr. Bibb is the recipient of many awards for his life in journalism. Nominated many times for local Emmy Awards, Leon Bibb has received the Emmy six times for his news reports.
Leon Bibb is a veteran of the U.S. Army where he served in Vietnam during the war there. For his service in the war, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Meritorious Service.
He is an accomplished writer, actor, and narrator of audio books. He is currently writing a novel.
Keynote Speaker: The Honorable Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Democratic Leader, In 2018, Abrams became the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, winning more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. Abrams was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States, and she was the first black woman and first Georgian to deliver a Response to the State of the Union. After witnessing the gross mismanagement of the 2018 election by the Secretary of State’s office, Abrams launched Fair Fight to ensure every American has a voice in our election system through programs such as Fair Fight 2020, an initiative to fund and train voter protection teams in 20 battleground states. Over the course of her career, Abrams has founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels. In 2019, she launched Fair Count to ensure accuracy in the 2020 Census and greater participation in civic engagement, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project, a public policy initiative to broaden economic power and build equity in the South.
Abrams is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where she serves on the Subcommittee on Diversity. As a Next Generation Fellow of the American Assembly on U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions, she also served as a discussion leader, editor, and essay contributor. She was also selected as a Salzburg Seminar Fellow on East Asian Studies, an American Marshall Memorial Fellow, an American Council of Young Political Leaders Fellow, a Council on Italy Fellow, a British-American Project Fellow and a U.S.-Russia Young Leaders Fellow. As the top-ranking Democrat in Georgia, she traveled to and met with leaders in South Korea, Israel and Taiwan, and she worked closely with several members of the consular corps. Her international policy travel includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Abrams is a member of former Secretary of State John Kerry’s World War Zero bipartisan coalition on climate change. She has been a featured speaker at the Aspen Ministers Forum, the Kerry Initiative-Yale Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, the National Security Action Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a contributor to Foreign Affairs Magazine.
She is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award and a current member of the Board of Directors for the Center for American Progress. Abrams has also written eight romantic suspense novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery, in addition to Lead from the Outside, formerly Minority Leader, a guidebook on making real change, and Our Time is Now, which was released in June of this year.
Abrams received degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and Yale Law School. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she and her five siblings grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi and were raised in Georgia.