PRESIDENT

Timothy W. Kirk, Ph.D is professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, York College specializing in healthcare ethics and philosophy of nursing, with an emphasis on hospice and palliative care nursing. He has a secondary academic appointment in the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center. Dr. Kirk is also an ethics consultant in hospice care and courtesy faculty in the palliative care research institute of MJHS Health System.

PRESIDENT-ELECT

Renee McLeod-Sordjan, DNP, Ph.D. HEC-C is System Chair of the Division of Medical Ethics at Northwell Health. She also serves as Dean and Professor of the Hofstra-Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. She has a secondary academic appointment in the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. Dr. McLeod is also a board member of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors. As a board certified acute-care, family and palliative nurse practitioner her body of research entails advance care planning and clinical ethics curriculum development.

SECRETARY

Margie Hodges Shaw, JD, MA, PhD, HEC-C is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Humanities & Bioethics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry; Director of Clinical Ethics at Strong Memorial Hospital (SMH); and Chair of the SMH ethics committee. She serves as a clinical ethicist and teaches about clinical ethics, clinical judgment, and decision-making in clinical care.

TREASURER

Nicholas R. Mercado, DrPH, MCHES, HEC-C is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Humanities & Bioethics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. His primary role is Director of the Bioethics Curriculum for the 4-year MD program while also serving as a clinical ethics consultant for the University of Rochester Medical Center. His primary research interest involves the clinical and public health ethical issues that impact family caregivers.

FOUNDING PRESIDENT (2020-2022)

Louis Voigt, MD, MSc, was the founding president of the Empire State Bioethics Consortium (ESBC) from 2020 to 2022. Amid the first surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Voigt united healthcare ethics professionals across New York to address acute ethical challenges faced by care teams. With the state’s Task Force on Life and the Law dormant and no declaration of a crisis standard of care, he forged a collaborative network to support patients, families, and healthcare providers during an unprecedented moral crisis.

A specialist in critical care medicine, Dr. Voigt serves as Chair of the Ethics Committee and Associate Attending Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). He is also an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Voigt’s collaborative vision and inaugural leadership of ESBC, has built a united network of bioethics practitioners, facilitating the sharing of resources for tackling ethical issues across New York.