Speakers

Sutter Health’s New Santa Clara Hospital

Jennifer Ellman and Dr. Alan Sue, two senior Sutter Health leaders, will discuss Sutter Health’s new hospital being developed in the northern part of the City of Santa Clara, including plans for the new facility and what Sutter’s expansion will mean for healthcare in our community.

Dr. Alan Sue is a practicing foot and ankle surgeon and senior physician leader with Sutter Health. He is board certified in both foot surgery and reconstructive rearfoot and ankle surgery and has played a significant leadership role in Sutter’s expansion of healthcare services throughout the South Bay.

Jennifer Ellman, MSN, RN, FACHE, NE-BC, CEN, is Sutter Health’s Vice President and Chief Clinical Facilities Planner for Greater Silicon Valley. Her career has included serving as an Emergency Department nurse manager at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and later as Chief Nurse Executive at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center. Today, she is helping lead the planning of Sutter’s future hospital campus in Santa Clara.

Together, they bring perspectives spanning physician leadership, nursing, hospital operations and the planning and development of the next generation of healthcare facilities.

Captain Tom Spink, USN (Ret.) is Chairman of the Board of the Moffett Field Historical Society and Museum and a longtime naval aviator with a personal connection to Moffett Field extending back more than five decades.

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Captain Spink graduated from the University of Kansas in 1968 and earned his Naval Flight Officer Wings of Gold in 1970. He served with Patrol Squadron 46, flying P-3 Orion anti-submarine patrol missions throughout the Pacific, and later returned to Moffett Field as an instructor with Patrol Squadron 31. After leaving active duty in 1977, he joined Reserve Patrol Squadron 91 at Moffett Field and served as its Commanding Officer from 1986 to 1988. He subsequently held a variety of Navy Reserve command and staff assignments in California, Hawaii, and Virginia.

Captain Spink earned a Master of Science in Systems Management from the University of Southern California. His civilian career included work with Singer-Link, Watkins-Johnson, Precision Echo, and Lockheed Martin, where he worked on MILSTAR, the highly secure U.S. military satellite communications system.

He has been actively involved in preserving and interpreting Moffett Field's history for many years and became Chairman of the Museum's board in 2022. His perspective combines historical research with firsthand experience: he first arrived at Moffett Field in 1970 at age 25 and served during the height of the base's Cold War naval aviation operations.

James M. Glaser joined Santa Clara University in July 2024 after serving over 33 years as a faculty member and 10 years as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University. As the chief academic officer at SCU, he oversees a broad portfolio including the College and all the schools, two centers of distinction, libraries, academic support programs, student life and wellness programs, global engagement, and enrollment management. Working closely with President Sullivan, he strategizes on how best to move the institution forward as it pursues its critical educational mission and its quest to be a place of significant knowledge creation.

Glaser received his B.A. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. A noted scholar of electoral politics and American political behavior, he is the co-author (with Jeffrey M. Berry and Deborah J. Schildkraut) of the forthcoming book Everyday Democracy: Liberals, Conservatives, and Their Routine Political Lives (University of Chicago Press), which looks at how the habits and attitudes of ordinary liberals and conservatives shape the health of American democracy. His previous books include Changing Minds, if Not Hearts: Political Remedies to Racial Issues (2013, University of Pennsylvania Press, with Timothy J. Ryan), The Hand of the Past in Contemporary Southern Politics (2005, Yale University Press), and Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South (1996, Yale University Press). The latter two each received the Southern Political Science Association’s V.O. Key Prize awarded to the year’s best book on Southern politics. Both books were also named among the year's “Outstanding Academic Titles” by Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College & Research Libraries.  His work has also appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and Political Science Quarterly.