News Release
Spok Appoints Christine Cournoyer to Board of Directors
Industry Veteran Has Substantial Experience in Digital Health and Leading Companies with SaaS Business Models
SPRINGFIELD, Va. (March 19, 2020) – Spok Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPOK), a global leader in healthcare communications, today announced that, effective immediately, it has appointed Christine M. Cournoyer, who most recently served as the Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of N-of-One, Inc., to its Board of Directors. Cournoyer led the transformation of N-of-One from a patient concierge business to a leading molecular decision support company selling to large health providers and leading molecular diagnostic commercial labs. She, along with the efforts of the team, created a HIPAA compliant platform running in the cloud that scaled to interpret hundreds of thousands of molecular diagnostics tests. Cournoyer led a strategic process for N-of-One, resulting in a successful sale to QIAGEN N.V. (NYSE: QGEN; Frankfurt Stock Exchange: QIA), a Netherlands-based leading provider of Sample to Insight solutions, in 2019. Cournoyer is presently a strategic advisor to digital health companies and is on the Board of Directors of CareDx, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNA), a leading precision medicine company providing solutions for transplant patients.
“We are excited to have Chris join our Board,” said Vincent D. Kelly, chief executive officer. “She is a proven leader in Healthcare IT, with a broad range of strategic, operational, financial and management experience in Software and Healthcare IT. I believe she will make meaningful and immediate contributions as we continue to introduce our new, innovative, cloud-native and integrated communication platform, Spok Go®. Chris understands our value proposition, market and customers, and will have invaluable insights as we develop our software as a service (SaaS) platform to drive and extend Spok’s market leadership.”
Cournoyer has operated in publicly traded companies as well as private, venture-backed companies, moving successfully across industries with software as the common thread. Prior to N-of-One, Cournoyer was Vice President of Clinical Analytics for UnitedHealth Group/Optum. There she was responsible for clinical solutions in Optum and for defining the clinical decision support strategy. Prior to UnitedHealth/Optum she was President and Chief Operating Officer for Picis, a global leader in the Healthcare IT market, offering solutions that bridge both revenue cycle and clinical workflow management for the high acuity operations of hospitals. Her time at Picis culminated in a sale to UnitedHealth in 2010. Prior positions include Managing Director, Database Division, of Harte Hanks, and Vice President of Global Business Transformation and CIO of the IBM Software Group. Cournoyer holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts, an M.A. in Economics from Northeastern University and is a graduate of the MIT Executive Education Program. She was voted to the Ten Most Influential Women in Technology by Businessweek and to the Top Ten Women in Computing by CIO Magazine.
“I believe that Spok’s strategy is exactly aligned with the needs of healthcare organizations, and I am excited to help the company achieve its full potential,” said Cournoyer. “I believe my deep experience with Software as a Service (SaaS), positions me to assist Spok as they transition to this platform. This is a very exciting time for Spok to capture the large market opportunity to deliver clinical information to care teams when and where it matters most to improve patient outcomes.”
The appointment of Christine Cournoyer to the Spok Board of Directors is part of a focused national search instituted by the Board with the assistance of Korn Ferry International in late Summer 2019 to find the best qualified candidates in healthcare information technology as the Company introduces its new cloud-based Spok Go platform for critical in-hospital communications. Her appointment follows the January appointment to the Spok Board of Bobbie Byrne, M.D., Chief Information Officer of the Illinois-based Advocate Aurora Health System. Spok also recently announced the formation of the Cybersecurity Committee of its Board of Directors, chaired by Stacia Hylton, an experienced advisor on cyber security matters and former Director of the United States Marshals Service.
The Company also announced that Samme Thompson will be stepping down from the Board of Directors at Spok’s annual meeting later this year and will not stand for re-election. Thompson became a director of Spok in 2004 and is a member of the Compensation Committee and is Chairman of the Nominating and Governance Committee. Prior to the merger of Metrocall and Arch Wireless, Inc., Thompson had been a director of Arch Wireless. Subsequent to Thompson’s departure and the addition of Cournoyer, the Spok Board of Directors will be comprised of nine directors.
“On behalf of myself and our Board of Directors it has been a tremendous honor and privilege to have worked with and learned from Samme over the years. Samme has served as a member of Spok’s Board of Directors since before we started on our journey to pivot from a telecommunications company to a provider of software solutions. The Board has benefited from Samme’s experience. I am grateful for Samme’s leadership as I worked alongside him to realize our mission to become a global leader in healthcare communications,” said Kelly.