Our Board

Christina Coons, RN, BSN, PCC, CCM

President

Christina Coons is a Hudson Valley bred healthcare leader. She graduated Pace University with her Bachelors of Nursing Degree and earned a certificate in Population Care Coordination from Duke University School of Nursing. She has strong management and leadership background for the past 10 years with varied post-acute healthcare delivery operation roles, most notably with Visiting Nurse Service of New York from 2005 to 2016, and currently with United HealthCare, since 2019. She balances transformational and transactional leadership styles to maximize patient and fiscal outcomes. She has been part of multiple projects in defining, implementing, and managing care delivery solutions across various patient populations.


Terry M. Perlin, Ph.D

Secretary
Terry M. Perlin serves as Consultant in Medical Ethics at The Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati. He is Emeritus Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Research Fellow at Scripps Gerontology Center, having been a faculty member at Miami University in Ohio from 1975-2009. He has held teaching and research positions at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine; Wright State University School of Medicine; and the University of California, San Francisco. Terry received his B.A. in History, magna cum laude, from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History of Ideas from Brandeis University. For ten years he was Ethics Consultant for the American Association of Blood Banks. Terry is the author of Clinical Medical Ethics: Cases In Practice and trains hospital ethics committees in case consultation.

Peter J. Strauss, JD

Treasurer
Peter J. Strauss practices trusts and estate law and has a special interest in issues involving the rights of persons with respect to health care treatment at the end of life. He has been included in The Best Lawyers in America (2007 to 2014) and in New York Super Lawyers – Metro Edition (2007 to 2015). Best Lawyers named him “New York City Elder Law Lawyer of the Year” for 2012. Peter is Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at New York Law School, and director of the Guardianship Clinic, which he founded in 2003. He has written articles for many professional publications, including the New York Law Journal. Peter earned his J.D. from New York University School of Law and his bachelor’s degree, with honors, from Bowdoin College.

John Blumenreich, MBA, MPH

Director
John Blumenreich has 22 years of professional experience within the pharmaceutical industry with subject matter expertise in the development of strategy, policy, and governance. John has a B.S. in Finance, an M.B.A. in Information Systems, and an M.P.H. in Community Health Education. He is a Board member at Jewish Family Services of Central NJ and Temple Emanuel of Westfield, NJ, where he lives with his husband and two daughters.

Marcie Colon, MSW

Director
Marcie Colon received a masters degree in social work from Fordum University. She has many years of experience in the health care arena including home care and hospice. While at hospice she developed and implemented a bereavement day camp for children who had a significant loss in their lives. Although retired the camp continues to serve children dealing with grief. Marcie was a member of the ethics committee at a community hospital in New Jersey before moving to New York 8 years ago.

Nina Tiger, JD

Director
Nina Tiger is a former attorney who lives in Summit, NJ with her husband and two sons. She has worked in Business Affairs at both Viacom and HarperCollins Publishing. Recently, she was the Project Manager of Your Decisions Matter, a four-year community initiative funded by a grant from Atlantic Health System’s Overlook Medical Center’s Community Advisory Board. The program encouraged all of us to talk about what matters in our individual healthcare, ideally before a medical crisis occurs. Nina earned her BA from Trinity College in Harford, CT and received her JD from New York Law School. She has served on a number of educational boards and organizations. Nina enjoys giving presentations about health care decision making in her community, facilitating and normalizing this difficult topic for families.

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