The evolution & importance of hiring & training clinical professionals beyond COVID

Alana Mermer is a Learning and Development leader with experience in the luxury retail and healthcare industries. Alana has been with Healthfirst for over five years and currently leads the Learning Delivery and Learning Technology and Operations Teams. Under Alana’s guidance, these five teams work to create, deliver, and operationalize dynamic mixed modality learning solutions that support Healthfirst employees throughout their entire employee lifecycle. Alana resides in New Jersey and enjoys the Jersey shore and spending time with her family outside of work.

Wanthony Cruz is a New York City native from Washington Heights. After Binghamton University, Wanthony worked at Fidelis Care in Member Services then Compliance.

He joined Healthfirst's Growth team in 2015. He went on to support the development of Sales systems as a Product Owner. Since 2019, Wanthony has led a Learning Delivery team supporting Healthfirst’s Growth business unit. In his spare of time, you'll find Wanthony training for a marathon or playing with basketball & baseball in uptown Manhattan.

Angela Susca is a Learning Delivery Manager with over 25 years of Learning and Development experience in the telecommunications and healthcare industries. Angela is going into her tenth year with Healthfirst and currently leads the Learning Delivery Operations Team. Under Angela’s guidance, seven talented individuals help develop, deliver, and support Operations learning, which include departments such as Contact Care Operations, Claims, Enrollment and Billing, and Provider Data Management. Angela is a proud single mom of three amazing children. Her oldest child is a Toy Designer and FIT graduate, her son is a Mechanical Engineer and NYU graduate, and she is eagerly awaiting how her youngest will impact the world. In her spare time, Angela likes to travel, experience new cultures and cuisines, and spend time with her family and friends.

Ploumi Stroumbakis has more than 20 years of experience in Talent Acquisition and Human Resources across multiple industries including finance, retail, and healthcare. She executes on strategies to attract, hire, and retain best in class talent and develops sourcing strategies that target diverse candidate pools. She also works to strengthen partnerships with educational institutions and industry associations to identify and recruit talent from local communities and non-traditional career paths. At Healthfirst, she leads a full lifecycle recruiting team that supports hiring for Nurses, Social Workers, and healthcare professionals in Clinical Operations.

Dr. Ana Mola is an advanced Practice Nurse, Administrator, Educator, and Researcher. She has clinically practiced for over three decades at NYU Langone Health System, in the specialty areas of cardiovascular surgery, cardiology, rehabilitative medicine, and supervised the care management professional development training program. She has a faculty appointment as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the NYU School of Medicine Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. She is currently employed at Healthfirst Insurance Plan in NYC, serving as the Director of the Clinical Technical Assistance Center, leading the care management clinical practice training program.