HIMSS Virginia Chapter

2025 Annual Conference

September 29th – 30th: Conference
October 1st: Charity Golf Tournament

REGISTER NOW

Meet Our Speakers

Geoffrey Lawson

Senior VP and CIO, Mary Washington Healthcare

Geoff Lawson is the SVP/CIO at Mary Washington Healthcare. He’s responsible for creating and maintaining innovative, secure, and resilient applications and infrastructure in service to MWHC’s associates, provider staff, and patients.
After his military service as a nuclear-trained submarine officer, Geoff worked in various IT leadership positions across multiple industry verticals, spending the last 15 years in healthcare.
Before his current position, Geoff served as CIO at Morehead Memorial Hospital in Eden, North Carolina, and CTO/CISO at Cone Health in Greensboro. He also served as president and board member of the North Carolina Health Information & Communications Alliance (NCHICA).

Stefanie Simmons, MD

Stefanie Simmons, MD is the chief medical officer at the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation and a board-certified emergency medicine physician. She was the primary advisor to NIOSH for the Impact WellbeingTM guide for healthcare leaders, leads multi-state programs to improve the operational environment of care and remove barriers to mental health care, and serves as a national thought leader in healthcare worker well-being. Stefanie served as the vice president of Patient and Clinician Experience for Envision over 7 years, serving 26,000 physicians and advanced practice providers with a focus on professional well-being, including translational research and programs designed to bring well-being best practices to clinical environments. She served as lead clinical faculty for the Clinician Experience Project Wellbeing program.

Stefanie earned her Bachelor of Science and medical doctor degrees from University of Michigan and completed residency training at the University of Michigan/St. Joseph Mercy emergency medicine residency. She has completed additional training in medical education, research methods, coaching, and positive organizational psychology.

Ellen Wiegand

Senior VP and CIO, VCU Health

Ellen Wiegand is senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO) at VCU Health. As CIO, Ellen is charged with leveraging technology to preserve and restore the health for all people of Virginia and beyond. She is accountable for overall IT strategy, including all infrastructure, operations, applications, informatics, data and analytics. Prior to joining VCU Health in October 2022, she served as vice president and CIO for Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Seattle. For demonstrating excellence in technology leadership, Ellen was selected as the health care winner for Seattle CIO of the Year in 2020, and Capital CIO of the Year in the enterprise category in 2024. Ellen earned a Master of Business Administration from The George Washington University, and a Bachelor of Science in biology from Boston College. In 2013 and 2018, she traveled to Japan to study the Toyota Production System with Shingijutsu.

Leigh Williams

Assistant CIO, Augusta Health

Leigh is an accomplished, solution-oriented technical executive and published leader with extensive, proven experience driving improvements and functionality in healthcare information technology delivery through a deep understanding of clinical and financial operations and an ability to create high performing teams that deliver exceptional results. She has established highly productive, collaborative partnerships with executives to achieve strategic goals with effective technology solutions. Leigh is a strategic health information management systems board advisor, certified healthcare CIO, HIMSS Fellow and CPHIMS.