Jordan Rathkopf is a photographer, filmmaker, creative director, and co-founder of RATHKOPF, a patient- and caregiver-led insight, strategy, and storytelling studio helping healthcare organizations, life sciences companies, and advocacy groups create work shaped by lived experience. The studio's work has been recognized by Lürzer's Archive, Communication Arts, the Communicator Awards, and the United Nations.

Jordan also founded the Patient Caregiver Artist Coalition (PCAC), a nonprofit supporting visual artists with lived experience as patients and caregivers. After his wife and creative partner, Anna, was diagnosed with breast cancer, Jordan became her primary caregiver—an experience that transformed both their lives and creative practice.

Together, their work has informed advertising campaigns, advocacy initiatives, exhibitions, a published book, and healthcare communications rooted in authentic patient and caregiver perspectives. They also helped establish the New York Festivals Health Awards category Human Lens: The Lived Experience and serve as its jury co-chairs.

Anna Rathkopf is a photographer, creative director, and co-founder of RATHKOPF, a patient- and caregiver-led insight, strategy, and storytelling studio helping healthcare organizations, life sciences companies, and advocacy groups create work shaped by lived experience. The studio's work has been recognized by Lürzer's Archive, Communication Arts, the Communicator Awards, and the United Nations.

Together, their lived experience has informed advertising campaigns, advocacy initiatives, and healthcare communications that seek to build trust through authentic patient storytelling. They helped establish the New York Festivals Health Awards category Human Lens: The Lived Experience and serve as its jury co-chairs. Anna believes the most meaningful healthcare storytelling begins by giving people the opportunity to represent their own lives with honesty and dignity.

Anneliese Barron is the Head of Social Impact at Lea Pictures, Bradley Cooper’s production company, and Executive Director of his One Family Foundation, where she leads Care Out Loud, a national initiative helping people better recognize, prepare for and navigate caregiving.

A seasoned social impact leader, Anneliese has led multi-million-dollar fundraising and marketing campaigns, created national mission-driven programs, and served as a consultant to brands, corporate foundations, athletes and entertainers. Previously, she was a Foundation Executive at CAA, where she advised agency clients on their philanthropic work.

Her perspective is shaped by both professional and personal experience with disability and caregiving, and a deep belief in storytelling’s ability to challenge stereotypes and change perceptions.

Originally from Montreal, Anneliese is a graduate of McGill University and, like a good Canadian, is a lifelong hockey fan.

For more than 25 years, Glenn Batkin has built a career in advertising as an award-winning Creative Director and Art Director, helping brands find ideas that feel less like messaging and more like something people recognize in themselves.

His career has been shaped by a simple instinct: look closer. Past the brief, past the expected answer, past the surface of what a brand says it wants to say. That is usually where the better idea lives.

Glenn’s work spans campaigns, brand platforms, and visual storytelling, but the goal is never just to make something look good. It is to find the human truth that gives an idea weight, and makes people care. His work has been recognized by Clio, Cannes, New York Festivals, and London International Awards.

Sport-bike racer, track & field All-American, multi-patent holder, biometric lab creator, Adweek 50 most important people in Media Marketing & Tech, Adweek Change Creator of the Year, American Advertising Federations Mosaic Champion, and Savoy Magazines Most Influential Black Executives In Corporate America—these are just a few of Walter Geer’s self-earned epithets.

A veteran of the digital advertising space, Walter holds a total of six U.S Patents for digital ad formats, and has developed ad products and implemented creative strategies for a variety of publishers and leading technology and media companies including Google, Viacom, NYTimes and MySpace.

Throughout his twenty-year career, Walter has architected market-first usability labs, applying biometric research to the development of creative executions and minimizing risk by understanding how consumer emotions and demographics impact brand engagement.

His passion sits at the intersection of story-telling, design, technology, data, and research.

Jana Jarosz is a strategic problem-solver. Art director. Thinker. Maker.

Her work in healthcare advertising centers on ideation, innovation, and building teams that elevate the creative process. From the first genAI prompt to the social posts, digital videos, or a brick and mortar experiential installation, Jarosz believes that joyful “creation is content” and designing and producing across mediums is critical to bringing the full voice of the brand to life.

As a creative director in Olixir’s in-house concepting and design hub, The Bank, she has contributed to the creativity across a wide range of healthcare categories, from oncology to diabetes to women’s healthcare.

Before and after advertising hours, she runs miles on the streets of NYC and creates custom clothing using a zero-waste approach.

If your work doesn’t make you feel something yourself, how will it ever influence your audience?

This question guides every decision Clay makes as a creative. Having spent her career working on some of the biggest brands in healthcare (and some of the smallest, too), Clay loves finding new ways to make people tick.

Her work has earned recognition from the most prestigious names in ad land, including Cannes, Clio’s, D&AD, One Show, and LIA – with 3 projects even being awarded ‘grand’ level statues (2 Grand Clio’s and 1 Grand LIA).

Clay herself has been listed as a top 100 Creative Director in the world and #14 Copywriter in the US by D&AD and Lürzer’s Archive, respectively.

She can’t wait to see where creative takes her next.

Dina has spent her career creating work that people can’t ignore and won’t forget. And she has done it by putting the human experience at the center of it all. Now, as Founder of The Narratology Lab™, Dina is doubling down on a longtime obsession with narratology—not simply storytelling, but understanding what narrative already exists, what is shaping it, and what needs to change. Her belief is that lived experience can be the Northstar for the decisions a brand makes.

When New York Festivals introduced Human Lens: The Lived Experience, Dina wanted in. The idea that people with lived experience belong inside the process, not simply inside the story, is something she has believed in for years.

Dina has seen health from enough angles to know that a diagnosis can change everything in a split second without becoming everything about a person. That perspective has shaped how she sees the work. It’s also why This Is Living With Cancer remains one of her favorite pieces of work from her career. Yes, it earned her a spot on the Cannes Lions Inspiration Stage, but what matters most to her is that it was truly human-focused and tumor-agnostic. It was rare then and this approach is still needed now.

Dina’s work has gone from Times Square takeovers to legally smuggling women’s health information into prisons with Contrabanned. Along the way, she has won a countless Clios, been chosen as an Elite 100 for digital transformation, and been inducted into the DTC Hall of Fame.

“I am focused on the human experience and its ability to be transformative, unforgettable, and authentic. When the human experience becomes a decision-making system for a brand, its narrative dramatically changes.”

After being diagnosed with cancer many years ago, Elyse Spatz Caplan used her lived patient experience to change careers moving into oncology patient advocacy and engagement. For more than three decades in various leaderships roles, she has embedded  authentic patient voices into business strategy, campaigns, and resources across  numerous therapeutic areas in oncology and rare disease.

Her experience across a comprehensive cancer center, a national breast cancer nonprofit, and the biopharmaceutical industry gives her a unique 360-degree perspective on what patients, caregivers, and the community need.

Known as a trusted thought partner and connector, Elyse brings strategic vision and a collaborative spirit to every project ensuring patient and caregiver perspectives are integrated from the earliest stages of research through the continuum of care and beyond. Her work is driven by a rare combination of personal insight, empathy, and professional  expertise, bringing invaluable perspective to organizations committed to making a meaningful difference for patients and the advocacy community.

Eason Yang is a designer, creative director, educator, and founder of Not Entirely Dead (NED) — an organization that helps cancer survivors navigate professional comebacks and redefine what's possible after adversity. A former creative leader at Uber, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi, Eason now uses design to drive social innovation, combining public health data and personal narratives to challenge outdated perceptions of survivorship.

His work has been recognized by The Clios, PRINT, AIGA, and D&AD, and in 2023 Fast Company named NED both a World Changing Idea and a Most Innovative Design. He mentors at Yale University and has shared his vision internationally through exhibitions and keynotes. Eason is based in New York.