Working together to get results
All have one goal in mind; to improve research and lives
FRAME’s Board of Directors and Advisors include a diverse group of physicians, researchers, business professionals, and academics. Each member is passionate about the work we do and is committed to improving the lives of those in chronic pain.
Dr. Marcus is currently the Director of Clinical Muscle Pain Research at Weill-Cornell Medicine in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Neurological Surgery. He has focused on the study of pain throughout his career, with a special interest in muscle pain. He is a past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine and is currently on the BOD of the American Board of Pain Medicine.
He started and co-directed the first pain center in New York City at Montefiore Hospital from 1978-1984, then established and directed the Lenox Hill Hospital Inpatient Pain Center from 1984-1998. From 1995-1998, he also directed the Princess Margaret Pain Treatment and Functional Restoration Center in Windsor, UK. He received a $500,000 grant from Medtronic to study outcomes at pain centers for the American Academy of Pain Medicine in 1990.
He has written two books, Freedom from Pain and End Back Pain Forever and has published numerous journal articles and academic textbook chapters. He has 3 patents on his approach to evaluate and treat muscle pain and is currently working on producing an instrument that will allow most clinicians to identify and treat specific muscles that are the source of common back, neck and shoulder pains.
Dr. Marcus also serves as a Scientific Advisor to FRAME.
Steve is a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley where he is accountable for a global technology infrastructure organization with a work force of 3000+ responsible for architecture, engineering, program execution, service delivery and operations to enable business across 1,306 locations in 43 countries.
He has 25 years of IT experience that includes design work on the International Space Station, development of real-time wired and wireless polling systems, authoring one of the IETF standards on IPv6, and managing a 10,000-site network. Prior to Core infrastructure, he was responsible for distributed infrastructure and networks in Morgan Stanley's Enterprise Computing and ENS organizations.
After taking a messaging security company public in 1996, Steve transitioned into financial services at UBS, where he held multiple roles including Global Head of IT Security, Head of E-Commerce Infrastructure, Head of Distributed Engineering, and Program Management in the London equities business, transforming its high-volume direct market access (DMA) process.
Dr. Hayes is a retired Professor of Psychology and founding Chairman of the Master’s Program in Gerontology at Southampton College of Long Island University. As the Director of the Center on Aging at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., he developed a variety of Administration on Aging (A.o.A.) research grants addressing bereavement, ethnicity, and support group models for caregivers. In 1992, Dr. Hayes founded the National Center for Women and Retirement Research (NCWRR), the first academic research body in the U.S. focusing on the pre-retirement planning needs of mid-life women. Over his academic career, Dr. Hayes was the Principal Investigator of 17 national research studies and raised 6.4 million dollars in research funding. Dr. Hayes is an author of a variety of popular and academic books on age-related topics.
In 1996, Dr. Hayes received the Long Island University Scholarly Achievement Award for research and education dedicated to improving the lives of older adults. Currently, Dr. Hayes is an advocate for patients addressing chronic pain and trains volunteer facilitators for bereavement groups for the Diocese of Rockville Center on Long Island.
Cecil Lynch, MD, MS is the Chief Medical Information Officer of Accenture's Global Health Services Group with extensive domain expertise in both medical practice and Health IT. At Accenture he is a Subject Matter Advisor on Big Data in Healthcare, Health and Clinical Analytics, Health Data Exchange and Connectivity. He serves as a domain expert in data standards, interoperability and enterprise architecture and manages data mining in Accenture’s Predictive Health Intelligence Hadoop/HBase platform for Life Sciences.
He has served in leadership roles within the HL7 Standards Development Organization including as a co-Chair of the Vocabulary Technical Committee and currently as a member of the Architectural Review Board and FHIR Governance Board. He is recognized as a thought leader and international advisor on Health Informatics and has served in advisory roles to the US Centers for Disease Control, the National Cancer Institute, Health and Human Services, and the European Commission Centers for Disease Control. Roles prior to Accenture included the CEO of OntoReason, LLC, a Semantic Web Service company; the Chief Semantic Architect of the National Cancer Institute; Chair of the UC Davis Health Informatics Graduate Group; and Chief of the Office of Informatics and Surveillance for the State of California Department of Public Health. Dr. Lynch is a UCLA trained OB/GYN and was practicing Gynecological Oncology for 10 years before earning his MS in Medical Informatics at UC Davis.
Dr. Lynch also serves as a Scientific Advisor to FRAME.
Desiree Lee joined FRAME in 2017 after a personal battle with chronic pain. Her career, active lifestyle, travel, and work with FRAME would not be possible without the life-changing effects of the treatment of muscle pain. Desiree is passionate about bringing the relief she found to others who are still suffering silently.
Desiree is a Solutions Architect with Armis, a breakout Israeli cybersecurity firm. She has spent her career collaborating with technical leaders of the global financials to reduce business risk through technology. She holds a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics.
In her free time, Desiree enjoys exercise, photography, and travel.
Desiree also serves as Chair of our Fundraising Committee.
Neil Ash is the managing partner of Ash & Parsont LLP, an accounting and tax firm now into its third generation and over 100 years old. He serves as both a fiduciary to numerous clients and advisor in business and tax matters.
He has over 30 years of experience in accounting and tax matters and holds a Bachelors of Science in Business and Economics from Lehigh University and a Masters of Science in Taxation from Long Island University. Neil resides in NYC with his wife Cynthia, their 2 dogs and they enjoy 4 children together.
He has over 30 years of experience in accounting and tax matters and holds a Bachelors of Science in Business and Economics from Lehigh University and a Masters of Science in Taxation from Long Island University. Neil resides in NYC with his wife Cynthia, their 2 dogs and they enjoy 4 children together.
Gayle Sirard is a Managing Director at Accenture, where she leads the Applied Intelligence business for the North America region. Gayle is responsible for defining cross industry offering portfolio and helping clients become intelligent businesses through innovative solutions that combine industry and functional knowledge with analytics, insights, and artificial intelligence.
Gayle has held a number of leadership roles within Accenture, most recently within Life Sciences and Products businesses and has over 20 years of experience in Healthcare and Products.
Gayle has held a number of leadership roles within Accenture, most recently within Life Sciences and Products businesses and has over 20 years of experience in Healthcare and Products.
Gayle Sirard also serves as a Scientific Advisor to FRAME.
Dan Teguis is a sales leader at Armis, a breakout startup with an award-winning enterprise cybersecurity platform. Dan has more than 25 years of experience executing go-to-market strategies for early-stage tech startups, including IronPort and Skyport Systems, both acquired by Cisco. He has extensive experience helping pharmaceutical, financial, and manufacturing companies meet their business goals with the right technology.
Previously, Dan served as an aide to Simon Hughes, an MP in the British Parliament. He holds a degree in Political Science and Government from Colby College.
A lifelong athlete, Dan is passionate about the fight against pain and dysfunction from injury, illness, and age. In his free time he enjoys being active with his children and playing golf.
Matthew started his professional career as a professional golfer after playing collegiate golf at the University of California at Santa Barbara and captaining the team at Colgate University (for 2 years), where he earned his degree.
Just prior to turning professional he decided to have his left shoulder operated on after approximately the 15th dislocation, but due to over tightening, he tore his posterior capsule within months of starting his career. In 2004, Matthew and two partners started one of the most successful independent golf putter companies called Rife Putters, LLC, which was ranked the 5th largest putter company in the U.S. Following his resignation from Rife in 2010, he was senior VP of Operations for Performance Sports Brands, INC, which he then spun off the NC division into Global Sports Brands, LLC.
He is now Chief Executive officer of Global Sports Brands, LLC, a full-service consulting and sales company designed to give innovative golf companies instant expertise and economies of scale to keep overhead down. He has been heavily involved in the launch of 20+ companies, which has given him experience in just about every facet of running a company.
Alex von Obelitz is Head of ETF Business Strategy for Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Exchange-Traded Funds. She has held various client-facing roles on the ETF team since joining Goldman Sachs in 2015. Previously Alex was a senior vice president in PIMCO’s New York office, ETF strategist and member of PIMCO’s global wealth management team.
Prior to joining PIMCO in 2011, she was an executive director at J.P. Morgan and worked in structured investments at Lehman Brothers and Société Générale. Alex has 20 years of investment experience and holds a master's degree in Finance from Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in France (Edhec) and a master's degree in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University. She is a CFA® charterholder.
Mandy currently serves as Executive Director of FRAME. Mandy has been a part of FRAME since its inception and subsequently became Executive Director in February 2018. She has struggled with chronic pain for the majority of her life and after finding relief through treatment of her muscles, has vowed to dedicate her life’s efforts to increasing the awareness of soft tissue pain.
She received her BS in Human Development & Family Studies with a minor in Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University and her MSW from Fordham University. Prior to FRAME, Mandy worked at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where her duties included discharge planning as well as providing emotional support and crisis intervention to patients and their families admitted to the neurology and neurosurgery unit. She also worked with post adopted children and their families at the New York Council on Adoptable Children.
Her personal life experience and professional background make her an ideal liaison between providers, patients, and payers.
Dr. Simon completed his medical school training at Wayne State University and his residency in Emergency Medicine at the University of Chicago. While working in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.) he began the first paramedic program which fostered the concept that paramedics working in a rural environment could best maintain their skills if based at a hospital rather than the traditional fire department, resulting in a 400% improvement in survival for heart attack and accident victims in the U.P. The system he developed became a model used around the nation.
He was appointed as the Director of the Emergency Surgical Procedures laboratory in Emergency Medicine at UCLA, the first of its kind in the nation. This led to the development of many new and revised emergency surgical techniques used today, including new techniques for rapid venous access in trauma, new techniques for emergency tracheotomy in patients with massive neck swelling, new technique for subclavian venous access and many other plastic and orthopedic procedures.
Dr. Simon was appointed the first Chairman of Emergency Medicine at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital, then became the first Chairman of Emergency Medicine at Rush University Medical Center. He is one of the founding members of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine. He is also the author of six medical texts in emergency medicine. He was instrumental in fostering the development of “observation units” adjacent to emergency rooms, making possible dramatic reductions in length of hospital stay for common short-term medical problems such as asthma and diabetic complications.
Dr. Simon is the founder and continues to be Chairman of the Board of the International Medical Corps (IMC), an organization he founded in 1984, which is a non-profit humanitarian aid organization which specializes in establishing healthcare for villagers primarily in war zones (see internationalmedicalcorp.org). Dr. Simon developed and designed the world’s first Advanced Medic Training program, which in one year trains healthcare medics to diagnose and treat over 90% of the conditions they will encounter in their villages, concentrating on the diagnosis and treatment of only the 8-10 common conditions in each organ system, all without medical supervision. He designed nursing programs with similar outcomes. Today IMC is in 21 nations, almost all areas of conflict around the world.
Dr. Simon’s accomplishments have been recognized by numerous awards including the David K. Wagner Award from the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (2003) and the Heritage Medal of Freedom Award (1988), having been nominated for the latter by President Reagan. People Magazine ran a feature story on his work with the IMC and he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
Dr. Blanck received his medical and graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Following an internship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, he was a Research Associate at the National Cancer Institute and then a Muscular Dystrophy of America Research Fellow at the Muscle Biology Center at the University of Padua in Padua, Italy. He then did a residency in anesthesiology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
He has held faculty appointments in Anesthesiology, Pharmacology (U of A), Biomedical Engineering (JHU), Physiology (Cornell) and Neuroscience (NYU) at the University of Arizona, Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, and New York University. He was Director of Anesthesiology at the Hospital for Special Surgery from 1995 to 2001, and the Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at New York University from 2001 to 2013.
He is now Emeritus Professor at NYU. His research, supported by over thirty years of NIH funding, focused on the mechanism of action of inhaled anesthetics and, most recently, on the transition from acute to chronic pain.
Join our cause in research
We are the first nonprofit devoted to understanding how muscles can cause pain. We need to improve the way chronic pain is treated.
You can play a critical role in advancing the muscle pain field by contributing to FRAME.