Ashley Brenton, PhD

VICE PRESIDENT, REAL-WORLD EVIDENCE & GENOMICS, LIFE SCIENCES, OPTUM

Dr. Ashley Brenton is the vice president of Real-World Evidence and Genomics for Optum Life Sciences. Ashley is responsible for leading the data strategy, development, business development and operations for real-world data with a focus on genomics. In this role, she bridges the gap between clinical genomics and product development to leverage the wealth of Optum data into commercial datasets and strategic alliances.

Prior to joining Optum, Dr. Brenton was the chief science officer at Mycroft Bioanalytics where she led corporate valuation and sales strategy of the intellectual property portfolio, including the world’s largest clinicogenomic biobank in chronic pain. Previously, Dr. Brenton developed and commercialized a number of precision medicine tests and algorithms while building clinicogenomic datasets. In addition to her product development in the space, she has established herself as a thought leader, publishing a number of manuscripts that provide support for the integration of clinicogenomics in health care.

Before entering industry, Dr. Brenton was a molecular biologist in academia, earning a Bachelor’s in Public Health Studies from Johns Hopkins, a PhD from University California Davis and a viral pathogenesis fellowship from the Scripps Research Institute. Ashley enjoys powerlifting, spending time outside camping, trail running and hiking. She’s an accomplished athlete, completing the Ironman twice and a number of ultramarathons, and competing in CrossFit competitions. She resides in Spokane, WA, with her husband and two daughters.

Michael Hultner, PhD

VICE PRESIDENT, HEAD OF GENOMICS STRATEGY, OPTUM

Dr Hultner is a health care industry leader with breadth and depth experience in informatics, data science and genomics, enjoying a career history of bringing new technologies and businesses from concept to market.

He’s currently leading genomics strategy development and implementation at Optum with a focus on integrating genomics applications and data into payer and provider workflows. These efforts face specific challenges in gathering and generating evidence for clinical and economic utility, which requires innovations in business and technology to create a learning health system for precision medicine.

Michael has previously developed and implemented health care strategies as chief scientist and LM Fellow at Lockheed Martin Health & Life Sciences where he brought nation-scale genomics solutions to market in the United States, United Kingdom and the Middle East. He led business transformation at SevenBridges Genomics as chief strategy officer by re-engineering pricing and position of the core platform while introducing new products in graph-genome technology. He also led strategic product development at PetaGene as SVP of Strategy, bringing novel genomic privacy and compression technologies to market.

He holds a doctorate in Biomedical Sciences from UC San Francisco and a BA in Molecular Biology from UC San Diego.

Pre-COVID-19, Michael enjoyed traveling and exploring new cities and cultures. These days, it’s finding and tackling the most ridiculously complicated cooking projects.