
Avem Health Partners
Meet our Team
Meet Our Executive Management Team
Avem Health Partners has an experienced management team consisting of corporate finance and management professionals with significant experience in healthcare delivery.
Jeff Hill
Chief Executive Officer

Jeff Hill is the CEO of Avem Health Partners and joined the organization in March 2020. He is an innovative leader in the healthcare community with over 30 years of medical and clinical experience. His background in organizational, clinical and service excellence help bring a visionary perspective to his leadership expertise.
Hill previously served in other executive roles including regional vice president of Quorum Health Resources in Brentwood, Tennessee and the CEO of both Steele Memorial Medical Center and Midwest Medical Center. He graduated from Wichita State University with a degree in medical technology and received his master’s degree in health administration from the University of Colorado-Denver.
Hill has been recognized in Becker’s Hospital Review as 50 Rural Hospital CEOs to Know in 2014 and 2015. He was awarded Press Ganey’s Guardian of Excellence for patient experience as well as the National Rural Health Association’s Top 20 Critical Access Hospital in America.
Dale Alward
Chief Operating Officer

Dale Alward is the Chief Operating Officer of Avem Health Partners and joined the organization in May 2021. He is a dynamic, highly motivated, and visionary leader with over 37 years of progressive management experience working in highly successful acute care hospitals and complex healthcare organizations to include serving in the United States Air Force Medical Service for over 23 years in hospital administration both stateside and overseas.
Alward has also served in additional executive roles with the Hospital Corporation of America, LifePoint Health and Bon Secours that included Administrative Director Memorial Regional Medical Center – Bon Secours, Assistant Administrator Henrico Doctors’ Hospital – HCA, COO Terre Haute Regional Hospital – HCA, CEO Englewood Community Hospital – HCA, CEO Mercy Hospital – HCA, CEO Twin County Regional Healthcare – Duke LifePoint Health, and CEO Sovah Health Martinsville – LifePoint.
Dale was recognized in Becker’s Hospital Review as 60 Rural Hospital CEOs to know in 2019 and 2020. He is a Fellow with the American College of Healthcare Executives. Additional professional affiliations include lifetime member of Military Officers Association of America, lifetime member of the Air Force Association and member of The American Legion.
Alward received his Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts degree from Excelsior College, Albany, NY, he received his Master of Health Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University – Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, VA and received his Master of Public Administration from Troy University, Troy, AL.
Dr. Rakesh Shrivastava
Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Rakesh Shrivastava serves in the role of Chief Medical Officer. He is board certified in cardiovascular diseases and interventional cardiology. In addition, he also holds a Master Certificate in Healthcare Practice Management from Oklahoma City University.
He graduated from Institute of Medical Sciences, Varanasi (India) and completed residency training at Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Chicago, IL. He completed his fellowship in General Cardiology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center at Shreveport, LA and went on to complete Interventional Cardiology fellowship from University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS
Dr. Shrivastava has remained actively involved in providing care to medically underserved and rural communities throughout his career. Notable amongst those are his role as Associate Medical Director of Health Care for the Homeless program in Rochester, NY. He also serves in leadership roles in various hospitals in local communities. In his role as chief medical officer of our organization, Dr. Shrivastava is responsible for overseeing the clinical services of the rural hospitals.
Meet our Board of Directors
Members of AVEM's board of directors include financial, operational and medical professionals.
Guy W. Adams
Chairman of the Board

Guy W. Adams
Chairman of the Board
Mr. Adams is Managing Director of GWA Capital Partners, a registered investment advisor in Beverly Hills, CA. He has over 30 years of experience in money management and investment banking. For the past 20 years, Mr. Adams has structured private and public equity investments for himself and for various wealthy families. He is currently on the board of directors of: Reading International (RDI) (2014 - Present) and Avem Health Partners (2019 – Present) serving as Chairman of the Board.
Mr. Adams was involved in three successful proxy contests: Exar Corporation, in which he was publicly endorsed by both Institutional Shareholders Services ("ISS") and Glass Lewis & Co., resulting in the decisive election of the entire GWA dissident candidate slate in 2005-07 where he served as Chairman of Audit Committee and Financial Expert; and Mercer International, 2003-2013 as a nominee of Greenlight Capital, where he served on Compensation and Audit Committee. Previously, Mr. Adams served as a director of Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon 2001-2002. Mr. Adams was publicly endorsed as a candidate for the Lone Star Board by ISS and California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS). He also served on the board of Vitesse Semiconductor 2007-08, serving on the Compensation and Audit Committees.
From 1989-1995, Mr. Adams held the position of Investment Manager with Decurion Corporation, a holding company for a Forbes 400 Wealthiest Family. He also served as Chairman of the Pacific Theatres Employees Retirement Plan.
From 1986-1989, Mr. Adams was President and Founder of Petro Investments, an investment banking company advising on mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry. Earlier in his career, Mr. Adams was with Sonat Offshore (now Transocean) as a Drilling Engineer, General Manager, and Area Manager of Operations. While at Sonat, he was responsible for offshore drilling operations in the Far East, Middle East, Africa and Europe, overseeing 427 employees and operations in 13 foreign countries. During this period, his division set three (3) world records for exploratory drilling in ultra-deep waters.
Mr. Adams has been profiled in The NY Times, Fortune, Smart Money, Institutional Investor, Money, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He has appeared on CNBC and was a past keynote speaker at the Council of Institutional Investor conference. During his career, he has developed an in-depth knowledge of matters involving corporate governance, proxy contests, strategic mergers and acquisitions, and corporate restructurings. In 2018 he became a National Association of Corporate Directors Governance Fellow.
Mr. Adams has an undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University in Petroleum Engineering and a MBA from Harvard Business School.
Anthony J. Ciabattoni
Director

Anthony J. Ciabattoni
Director
Anthony J. Ciabattoni became a Avem Health Partners board member in 2014 and is currently the company’s second largest shareholder. In addition to his own investment in 2006, he also played an advisory role in introducing the company’s growth potential to prospective investors. That effort led to the raising of a majority of the invested capital that was used to acquire both the Stroud and Anadarko entities.
Tony brings a diverse business background in sales and marketing with two Fortune 200 companies. That experience led him to building and operating his own enterprise, Pacific Business Interiors, in 1984. Over the next eleven years Tony’s company grew from a start-up to becoming a Southern California leader in providing large corporations with integrated and diversified products and facilities management services. In 1996 he made the decision to sell his company and to move on to new challenges and opportunities. After building a home in Laguna Beach, California, he has since spent his time participating in a myriad of investment opportunities in various private equity sectors, including real estate, technology, telecom and healthcare. He currently serves as either a board member, or an advisor to several companies.
In 2005, he formed Laguna Legacy Fund, a charitable organization that receives its non-profit status through its relationship with the Orange County Charities Foundation. Laguna Legacy’s mission is to make grants to local persons and non-profit organizations of need.
Tony was born and raised in Delaware and earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Delaware. He and his wife Jane, a retired high school teacher, reside in Laguna Beach. They have been married for 52 years and have two children, Susan and Michael, and two grandchildren, Delaney and Lilianna.
Jeff Hill
Director & Chief Executive Officer

Jeff Hill
Director & Chief Executive Officer
William Houlihan
Chairman of Audit Committee

William Houlihan
Chairman of Audit Committee
Mr. Houlihan has been an investor in our company since 2005, and a member of the Board of Directors since 2010. He has more than 40 years of finance experience. He has been Chief Financial Officer or a member of the Board of Directors for 17 publicly traded and privately owned companies between 2001 and the present. Mr. Houlihan also was an investment banker for Goldman Sachs and other major Wall Street firms from 1981 to 2000, when he advised CEOs and other corporate officers of more than 200 companies on a broad range of acquisitions, financings and other corporate transactions. His industry experience includes healthcare providers, banks, non-bank lenders, technology companies and real estate investors. Mr. Houlihan received a B.S. in Accounting in 1977 from Manhattan College, became licensed as a C.P.A. in 1979, and received his M.B.A. in Finance in 1983 from New York University Graduate School of Business.
Robert N. Schwartz Ph.D.
Chairman of Cyber Security Committee

Robert N. Schwartz Ph.D.
Chairman of Cyber Security Committee
Dr. Schwartz has been on the AVEM Board of Directors since August 1998. He has served on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a former member of the technical staff at the Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California. Dr. Schwartz is currently a research faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA. He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Colorado.
Richardson E. Sells
Chairman of Compensation Committee

Richardson E. Sells
Chairman of Compensation Committee
Richardson Sells has served on our Board of Directors since April, 2005 and was an investor in the company at its inception. He has vast experience in national and international business operations. Sells was President of South Asia Operations for Holiday Inns Worldwide 1991-1995 based in New Delhi. Following his Holiday Inn basing, Sells was Managing Director, Hong Kong and China for CV Transportation Services for five years. Part of this project involved building a 100,000 square foot duty-free warehouse on the Third Ring Road of Beijing. In addition, CV Transportation built a logistics network in the 1.2 billion populace China market. Sells commuted each week back to his home in Hong Kong and traveled extensively throughout the Peoples Republic of China. This travel gave him the opportunity to meet and spend time with Prime Ministers Thatcher of the UK and Vajpayee of India as well as Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton
In January 2001 Sells and his family returned to the USA where he was named vice-president of sales for Northwest Airlines’ $700 million-dollar global cargo operations based in Minneapolis. In his first year leading the sales team the revenue grew over 40 percent to $1 billion dollars annually and continued growth over the succeeding five years when Sells retired from the airline. Sells was a scholarship athlete at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Business Management and Administration. He served three years with the U.S. Army, honorably discharged in 1969 after three years of active duty, with his last year served in Asia.
He and his wife, Judy, have been married for “55 adventurous years.” They met as seniors in high school. They received their first overseas assignment from what was then branded Northwest Orient Airlines in 1971, moving from Miami to Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Northwest Headquarters in Minneapolis. He was Country Manager of the Philippines, based in Manila, and Regional Manager of Hong Kong and oversaw business development in Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East from a Hong Kong base. In 1982, living in Atlanta, Sells and his wife bought a chain of travel agencies which were sold to Wagons-Lits Travel a French company, and owner of the Orient Express. Wife Judy later went to work in a senior management position for the accounting and software development firm Dun & Bradstreet. Though achieving success in his global work life, Sells voices some of his greatest career satisfaction is with the growth of Avem Healthcare Partners, formerly known as First Physicians Capital Group. "In the midst of the worst health disaster to hit this country in a century, Avem Health Partners through collegial cooperation with all members of the board and its management team, is growing, and providing first in class patient care".