APOPS             

LEADERSHIP

As Founder and CEO of APOPS, Sherrie Palm is a grassroots women's pelvic floor health advocate at the forefront of increasing recognition of the common, cryptic women's health concern, pelvic organ prolapse. Sherrie's path began in December 2007 when she was diagnosed with pelvic organ prolapse and discovered that millions of other women around the world suffer with different aspects of a health concern still kept behind closed doors. Sherrie recognized the need to establish broad-spectrum paths to recognition, education, research, and support for POP.

The Board of Directors (governing body) for APOPS will continually grow and evolve; it is pivotal to maintain balance of representation between health care professionals from various disciplines, non-medical professionals from legal and business avenues, and most importantly, representation from women in both developed and developing areas of the world who have experienced pelvic organ prolapse.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS 

Sherrie Palm

Founder/Executive Director

Women's Pelvic Floor Health Advocate, Author, Speaker 

Sherrie Palm is APOPS Founder/CEO, the award winning author of Pelvic Organ Prolapse:The Silent Epidemic, and a public speaker and educator on pelvic organ prolapse. As a grassroots women's pelvic floor health advocate, Sherrie dedicates her time to multiple avenues of international POP recognition, guidance, education, and support.   

Lynn Gunn, President

Medical Practice & Academic Affairs Administrator

Lynn Gunn is an experienced non-profit operations and IT leader in health care, acedemic affairs, and higher education sectors. She received her Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Marquette University, completed a fellowship with the Frye Leadership Institute and holds numerous information technology certifications. Lynn's current professional work includes designing and measuring new models of patient-centered coordinated care and streamlining ambulatory patient flows, all with the goal of improving patient outcomes and service while reducing waste and cost in the health care delivery system. She also serves as faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Communication's Clinician Patient Communication course, which enhances the quality of health care by improving communications between the patient and their health care providers.

Vice President

     Margaret Gonzales-Charles PT

Peggy is a bilingual, licensed physical therapist who specializes in women's health. Numerous years of experience at an inner city hospital assisting people from multiple countries of origin, her respect for cultural diversity enables her to bring key insights to the sensitive nature of treating a condition as private as pelvic organ prolapse. She currently runs a private practice, A Step Ahead Physical Therapy Services, in Milwaukee, WI. 

Secretary-Treasurer

  Wendy Vear-Hanson 

Wendy Vear-Hanson has an diverse adminstrative background within the business community as well as running her business, Noproblemo. Wendy also has extensive experience in the nonprofit sector, dedicating time as secretary of Walworth County 4-H Senior Leaders Association, as a member of the Walworth County 4-H Executive Board, as the General Leader of Lake Beulah 4-H, and as County Leader for the Projects of Wildlife and Adventure Education. In her spare time, she fundraises for Breast Cancer and Cystic Fibrosis using multiple tools to achieve her goals. 

Director 

Ruth Campos, Bilingual Paralegal 

Ruth Campos has extensive experience as a bilingual paralegal which includes years within both the legal private sector and the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office where she is currently employed. Her widely diverse skills and experience enable her to assist the APOPS agenda and its community as a bilingual liaison as well as providing and sharing resourceful legal documentation and insights.   

 Director

 Gary Ford, VP of Investments

 As VP of Investments with Northland Securities, Gary Ford has provided personalized fiscal insights enabling his clients to achieve their investment goals through guided strategies since 1984. Gary maintains long term relationships with a global client base including private investors, corporations, insitutions, and 401K retirement plans. Gary is an avid hunter and outdoorsman, a golfer, and a motorcycle enthusiast. He is also a highly decorated Vietnam veteran with a strong passion for supporting our troups. When he is not assisting his clients, he prefers to be somewhere close to nature.

Director

Diane Hankey Underwood MS, WHNP-BC, CRNP

Diana Hankey Underwood, received her Master of Science in Parent-Child Nursing in 1996, from the University of Michigan, with a focus on research and women's health.   She is board certified and licensed as a women's health nurse practitioner.  After writing a grant for support to train Kazakh surgeons in craniofacial reconstruction, she was asked by Kazakh surgeons to organize and fund training for urogenital and colorectal defects. She organized a non-profit, raised funds, and while attending training with the surgeons, was struck by the benefit of this training to assist adult patients.  Diana was inspired to spend one year researching and creating an educational program for lay audiences and providers on urinary and fecal incontinence.   A series of four classes became the first in the nation to be approved for insurance reimbursement.  Diana continues to deliver her educational material to audiences across the nation, speaking with humor and dignity on a subject with which she has personal, as well as professional, experience.  For this work she won two National awards: the Nurse Practitioners in Women's Health and the Bayer HealthCare 2007 Inspiration in Women's Health Award and the National Association For Continence 2007 Continence Care Champion Award.   Known by her friends as Diane Underwood, she is currently Director of the Bladder and Bowel Clinic at the Center for Aging in Huntsville, Alabama.  

Medical Advisory Commission

 Lennox Hoyte MD, MSEECS

Urogynecologist

Dr. Hoyte is a Board Certified OB/Gyn physician, and fellowship trained sub-specialist in Urogynecology and Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery (FPMRS). He is Associate Professor and Director of Urogynecology and Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He is an attending urogynecologist at the Tampa General Hospital, and director of urogynecology and the pelvic floor disorders group at TGH. Dr. Hoyte has participated in multiple research studies and is the author of Prolapse Repair: A Guide for Patients and Their Families as well as Robotic Hysterectomy.

He received his Masters degree in Electrical engineering and Computer science from MIT, and his MD degree from Stanford Medical School. He received Residency training on OB/Gyn from Brigham and Womens and Massachussetts General Hospitals in Boston, and completed formal fellowship training in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago.  He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Dr. Hoyte is also an elected member of the Society of Gynecologic Surgeons.

Dr. Bruce Crawford, MD

 Urogynecologist 

Dr. Crawford is a board certified Obstetrician Gynecologist and Pelvic Floor Specialist in private practice in Northern Nevada.  Dr. Crawford attended medical School at New York University before completing a residency at the University of Arizona, Tucson.  Dr. Crawford is a member of the International Organization for Women and Development and has made several surgical trips to Niger, West Africa to repair obstetrical fistula.  Dr. Crawford is the creator of Pfilates; a scientifically based plyometric program for pelvic floor conditioning.  Dr. Crawford has published numerous articles in the areas of obstetric fistula and pelvic floor neuromuscular function.  Dr. Crawford is a member of The Society of Gynecologic Surgeons, Society for Urodynamics and Female Urology, The International Continence Society, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 

Gaynor Morgan 

 

 CEO C&G Medicare Ltd,  APOPS Ambassador Europe

Gaynor Morgan is the CEO of C&G Medicare and developer and marketer of Incostress, an award winning medical device for treatment of urinary incontinence. Gaynor has won multiple international awards for her invention, Welsh Woman of the Year-Science and Technology, MediWales Innovator of the Year Award, British Invention Award-Best Medical Device, BFllN Innovator of the Year, Geneva International Invention Gold Medal. With a background in nursing, Gaynor went on to develop her product and company after discovering her mother was hiding life-altering incontinence issues. Today Gaynor works on establishing multiple paths of recognition for women's pelvic floor health and incontinence as well as managing the C&G Medicare global protocol.

 

Beth Shelly, PT, DPT, WCS, BDB PMD

Doctor of Physical Therapy