Academic experts with real-world experience
Courses are delivered by distinguished professors from the Zicklin School of Business and experienced healthcare industry practitioners from the greater New York City area. This combination yields an unparalleled opportunity to learn about the healthcare industry in the context of business administration.
Academic Director: Alex F. Mills, PhD
Full-Time Faculty
Part-time Faculty
Barbara Caress
Caress, Barbara
Barbara Caress has over 40 years of experience as a union, non-profit, and public agency manager, consultant, and administrator. She served as Director of Strategic Policy and Planning for the SEIU Local 32BJ Funds. Ms Caress consulted to the NYC and NYS Health Departments, the Community Service Society, Local 1199, SEIU, and the United Hospital Fund and currently works with a wide array of self-funded health plans. While working for 8 years at the Segal Company, a national benefits consulting firm, she provided consulting services to 22 multi-employer and single union/employer plans. She has served as a member of NCQA’s Standards Committee, the NYC Primary Care Improvement Project Advisory Board, and the National Quality Forum’s MAP Hospital Workgroup. Ms. Caress is a member of the Baruch College, CUNY faculty where she has taught courses in health policy and nonprofit management for 35 years. Author of a wide range of health policy reports, book chapters, and articles, Ms Caress received her undergraduate and graduate education at the University of Chicago.
Timothy M. Gorton
Gorton, Timothy M.
MPA, FACHE
Tim has 20+ years’ experience in healthcare operations, compliance, and consulting, most recently working on three, operational initiatives as a strategic, contracted consultant with the NYC Department of Health.
Tim is a past president of Healthcare Leaders of NY, the local chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives. He is a past recipient of the ACHE Early Career Healthcare Executives Leadership Award.
Tim serves as an advisor with the University of Scranton’s Health Administration Professional Advisory Council, and has recently been/continues to be a guest lecturer and mentor with Master’s in Health Administration classes amongst several, higher education programs, including the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Fordham University, and SUNY Downstate.
Tim recently served as a consultant co-author with the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) for their 2023/2024 Healthcare Environmental Scans and Trends Report, found here.
Tim attained his bachelor’s in healthcare administration from the University of Scranton, and a master’s in public administration from NYU. He was born and raised in Queens, NY where he also currently resides.
Errol L. Pierre
Pierre, Errol L.
Errol L. Pierre is the Senior Vice President of State Programs at Healthfirst, Inc., the largest non-profit health plan in New York State serving nearly 2 million members. In this role, he is accountable for growth, profit/loss, and sales and retention for the Medicaid, Commerical, and Long Term Care product portfolios.
Prior to Healthfirst, Errol spent over 12 years at Empire BlueCross BlueShield, the largest for-profit health plan in New York State. Throughout his tenure, he held various leadership roles in Sales and Strategy until leaving the company as the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in 2019.
A Bronx, New York resident, Errol graduated from Fordham University with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance, New York University with a master’s degree in Health Policy and Financial Management, and Baruch College with a doctoral degree in Business Administration with a focused on Health Economics. He is the author of The Way Up – Climbing the Corporate Mountain as a Professional of Color, published by Wiley in 2022.
In his spare time, Errol volunteers for various non-profit organizations. He serves as a board member of the Arthur Ashe Institute of Urban Health, He is a member of the national 100 Black Men Health & Wellness Committee. Lastly, he mentors both high school students and Fordham undergraduates in the Bronx.
Leon Sears
Sears, Leon
MBA
Professor Sears is an accomplished Business Executive with 20+ years of broad expertise in healthcare financial and operational leadership in both provider and payor arena. He possesses deep experience in PE-and Venture-backed, multi-state/multi-location, hyper-growth healthcare companies, publicly traded large payors and nonprofit healthcare organizations. Professor Sears is a transformational leader with a successful track record in strategic planning, KPI establishment, mergers & acquisitions, revenue & profit optimization, performance improvement, risk management and board/investor reporting. He is the Senior Vice President of Finance at Essen Healthcare.
As a senior healthcare executive, Professor Sears’ classroom approach incorporates a unique ability to synthesize, review, and analyze data, and attributes contributing valuable input to the executive decision-making process.
Professor Sears earned an Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) in Finance & Strategic Management from Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from New Jersey City University.
Robert Stinerock
Stinerock, Robert
Robert Stinerock has more than 35 years of experience teaching statistics and probability to students at both the undergraduate as well as graduate level. Most recently, he has been teaching statistics at three different universities: the Executive MBA program at Baruch College of the City University of New York; the Quantitative Finance program at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey; and the Faculdade de Economia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, in Lisbon, Portugal, an MIT Sloan School affiliate.
He has received several awards for excellence in the classroom: the Stevens Howe School Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher Award; the Stevens Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher Award; and the Fairleigh Dickinson Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching.
He has published numerous research articles in academic journals, most recently in the Journal of Macromarketing, the Journal of Business Research, and Geoforum. His textbook, Statistics with R (Sage, 2018 and 2023), is now in its second edition; the third edition will come out in 2025.
He earned his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees, all from Columbia University.