HCP (VC-08) Leadership Team
President
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey B. Clark, M.D., MPH, MSS, FAAP, USA (Ret), was born in LaGrange, N.C., and attended Davidson College and East Carolina University School of Medicine. During his 35 years of service, he served as a family medicine physician with teams in both garrison and operational assignments and as commander at the clinic, hospital, academic medical center, and geographic regional levels. He also served as COO and CMO at the enterprise level.
During the last decade of his military career, he served as commander, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center; commander, Europe Regional Medical Command; director, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center; director, National Capitol Region Multi-Service Market; J3, director of Health Care Operations, CMO, and MHS GENESIS Functional Champion, Defense Health Agency; and deputy commanding general for Operations and Chief of the Medical Corps, Army Medical Command.
He currently serves in semi-retirement as a Defense Health Agency senior mentor advisor, Army Medicine executive consultant, and as medical director, Semper Fi & America’s Fund; as well as on the nonprofit boards of WarDocs: The Military Medicine Podcast, the American College of Nurse Midwives, and the Uniformed Services Academy of Family Physicians Foundation.
Vice President
Brig. Gen. James (Jim) Dienst, USAF (Ret), is a senior executive leader with over 30 years of experience and demonstrated success leading large and dispersed medical organizations across the Air Force and DoD. He has proven skills in creating strategic plans and policies within the DoD and in developing organizational performance strategies with supporting action plans, budgets, and related metrics.
Born and raised in Kansas, he graduated from Emporia State University in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and graduated from the Houston College of Optometry in 1989 with a doctorate. In 2010, he graduated from the in-residence Air War College program with a master’s degree in strategic studies within the Blue Horizon’s Program. He entered into the active duty Air Force in 1996 and retired from the military in 2020.
During his time in the military, he served in a large variety of roles, including serving as a commander five times (squadron, group, agencies, and wing), completed an Air Force fellowship in war plans and operations, oversaw the medical operations center at the Pentagon, served at the Joint Task Force National Capital Region Medical, was the surgeon general for the Air Force Reserve Command, was the senior Air Force officer in the Defense Health Agency (DHA), served as the director for both the DHA J7 Education and Training and the DHA J8 Financial Operations directorates, served as the commander of the Air Force Medical Operations Agency, and served as the commanding general for the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
Since leaving active duty, he has been actively employed by the MITRE Corporation as the principal healthcare strategist and Department of Defense advisor. He presently works at the Leidos Corporation as a Human Performance and Warfighter Readiness consulting employee. He also serves on the Fisher House Foundation executive board of South Texas. Jim is married to his wife, Judith, and has five children and five grandchildren.
Secretary
Capt. Eugene M. de Lara, USN (Ret), is a Navy veteran with over 23 years of active duty service as a Medical Service Corps Officer, rising to the rank of captain before retiring in 2013. He received his bachelor’s degree from Fisk University, a doctorate in Pharmacy from Mercer University, and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Webster University.
During his military career, he served in a variety of leadership roles in pharmacy, health care administration, and medical logistics, with multiple operational and humanitarian deployments. His military staff assignments include the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Health Protection and Readiness, and the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illness.
Following his retirement, he joined the Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care System as the chief of Pharmacy Services, overseeing a $90 million operation that serves approximately 55,000 veterans throughout Maryland. Since 2016, he has volunteered as an executive committee member of the foundation board of directors at Ascension Health, St. Agnes Hospital.
Treasurer
Kathryn M. Beasley PhD has extensive experience in both the Department of Defense and VA health systems health policy arenas. She has ten years of Capitol Hill experience advocating for a variety of health care issues affecting active duty personnel, retirees, veterans, and their families, in her role as the Military Officers Association of America’s Government Relations Director for Health Affairs.
She retired from the Naval Service in 2009 after serving 30 years. As a career Navy Nurse Corps officer, she served in a wide variety of staff and senior leadership positions within the Navy and the Department of Defense. She has had assignments serving in military treatment facilities both stateside and abroad. Her clinical specialties have been in the Surgical Intensive Care and Surgical Services as well as the Ambulatory care areas. Her operational assignments have been on the USNS Comfort, and her administrative emphasis has been in the Managed Care arena, TRICARE Operations, and Healthcare Operational and Contingency Planning.
Her leadership assignments have included Chief of Staff of Naval Healthcare New England; Deputy Commander and Director of Healthcare Operations at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda; Chief of Staff for the Commanding General for the NCR Multi-Service Market Area at Walter Reed Army Medical Center; and the Director of Planning and Operational Support for the Navy Surgeon General.
CAPT Beasley is a native of St. Louis Missouri. She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Tulsa, Tulsa Oklahoma, a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Boston College, Chestnut Hill Massachusetts, and earned her doctorate from the International School of Management. She is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives.