Staff (Employees)
Gilles Frydman
Executive Director
Gilles has been a pioneer of online health communities since founding the Association of Cancer Online Resources (ACOR) in 1995. Gilles is a co-founder of Smart Patients and of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Gilles is a former MedicineX Executive Board Member. He strongly believes patients are the most underutilized resource in healthcare. Gilles is a a sleep apnea patient with long term hypertension history.
Elizabeth Johnson
Operations Manager
Elizabeth began her Nonprofit Accounting career at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, MD in 2000. Following her career at Suburban Hospital, she worked for a national civil rights advocacy nonprofit organization in Washington, DC for 11 years rising to the position of Finance Manager.
Elizabeth joined ASAA in December 2013 as a part-time bookkeeper and became the Finance Manager in 2018. Finding her passion for healthcare advocacy again, Elizabeth joined ASAA full-time in June 2020. She is a single mother of three girls, all of which have at least one breathing disorder. She currently lives in Eastern North Carolina.
Valerie Mead
Program Manager
Valerie joined the ASAA in July of 2015. Val serves as a Program Manager for the ASAA and is located in Tracy, Minnesota with her three children. As a former small business owner, Val understands the importance of providing caring and timely customer service.
She has a passion for helping others, which makes her a valuable addition to our team assisting patients and medical professionals who utilize our Mask/Supply Program, Peer Mentors Program and our AWAKE Groups.
Alice Rolling
Customer Service Associate
Alice joined the ASAA Team in October 2019. Being a sleep apnea patient herself since 2012 she understands the importance of being dedicated to the PAP therapy and being our own best advocate.
She is a Customer Service Associate and works from her home near Tracy, MN. Alice has a background in Management and Customer Service, and brings with her a passion to make a difference and to help others be their own best advocate.
Staff (Contract)
Jean-Noel Frydman
Webmaster
Jean-Noel was born in Paris and moved to New York in 1981, where he received his BA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Upon graduating, he moved to Los Angeles where he discovered the nascent Internet. In 1994, he founded France.com, a pioneering e-commerce and travel website which won many accolades. A sleep apnea patient himself, he brings more than 20 years of digital experience and innovation to sleepapnea.org.
Erin Taylor
Grant Writer
Erin is a grant writer with 19-years’ experience in prospect research, grant proposal writing, and grants management. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in English from St. Olaf College and a Master’s of City and Regional Planning from Clemson University. Erin was diagnosed with sleep apnea in 2017 and started working with the ASAA in 2018. She lives in Colorado Springs, CO with her husband and two sons.
Board of Directors
Anne Marie Morse
Chairman
Anne Marie Morse is a neurologist with special training in child neurology as well as a sleep medicine specialist. Although an avid educator, successful leader, thoughtful clinician and inquisitive researcher, she views her most important roles in medicine as being a health care partner, advocate and changemaker.
Her proven track record and unwavering commitment to evolve healthcare to a patient directed model that accounts for all hours of the day, considering sleep health and circadian science across all disciplines, is showcased in her development of novel programs like Sleep to Be Well and Wake Up and Learn. Both programs focus on meeting people where they are with information and tools to live most successfully and sleep most restfully. Dr. Morse envisions a world where sleep can be acknowledged as the vital sign of health, wellness, and performance that it is designed to be.
Marc Donner
Treasurer
Marc Donner was born in a log cabin on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the waning half of the twentieth century. After high school he went west where he earned a BS at Caltech. After some time working at NASA and IBM Research he made his way to CMU where he earned a PhD in computer science working on Ivan Sutherland’s six-legged walking robot.
After his PhD he worked at IBM Research on robotics and distributed computing. The distributed computing work took him to Wall Street where he built large-scale systems and economic models, among other things. After Wall Street he went to Google where he rebuilt Google Health and worked on software for very large scale networks. After Google he led Uber’s NYC engineering office.
Marc now calls himself a recovering academic. He consults in high-tech, medical informatics, cybersecurity, software engineering, and general curmudgeonliness from his company, NYGeek LLC.
Whether he is between jobs or is retired depends on whether, as Ivan once said, “I take another job or die first.”
Larissa D’Andrea
Secretary
With over 25 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Larissa is passionate about transforming a system that cares for the sick to one that keeps people well, with the right technology, at the right time. She is person-centric and purpose-driven, engaging in work that drives better health, and has a positive sustainable impact.
Areas of expertise include Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) corporate strategy, Government Affairs, Market Access, Clinical Advocacy, Patient Advocacy, Medical Affairs strategy, Regulatory Affairs, Quality Assurance, Commercialization of digital solutions, Digital marketing, impact-oriented content production and immersive installations, and Consumer engagement/campaigns to drive behaviors.
She holds BS in Biology from UCSD and a MS in Legal Studies from USD, School of Law. Sleep health is a personal focus with both her father and fiancé managing sleep apnea alongside cardiac conditions. Most recently she held executive roles at ResMed.
Susan Manber
Chief Patient Officer
A rare cancer survivor and patient advocate, Sue is dedicated to ensuring radical patient centricity is at the heart of her role as Chief Patient Officer at Publicis Health, a first in health communications. Sue helped found two start up agencies in the early days of the Internet and DTC communications and has deep health and wellness brand building experience spanning leading companies in virtually every category. She sees sleep as the critically important third pillar of health and is passionate about fueling sleep health for all.
Sue is in demand as a frequent speaker at Healthcare industry conferences and is frequently published, having been featured most recently at HLTH, in Ad Age and honored in the 2020 MM&M Hall of Femme, 2022 Reuters Patient Champion and 2024 HBA Luminary.
Rich Bren
Board member
Rich Bren, an obstructive sleep apnea patient, has over 35 years of trucking industry risk and insurance experience.
His father and sister have also been diagnosed and treated for Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA).
Bren specializes in commercial auto (truck) insurance programs. He has been active in state and national trucking, safety, and insurance association groups throughout his career.
He brings to the ASAA board a keen awareness of sleep apnea issues and their implications for commercial truck drivers and their employers.
Rich and his spouse, Lisa, are active in their church and family. They reside in a 4-generations home in Litchfield Park, Arizona.
