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Team
Center M’s interdisciplinary clinical and scientific team includes leaders in maternity care, mental health care, health equity science, clinical research, and health systems science. The business team has expertise in product development, commercialization and healthcare economics.
We have strong and growing community ties and input, including among Black, Indigenous, and Medicaid-supported patients, rural-residing women, leaders, and community members. Maternity care clinicians working with Medicaid-supported patients are eager to implement this model of care and provide key input for Center M’s success. Our community stakeholders are central to the Center M team and are the ultimate decision makers shaping our cultural tailoring goals and processes.
Ellen Tilden is a nurse-midwifery clinical-scientist and Associate Professor in the Schools of Nursing and Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University.
Dr. Tilden’s research addresses maternity health systems improvements to decrease maternal morbidity and mortality, with a particular focus on prenatal care, labor progress, cesarean reduction, and maternal mental health. Her work improves the quality and safety of U.S. perinatal care via influencing clinical guidelines on labor management, driving state policies on doula care reimbursement, translating mental health interventions to the prenatal care setting, and dismantling professional silos between midwifery and physician teams.
Dr. Tilden also works closely with industry partners: she is the Chief Scientific Officer at Center Mom. She served as a Member of the Data and Research Workgroup for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Maternal and Infant Morbidity and Mortality. And she serves as the Associate Editor of Birth, Data Management Chair within the American College of Nurse-Midwives Division of Research, American College of Nurse-Midwives representative to the Women’s Preventive Services Task Force, and on the American Academy of Nursing Women’s Health Expert Panel.
Dr. Tilden earned her BA with Phi Beta Kappa from Reed College, her RN, MS, and CNM degrees from the University of California at San Francisco, her PhD from Oregon Health & Science University, and she completed three years of women’s health K-12 postdoctoral training supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Ellen Tilden
Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer
David Starr has been solving formidable problems within the medical device sector for most of his 35+ year career. Specifically, the senior business executive has been devising affordable, easy-to-use medical technology products and solutions that address the critical needs of clinicians and patients while enabling organizations to achieve commercial success.
Equal parts innovator and strategic leader, Starr’s experience is both broad and deep, spanning product definition, market research and analysis, distribution planning, sales management, product and technical support, manufacturing planning, financial operations, HR, engineering management, intellectual property and patent strategy, quality and regulatory management, fundraising, business development, clinical study design, medical education, healthcare economics and reimbursement.
In his earlier career at HP Medical, Starr developed the defibrillator strategy that led to tremendous growth in use of this technology beyond hospital settings. He was also part of the original HP DeskJet printer introduction team that presided over rapid growth from $200 million in revenue to more than $3 billion in five years.
Among the most notable challenges Starr has taken on is that of developing the first low-cost patient monitor for outpatient surgery teams – the Atlas patient monitor – which was ultimately funded and distributed by Welch-Allyn. As co-founder of Inovise Medical, Inc. – the organization that brought this innovation to life – Starr was directly involved in raising $50 million of investor money from angels, corporations and venture capital firms, including several overseas VCs.
More recently, Starr served as CEO of Sonivate Medical, Inc., where he led the restart and turnaround of an innovative point-of-service ultrasound technology. Here, he eliminated more than $1 million in debt and raised nearly $7 million, including $5 million in non-dilutive funding from the US Department of Defense. Sonivate went on to win several awards, including best of show at two major trade conferences and won two at prestigious angel investor conferences.
Starr holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts (cum laude) from Pomona College.
David G. Starr
Co-Founder and Executive Director
