CommunityHealth IT (CommHIT) President and CEO Kendra Siler, PhD is a nationally recognized leader in technologies and workforce training and development to support rural and underserved communities’ needs, digital security, and information sharing. She has over 20 years of experience in complex healthcare, transportation, and communication issues, particularly in rural and underserved settings. Dr. Siler founded the CommHIT Initiative in 2008 as well as the CommHIT 501(c)(6)—established in 2011—which is now located at the Kennedy Space Center. Dr. Siler was an appointed stakeholder advisor to the Trump Administration White House Office of American Innovation, the Obama Administration White House Rural Council, and works in an advisory role to several federal agencies. After COVID was first discovered and became a pandemic, Dr. Siler was a panelist for a United Nation’s Event as an expert on the use of rural telehealth. Dr. Siler received her PhD from the University of Florida where she specialized in Immunology and Biochemistry, a boon in the COVID-affected world. In 2000, she was inducted into Gamma Sigma Delta (ΓΣΔ), the Honor Society of Agriculture and Animal Science. She received a National Research Service Award Fellowship to do post-doctoral research at the McKnight Brain Institute. During her time at the McKnight Brain Institute, she also started working on the best ways to protect the privacy and security of centralized health data. Dr. Siler currently serves as the UF Health Cancer Center’s Community Outreach and Engagement (COE) Advisory Council Chair, which works with all UF cancer researchers to ensure that UF cancer research is connected, and contributes value, to the UF service area. Starting in 2008, Dr. Siler led the development of the nation’s first rural-based Health Information Exchange (HIE); this HIE was appointed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to allow veteran-initiated electronic sharing of their My HealtheVet health records with civilian providers to improve veterans’ healthcare access—also a national first and White House-supported. She is the Wave 1 Lead of the HHS 405(d) Task Group and was a keynote panelist at the 2017 HHS healthcare cybersecurity initiative inaugural event alongside the HHS Chief Information Officer. The federal-award winning HHS 405(d) Program is a public-private partnership required under federal law to help healthcare organizations of all sizes improve their digital security practices. Dr. Siler has been an appointed expert for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board Panel for Emergency Management in State Transportation Agencies. In 2014, Dr. Siler developed the Care Coordination Neighborhood model, which is the foundation for Community Health Workers incorporating transport into their daily work with the community members they serve. For Dr. Siler’s depth and breadth of work in helping the nation’s rural health systems understand and adopt HIT, she received a 2013 Critical Access and Rural Hospital Champion Award from the head of the U.S. Office of the National Coordinator. Her work focuses on leveraging community health technologies, innovative healthcare access models, patient safety, and connected communities—ultimately creating a strong and flexible PUBLIC HEALTH WORKFORCE that can help patients day-to-day and in times of emergencies. Dr. Siler developed CommHIT’s Florida Department of Education-registered apprenticeship program called the Technology and Health Apprenticeship Program (THAP) [Florida registration GNJ (2022-FL- 111571)]. THAP houses apprentice occupations that are particularly important in communities that are rural or underserved.