Pascal Metrics brings together leaders and advisors with experience relevant to transforming patient safety & risk.Leadership & Advisors

Drew Ladner, MA, MBA

President & CEO

Read bioHide bio+

Drew Ladner is the founding President and CEO of Pascal Metrics, which developed the intellectual property to enable health systems to monitor, measure, manage, and reduce patient safety and risk at scale. The Pascal Metrics solution generates clinically validated adverse event outcomes data based on real-time EHR and health IT data (AE Outcomes)—also the optimal if not essential training data for safe AI in this domain. A pioneer in patient safety and risk technology, Drew previously served as CIO of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and General Manager at JBoss, and held roles at AOL Time Warner and Netscape. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Drew holds a BSFS from Georgetown University, an MA in theology from the University of Oxford, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr. David Stockwell, MD, MBA

Chief Clinical Officer

Read bioHide bio+

Dr. David Stockwell is Chief Clinical Officer at Pascal Metrics and previously Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. A practicing physician for more than 20 years, he pioneered the clinical use of EHR data to detect harm, leading a national collaborative of children's hospitals that partnered with the FDA and EHR vendors, and co-leading an AHRQ-funded pediatric safety measurement effort. Widely published, he advises CMS, the National Quality Forum, and AHRQ on quality metrics. He previously directed the pediatric ICU at Children's National, and earned his MD from the University of Oklahoma and his MBA from George Washington University.

Sarah Pratt, MHA

Vice President of Operations

Read bioHide bio+

Sarah Pratt is Vice President of Operations at Pascal Metrics, where she leads client and clinical operations that help health systems succeed with Pascal's solutions. Over nearly two decades, she has built deep cross-functional knowledge of healthtech and health system operations, with a focus on patient safety and leadership development. Before joining Pascal, she helped establish safety culture assessment best practices grounded in research from Johns Hopkins' Quality and Safety Research Group, and oversaw the curriculum for the American Hospital Association's Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship. She holds an MHA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a bachelor's degree in business administration from James Madison University.

Susanne Miller, RN, MS

Vice President of Clinical Informatics

Read bioHide bio+

Susanne Miller is Vice President of Clinical Informatics at Pascal Metrics, a registered nurse and health IT leader with 25 years of experience. She joined Pascal in 2013 and oversees Pascal's clinical surveillance products and the integration of client EHR and source-system data into Pascal's cloud platform, and led Pascal's day-to-day work supporting CMS development of EHR-based harm measures. Previously, she was lead product manager at TheraDoc, a pioneer of real-time infection control, where she worked with the CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network on national reporting. Susanne holds an MS in Nursing Informatics from the University of Utah and a BSN from Kent State University.

Jim Pallotta, MBA

Vice President of Business Transformation & Managing Partner, Pascal Strategy

Read bioHide bio+

Jim Pallotta is Vice President of Business Transformation and Managing Partner of Pascal Strategy, where he leads enterprise-wide engagements that combine clients' administrative and risk data with Pascal's adverse event outcomes data to unlock value that traditional risk management cannot reach. A 15-year leader in operations and strategy, Jim was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, focused on operations transformation, automation, and AI in healthcare, medtech, and financial services. He previously built automation and innovation programs at SunTrust Bank, consulted with Accenture, and began his career at Morgan Stanley. He holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Emory University.

Scott Smith, MA

Vice President of Product Management

Read bioHide bio+

Scott Smith is Vice President of Product Management at Pascal Metrics. He joined Pascal in 2017 and has since turned in-depth user research into product design in close partnership with product management and engineering. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Scott brings a disciplined approach to listening to users, analyzing behavior, and understanding needs. Over 20 years, he has designed award-winning user experiences in healthcare and financial technology for organizations including Cleveland Clinic, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, The Hartford, and The Advisory Board Company, as well as for consumer brands such as Procter & Gamble, Delta, and JetBlue.

John Allison, CPA, MAcc

Vice President of Finance

Read bioHide bio+

John Allison is Vice President of Finance at Pascal Metrics, bringing 15 years of accounting and finance leadership from startups to public companies. Most recently CFO of a precious metals company, he previously served as Controller of an AI/ML SaaS company serving the oil and gas refining industry, where he helped raise more than $100 million and grow annual recurring revenue from $3 million to $30 million. Earlier, he led accounting through two $400 million acquisitions at an oil and gas startup. John is a Texas-licensed CPA, teaches accounting at St. Edward's University, and holds an MAcc and BA from Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi.

Vishal Naik, MS, BE

Chief Architect

Read bioHide bio+

Vishal Naik is Chief Architect at Pascal Metrics, where he has designed and built the company's software platform since 2010. With more than 15 years of experience across the full software development life cycle, he leads the architecture of Pascal's HIPAA-compliant SaaS platform for real-time clinical surveillance and adverse event detection. Vishal works closely with product and design teams to turn client needs and business priorities into engineering solutions, drawing on deep expertise in Java, Go, Scala, HL7 integration, and distributed data systems. He holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Houston and a BE in Information Technology from Mumbai University.

Dr. David Classen, MD, MS

Advisor since 2012

Read bioHide bio+

Dr. David Classen has advised Pascal Metrics since 2012. A Professor of Medicine at the University of Utah, he is a pioneering global expert in trigger-based harm detection: he co-developed the IHI Global Trigger Tool, used by more than 500 organizations worldwide, and created the EHR flight simulator used by the National Quality Forum. He has authored more than 150 journal articles on patient safety, health IT, and quality. Dr. Classen received his bachelor's and MD degrees from the University of Virginia, undertook postgraduate training in internal medicine at the University of Connecticut, and an infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Utah. He then obtained a master's degree in medical informatics, also from the University of Utah.

Barbara Pelletreau, RN, MPH

Advisor since 2023

Read bioHide bio+

Barbara Pelletreau has advised Pascal Metrics since 2023. She retired as Senior Vice President of Patient Safety at CommonSpirit Health, one of the nation's largest nonprofit health systems, after holding the same role at Dignity Health, where she led system-wide high reliability, CANDOR, and harm-reduction programs. She serves on the Hospital Quality Institute board, advises Care.ai, and has served on an AHRQ technical expert panel.

Tim McDonald, MBA

Advisor since 2025

Read bioHide bio+

Tim McDonald joined Pascal Metrics as an advisor in 2025. Co-founder of Guidon Partners, he has led marketing strategy for high-growth healthcare services companies, including as Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Amerigroup before its sale to Anthem and as a vice president at UnitedHealthcare. He serves on the Executive Advisory Board of Penn's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and holds degrees from Princeton and Wharton.

Keyvan Azami, MSc

Advisor since 2025

Read bioHide bio+

Keyvan Azami joined Pascal Metrics as an advisor in 2025. As Senior Engineering Manager for Enterprise AI at Google, he leads development of foundational enterprise large language models and AI solutions for finance, legal, human resources, and operations. He previously led trading technology at BGC Partners, RBC Capital Markets, HSBC, Bloomberg, and Barclays, bringing extensive financial technology experience. He holds an MSc in Computer Science.