The Human Advantage - Innovators driving the future of health
The Human Advantage is an annual keynote that brings together visionary leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are advancing the science and practice of performance, healthspan, and human potential. Through a three-act journey—from the emerging trends shaping the future of health, to inspiring five-minute stories of breakthrough ideas and real-world impact, to a look at the innovations and partnerships defining what's next—attendees will discover how better systems, smarter technology, and timeless human habits are helping people live healthier, perform at their best, and thrive longer. Join us for an evening of bold ideas, meaningful connections, and an inspiring look at the future of health.
Please select either In-Person or Virtual attendance — not both. For in-person attendance, reserve one ticket for each person in your party. For virtual attendance, select one ticket.
Speakers:
Jason Mejeur
Jason is the Co-Founder and CEO of Coya, a pioneering health and performance coaching platform that integrates wearable technology, behavioral science, and personalized coaching to help individuals achieve peak performance and longevity.
Jason spent 15 years coaching college basketball, developing a deep understanding of motivation, accountability, and sustained excellence under pressure. He now brings those locker-room-tested motivational techniques into the boardroom, helping business professionals and leaders perform at their best.
Through his work at Coya, Jason inspires individuals and organizations to take ownership of their health, performance, and long-term success.
Dr. Melissa Sundermann, DO
Dr. Sundermann has crossed 13 Boston Marathon finish lines and completed 3 Full Ironmans, but across the medical world, she is known simply as Doctor Outdoors.
For more than 25 years in clinical practice, her work has centered on a clear conviction: nature and physical vitality are foundational medicine, not recreational afterthoughts. Her guiding philosophy, "Age is not your cage," is something she proves on mountain trails as an ultrarunner just as much as in clinical consults.
What makes her perspective especially vital is where she applies it. As the Medical Director of Lifestyle Medicine at Corewell Health, Michigan's largest health system, Melissa is helping to embed prevention directly into the machinery of large-scale healthcare and actively shifting how institutional medicine approaches root-cause intervention, healthspan, and human performance from the inside out.
Andy Beckman, Director of Garmin Health.
Andy has built and scaled the business across corporate wellness, clinical trials, remote patient monitoring, military, insurance, gyms, and human performance.
This work asks him to look beyond the product itself. to prove the data actually changes outcomes for real people and real organizations. Because fuller dashboards don't automatically become better decisions. Someone has to sit at the intersection of the technology, the biology, and the business model and figure out how to connect them. Andy has been doing that work across nearly every vertical where wearable data touches human health.
In a space full of people selling the promise of data, he's one of the few who has spent almost two decades proving what it takes to deliver on that promise.
Chief Brian Rippee, Chief of Texas Highway Patrol
Chief Rippee has spent 30 years in the Texas Highway Patrol. He's now the Chief, responsible for thousands of troopers across the state. And the thing that keeps him up at night isn't just the danger on the road — it's what happens to his people off of it. The long shifts, the stress that never fully leaves, the habits that compound over a career, and later feel impossible to break. Officers are dying on the job or shortly after retirement from conditions that didn't have to be inevitable.
Chief Rippee has watched it happen for three decades, so he decided to do something about it. His mission is straightforward: help the men and women in his uniform build a lifestyle that serves them while they're on duty and long after they take the badge off. He wants every single trooper living so long and so well after their years of service that their retirement fund can barely keep up.
Cory Johnson, Partner and Benefits Consultant at JA Benefits
Cory looks at healthcare through the lens of commercial finance and risk management. For years, the incentives in the system have run in the wrong direction: hospital networks and insurance carriers grow their margins while employers and employees absorb compounding rate hikes with almost zero control.
The standard playbook tells companies to manage those costs by fighting over renewal rates. But negotiating an 11% increase down to 8% is still losing ground every single year. What could happen if we approached the balance sheet from the root cause?
Real financial control (and far better health outcomes) are on the other side of proactive lifestyle and behavior change that addresses sleep, nutrition, and physical health before chronic conditions turn into high-dollar claims. The real shift in human health is happening on the employer side, driven by brokers and leaders willing to rebuild the model from within.
Dr. Fred Reyelts, MD
“Dr. Fred,”is an innovative family physician who has provided more than 35 years of multi-generational clinical care and healthcare leadership. Sometimes innovation isn't about adding something to the healthcare system. It's about removing the things that get in the way of delivering great care. Dr. Reyelts is disrupting the traditional primary care model through Direct Primary Care—creating a fundamentally different relationship between physicians, patients, and employers.
After more than 35 years in family medicine, Dr. Reyelts brings a unique perspective: he has experienced the traditional healthcare system from the inside and is now helping build a different model. He is passionate about improving the healthcare experience for providers, healthcare teams, and patients. Dr. Fred was recently nominated by his peers and named a TOP DOCTOR by Grand Rapids Magazine.