Yener Balan, MD, FAPA is a board certified psychiatrist and is currently the executive director of behavioral health for a major health care organization. He is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, has extensive years of experience working in high volume community emergency departments, is an expert on hospital operations, and has given lectures and workshops worldwide.

Yener was born and raised in New York City, and while he still misses the East Coast, has made a home for himself in Oakland, CA, where he lives with his wife and 5-year-old son.

Karen Murrell, MD, FACEP, MBA is board certified in emergency medicine and has her MBA with a focus on operations from the Physician Executive MBA program at the University of Tennessee. She is currently the physician lead for emergency medicine for a multihospital health care organization and is a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. She is on faculty at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Haslan School of Business at the University of Tennessee. Her expertise is in ED and hospital flow and Lean for healthcare. She has lectured extensively and published papers on these subjects.

Karen lives in Sacramento, CA, with her husband Richard, teenagers Jack, Maggie and Emily and their two dogs, Lucy and Larry.

Christopher Lentz, MS, LMFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in the Northern California area. Christopher has 20 years of experience working in the mental health field working with a diverse range of patients, both in age and ethnicity. His experiences range from direct patient assessments and counseling in an outpatient setting, to administrative leadership in an emergency department setting. Christopher has also served as a direct care mental health clinician for a publicly funded inpatient psychiatric facility, providing psychiatric assessment, diagnoses and case management services for the facility. Christopher has acted as a front line emergency department mental health clinician for many years, providing psychiatric assessment, diagnoses, treatment plan recommendations and discharge plan recommendations to emergency department care teams. He has also served as an administrator for the psychiatric consultation services of one of the busiest emergency departments in Northern California, helping to transform and drive the level of psychiatric patient care to new heights.

Christopher currently acts in a consultative role for a major healthcare organization. He resides in Northern California with his wife and two children.