Tuesday October 21, 2025
Keynotes
Get ready to be inspired! This year’s keynote speakers bring bold ideas, fresh perspectives, and a deep commitment to advancing healthcare.
Their stories will spark conversation, challenge assumptions, and energize our shared mission. Whether you are seeking insight, motivation, or connection, these voices will set the tone for an unforgettable experience.
OPENING CEREMONY KEYNOTE
Senior Director, Department of Public Safety and Security
University of Michigan and Michigan Medicine
CLOSING CEREMONY KEYNOTE
Workplace Safety and Leadership Speaker
Rare Disease Advocate (MPS/ML)
OPENING CEREMONY KEYNOTE | Monday, May 18
Brian Uridge, MPA, CPP, CHPA, CTM
Senior Director, Department of Public Safety and Security
University of Michigan and Michigan Medicine
Achieving a Culture of Zero Violence
Leadership Strategies to ensure our patients, staff and visitors are safe and just as importantly, feel safe.
Violence is one of the most significant occupational hazards facing health care workers today. According to OSHA, 75% of all workplace violence occurs in health care settings. In 2023, National Nurses United reported that 81.6% of nurses experienced at least one type of workplace violence in the past year, and nearly six in ten said these incidents led them to consider leaving their job, their profession, or to actually make a career change. These alarming statistics highlight not only the frequency of violence in health care but also its direct impact on workforce stability, morale, and patient care.
To address this crisis, organizations must adopt a system-wide strategy that treats every health care facility as a community, with each floor functioning as a unique neighborhood with its own dynamics. Building trust, transparency, and continuous training into daily operations is essential to reducing fear, fostering collaboration, and creating a safer environment of care. A community-policing–based model—focused on proactive engagement, nontraditional staff interactions, professionalism, targeted training, and robust critical incident response—provides the framework for a resilient security program. This approach not only reduces risk and anxiety but also strengthens retention and reinforces a culture of safety for staff, patients, and visitors alike.
OBJECTIVES
- Provide guidance on implementing community-focused security approaches rooted in safety, trust, training, and technology, including CPTED strategies and innovative stakeholder engagement to support leaders in creating a safer environment of care.
- Examine strategies for incorporating multidisciplinary violence prevention programs, advanced detection technologies, and Security/Pet Therapy K-9 Programs, with an emphasis on leadership’s role in policy, personnel, and clinical collaboration to ensure safety within the care environment.
- Explore methods for developing cost-effective, scenario-based training programs that strengthen situational awareness, proxemics, and de-escalation, highlighting how leadership ensures safety during training to build a resilient and secure environment of care.
About Brian Uridge
Brian Uridge has more than three decades of experience in law enforcement, healthcare security, and fire service. Since 2018, he has served as deputy director of public safety and security for the University of Michigan and director of security for Michigan Medicine at the University of Michigan. In this capacity, Brian Uridge oversees security and law enforcement personnel for a health system with 34,000 employees. that is visited by three million patients per year. A certified police officer for the university, he manages a full-time team, including clinical trainers, a K-9 team, security staff, and a community policing unit.
During his first few years with the University of Michigan, Mr. Uridge helped create the health system’s first K-9 program and developed a home health tactical safety training procedure. Before that, he spent three years as director of security services for Spectrum Health System in Grand Rapids.
Brian Uridge holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Ferris State University and a master’s degree in public administration from Western Michigan University. He also studied advanced criminal justice at the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy, which selects less than two percent of law enforcement officers from across the country.
CLOSING CEREMONY KEYNOTE | Tuesday, May 19
Mercedes Ramirez Johnson
Workplace Safety and Leadership Speaker
Rare Disease Advocate (MPS/ML)
Second Chance Living
Leadership Strategies to ensure our patients, staff and visitors are safe and just as importantly, feel safe.
Many people feel so overwhelmed by daily pressures and obligations that they find themselves in Survival Mode, operating with the assumption that there will always be a tomorrow in which they can fix today’s problems, right today’s wrongs, and take care of the truly important things they wished they’d done today.
Second Chance Living is a transformational program that moves participants to put their challenges in perspective and to carefully consider how the choices they make will profoundly affect their future. Mercedes’ message focuses on personal success, overcoming challenges and finding authentic fulfillment. Through her gripping, poignant and yet humorous account of her plane crash and long-fought recovery, Mercedes proves that everyone can achieve their dreams.
OBJECTIVES
- Build Confidence and Ownership: Face challenges with confidence, take control of your life, and understand what drives your success.
- Inspire Impact and Perspective: Highlight the power of personal actions, the value of gratitude, and the difference one person can make.
- Spark Passion and Purpose: Encourage urgency, passion for life, and intentional choices that lead to thriving, not just surviving.
About Mercedez Ramirez Johnson
In 1995, Mercedes Ramirez Johnson narrowly survived a commercial airplane crash that killed 160 people, including her parents. As one of only four survivors of this tragedy, she vowed that she would make her second chance at life count…and that she has—not only for herself, but also for the tens of thousands of people who have heard her story and her message.
Transformational, passionate, inspiring, and genuine. That is how clients and audiences describe Mercedes and her programs. Many speakers who have overcome great adversity are deeply inspiring but rarely offer their audiences more than momentary motivation. Content-driven presenters provide practical advice but are often short on inspiration. Mercedes offers both. Weaving workable solutions throughout an emotionally compelling story, she touches people’s hearts and minds. Her proprietary Second Chance Living™ concept, an innovative mindset and approach with a proven track record, offers participants a blueprint for change along with specific tools they can use immediately in their professional and personal endeavors. In addition, her message that experience is no guarantee is having a tangible and powerful impact on safety initiatives and programs across the country.
Mercedes presents to companies, associations, faith-based organizations, government agencies and higher education institutions across the U.S. and Canada. Her clients include some of America’s most respected organizations, such as General Electric, Verizon, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Gulfstream Aerospace, Suncor Energy, Meeting Planners International, The Environmental Protection Agency and The National Catholic Youth Conference, where she spoke to over 15,000 clergy and youth.
Before becoming a speaker, Mercedes spent nearly a decade in high-level sales in the pharmaceutical and medical software industries. A record-breaking, multimillion-dollar producer, she became the youngest female and sole Latino account executive at Cerner Corporation. As a result, she understands the challenges and opportunities today’s professionals face and has both the capability and the credibility to cross professional, generational, gender and ethnic gaps to connect with people from all backgrounds and levels.
Mercedes and her story have been the subject of considerable national and international media coverage. Her extensive media experience includes appearances on ABC’s PrimeTime, The BBC, National Geographic Channel, Discovery Health Channel and as a recurring guest on The Montel Williams Show. In addition, numerous national magazines and major-market newspapers have run cover stories and special-interest pieces about her.
Mercedes has received national awards for her work, influence, and dedication to improving the lives of others. She was recognized as one of the country’s top young Hispanic up-and-comers by People Magazine’s Spanish edition, People en Español. INROADS, Inc., an international organization dedicated to developing talented minority youth, voted her Alumni of the Year. In addition, she was recently honored as Volunteer of the Year for Christ Haven for Children, a home for neglected children in Texas. In memory of her parents, she established a scholarship for minority students at Northwest Missouri State University, where she actively serves as an Executive Member of the university’s Foundation Board.
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