The Maria and Sam Miller Professional Excellence Awards

Brigitte Folds has been a nurse at the Cleveland Clinic since April of 1997. She graduated from Kent State University with a BSN. She started as a new graduate on H81, which is a 36 bed Internal Medicine Telemetry unit. She has worked on H81 ever since.

Brigitte first worked as a floor nurse taking care of a very diverse group of patients for five years. She then became the Assistant Nurse Manager for the weekends for both H81 and H80 for three years. Then for the next five years she came to work as the Assistant Nurse Manager for day shift for only H81. She was offered the position of Nurse Manager on H81 which she has been currently in the last two years. She manages all the RN's, PCNA's and HUC's along with being responsible for all the patients and families on the unit.

Last May she opened up the Closed Observation Unit which is a specialized four bed unit for any patient that needs increased observation with 1:1 nursing care.

"I love working at the Cleveland Clinic and especially love working on H81, it is home to me. I am so passionate about what I do everyday for our patients, their families and my employees." Brigitte's pride and joy is her loving husband and her two active boys ages 10 and 8.

Kathleen Franco ,MD is Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Affairs and Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Franco graduated from the University of Toledo School of Medicine and completed residencies in general psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry. Her past experiences include director of medical student clerkship, residency training, student remediation and curriculum. She was on faculties of the University of Toledo and University of Vermont prior to her move to Cleveland. She has earned multiple honors for teaching and clinical care, including numerous Teacher of the Year awards, the Association for Academic Psychiatry Educator of the Year Award in 1994.the Bruce Hubbard Stewart Award in in 1997, the Nightingale Nursing Collaboration Award in 2001, the American College of Physicians Master Teacher Award for Ohio in 2002, the CCLCM Distinguished Faculty Award in 2006, and the Outstanding Faculty Award from the 2011 CCLCM graduating class. She is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American College of Psychiatrists, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She has been recognized annually as one of the ”Best Doctors in America” since its inception in 1993. Dr. Franco is widely recognized for her work in the areas of delirium, psychosomatic medicine, and medical education.

Dr. Franco grew up in southwestern Ohio and attended the College of William and Mary. She obtained a Masters degree at Ohio State prior to medical school. She treasures her relationships with colleagues, residents, students, and patients. She and her husband, Dr David Bronson, have 6 children, three of whom are in medicine, and one dear 3 year old granddaughter.

John Bartholomew, MD is Section Head of Vascular Medicine and a staff physician in the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute. He has a joint appointment to the Department of Hematology/Oncology. He is board-certified as a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Vascular Medicine. He is a Professor of Medicine for the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Bartholomew's specialty interests include clotting disorders (acquired and inherited), such as heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, antiphospholipid syndrome, thrombosis in cancer patients, protein C and S deficiencies, antithrombin deficiency and prothrombin gene mutation and Factor V Leiden, as well as elevated Factor VIII and homocysteine levels. In addition, Dr. Bartholomew's other clinical interests include peripheral arterial disease, the swollen limb including lymphedema, lipedema, thromboembolism (deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism), and leg ulcers.

Dr. Bartholomew is the Medical Director of the Pharmacy managed Anticoagulation program, as well as Director of the Vascular Medicine Section’s Coumadin Clinic. In 2003, Dr. Bartholomew was part of the clinical faculty for the Joint Commission Resources, Inc., for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospital Organizations (JCAHO). He has also been a member of the Deep Vein Thrombosis Steering Committee for the National Quality Forum, which sets the national standards for the care of patients with Deep Vein Thrombosis and Pulmonary Embolism. He currently serves as the Director of the Cleveland Clinic Health Systems efforts to prevent and treat deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.

Dr. Bartholomew was voted one of Cleveland's Best Doctor's by Cleveland Magazine from 2006 through 2011 and in 2004, 2002, 2001 and 1998. In 2001, he was named Teacher of the Year by Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Vascular Medicine.

He has published numerous articles and abstracts in professional scientific journals including the Annals of Internal Medicine, Transfusion, Cardiovascular Surgery, Circulation, the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, Chest, Archives of Internal Medicine, Journal of Pediatrics, and Vascular Medicine on topics related to smokeless tobacco and cardiovascular risk, peripheral artery disease, pulmonary embolism, and heparin-induced thrombocytopenia and deep vein thrombosis, among others. He has authored more than 50 book chapters in medical textbooks related to atheromatous embolization, stasis leg ulcers, hypercoagulable states, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, and peripheral arterial disease.

He is a fellow of the Society for Vascular Medicine, a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, a fellow of the International Academy of Clinical and Applied Thrombosis and Hemostasis. He is a member of the American College of Physicians, the Johns Hopkins Medical and Surgical Society, the American Society of Hematology and the International Society of Thrombosis and Hemostasis.

Dr. Lincoff is Vice Chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine and an interventional cardiologist in the Heart and Vascular Institute of the Cleveland Clinic.

He is the Director of C5Research, the Cleveland Clinic Coordinating Center for Clinical Research, an academic research organization which plans, coordinates, and manages multicenter clinical trials of new pharmacologic or device therapies. Dr. Lincoff’s research activities focus on development of therapies to reduce acute and long-term complications of percutaneous coronary revascularization procedures, to optimize therapy for acute coronary ischemic syndromes, or reduce progression or complications of atherosclerosis. He has served as principal investigator or steering committee member of over 20 pivotal trials in ischemic heart disease, enrolling in aggregate over 50,000 patients, studying new antithrombotic or metabolic agents in the settings of coronary intervention, heart attack, or unstable angina.

Dr. Lincoff supervises clinical research activities throughout the Cleveland Clinic as Director of the Center for Clinical Research and Vice Chairman for Clinical Research of the Lerner Research Institute. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. He holds the Charles and Charlotte Fowler Endowed Chair for Cardiovascular Research at the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Lincoff has authored or coauthored over 300 peer-reviewed articles, including publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Journal, and European Heart Journal. He has also authored over 80 book chapters and reviews and presented over 400 lectures at various medical meetings and courses throughout the world. He is the Consulting Editor of the American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs and serves on editorial boards or as a reviewer for over 15 peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Dr. Lincoff serves as the Chair of the Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee of the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Lincoff is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and a member of the American American Heart Association and the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society.

Todd has been a police officer for Cleveland Clinic for nine years. He is a field training officer, defensive tactics, taser and shotgun instructor for the police department and a member of the Cleveland Clinic Police Department Critical Incident Response Team as well as a member of the Cleveland Clinic Police training process action team.

Todd is a part-time police officer for the Grand River Police Department and worked as a Deputy Sheriff for the Geauga County Sheriff's Office. He was also a Guardsman for the U.S. Marshal Service Northern District of Ohio for over four years.

He loves providing a safe and secure environment to enable Cleveland Clinic to provide World Class Health Care. He served honorably with the United States Marine Corps and was discharged at the rank of sergeant. He was deployed overseas in 1991 in support of Operation Desert Shield/Storm and attended Non-Commissioned Leadership Scholl in Okinawa, Japan.

Todd is married to wife Rhonda Tommasone and they enjoy the outdoors and traveling across the United States. Todd grew up in Chardon, Ohio, and attended the Chardon School District.

Dr. Fairchild has an ongoing basic science research program of more than 20 years investigating the early inflammatory events that occur in cardiac and renal allografts. A major focus of this work involves events occurring within the first 72 hours of graft reperfusion and the impact of these inflammatory events on graft outcome. These studies have and continue to investigate the identity and magnitude of alloreactive T and B cell responses in the graft recipients. These studies were originally conducted in mouse models and have been extended to testing the induction of inflammatory markers in cardiac and renal graft biopsies from clinical transplant patients. Dr. Fairchild’s laboratory has also developed a novel model of antibody-mediated rejection that is used to investigate mechanisms of acute and chronic antibody-mediated injury in hetertopic heart and orthotopic kidney allografts in mice. In addition to these studies, Dr. Fairchild is the Director of the Molecular Core for CTOT-01 and CTOT-09. The goal of the Core is to identify biomarkers in blood cells, serum, and urine that are indicative of acute or chronic graft injury in cardiac and renal transplant patients using Luminex and qRT/PCR approaches to test levels of candidate inflammatory markers. Dr. Fairchild has trained more than 25 post-doctoral fellows, 4 MSTP students during the Ph.D. research portion of their program, and is the KO8 mentor for Dr. Emilio Poggio and actively participates in studies ongoing in Dr. Poggio’s research program investigating the presence and role of alloreactive T cell populations in renal transplant patients and the effect of different induction therapies on pre-transplant alloreactivity.