Meet Our Team!

Chris Brandt

Chris Brandt is the Chief Executive Officer of Audacious Inquiry—he oversees client services, portfolio planning, product development, and operations. In 2004 he founded the company with a mission to use information technology as a change-agent for positive impact. Mr. Brandt led the effort to become one of the first recognized B Corporations in Maryland; integrating our company’s values with the work we take on has resulted in a greater footprint and alignment with our clients’ goals. Through his role in driving the company’s growth over the years, Audacious Inquiry has been consistently recognized in Inc. 5000’s list of America’s fastest-growing private companies, and in 2014, he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young for the Maryland Region. Mr. Brandt serves as a staff adviser to CRISP, Maryland’s health information exchange. He served on the boards of the Duke University Alumni Association and the Maryland Small Business Financing Authority. Prior to founding Audacious Inquiry, Mr. Brandt held information technology positions with Prudential. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an AB in Computer Science from Duke. Chris is a Fellow of the third class of the Health Innovators Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Scott Afzal 

Scott Afzal is the President of Audacious Inquiry and a Strategic Advisor for CRISP, a health information exchange serving Maryland, DC, and West Virginia. Across both roles, Scott establishes organizational growth strategies, delivery system reform initiatives, and technology solutions to support value-based payment models and connected communities. Through Audacious Inquiry, Mr. Afzal advises other states, health systems, and health information organizations on health information exchange (HIE) implementation approaches and sustainability strategy. Previously at CRISP, Mr. Afzal served as the Program Director for the organization’s first 10 years; he managed the roll-out of CRISP’s HIE network while leading the development of new service offerings. Scott is a noted speaker on HIE, having presented at regional and national health IT conferences. Prior to joining Audacious Inquiry, he served as a consultant with Accenture, Inc. out of their New York City office. Mr. Afzal holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) from Bucknell University.

Danny Krifcher

Danny Krifcher is Ai’s Chief Financial Officer and is leading our growth efforts. He is an experienced builder and leader of growth companies including Aledade, where he served as Chief Commercial Officer, leading efforts to expand commercial payer partnerships and other value-based care arrangements; and, Avalere Health, where he was EVP overseeing the company’s Data Analytics Practice, Sales Organization, and Business Intelligence Unit, as well as all corporate functions including Finance, Human Resources, Marketing, Technology and Legal. For more than a decade, Danny was an executive at America Online, where he founded and led the first internet incubator, AOL Greenhouse, and also served as EVP/COO of the AOL Dial-Up business. A Pittsburgh native, Danny graduated from the Wharton School and received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Samit Desai

Samit Desai is Ai’s Chief Medical Officer, offering his clinical perspective to support value-added product development, and he serves as a senior adviser to CRISP, a regional health information organization serving Maryland and the District of Columbia. Prior to Ai, Dr. Desai was the CMIO at St. Agnes Ascension Health. He is double boarded in Emergency Medicine and Clinical Informatics. He attended Drexel University School of Medicine and subsequently trained at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Later, he completed an ONC-sponsored Applied Clinical Informatics program at the Division of Health Sciences Informatics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Marie Klok Crump

Marie is a well-rounded executive with more than fifteen years of experience in commercialization. Marie has played instrumental leadership positions across operations, marketing, partnerships and sales for high-growth companies in the process of productizing services into software solutions. Among Marie’s recent accomplishment was co-founding and leading DATUM to a market leadership position in the metadata management and data governance markets. DATUM leadership position was recognized by independent analyst firms Gartner and Forrester in their Magic Quadrant and Wave reports. Most recently, Marie held the role of COO overseeing the initial commercialization of Mymee, a digital care company serving the autoimmune market. Marie continues to serve on the board of Mymee.

Marie holds a Bachelor’s in Business Economy and Management from Aarhus School of Business and a Master’s in Business Administration and International Marketing & Management from the Copenhagen Business School, both in Denmark.

Rob Horst

Rob Horst is a Principal and Privacy and Security Officer for Audacious Inquiry. He has over 15 years of leadership experience in the healthcare information technology domain. Rob creates meaningful and lasting partnerships with Ai customers in Maryland (CRISP), Delaware (DHIN), Utah (UHIN) and the Philadelphia Metro area (HealthShare Exchange), and oversees the deployment and optimization Ai’s leading Encounter Notification Service (ENS®). He also applies his domain expertise as a consultant to regional hospitals and health systems as they look to optimize the use and value of health information exchange tools. He previously taught Medical Informatics for the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, and served for over seven years as Director of IT Services at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, MD. His BA in Biology was obtained from Elon University and he holds a MBA in Business Management from Johns Hopkins University. Rob recently served as professional faculty for the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, where he taught Medical Informatics for four years. Prior to joining Audacious Inquiry, Mr. Horst served for over seven years as Director of IT Services at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, MD. Mr. Horst also holds a BA in Biology from Elon University and a MBA in Business Management from Johns Hopkins University.

Sunil Chandran

Sunil has a distinguished career with over 22 years of experience leading technical teams across the world.  Most recently he was the CTO at FranConnect, where he led a globally distributed R&D team in transitioning to a pure SaaS platform deployed on AWS. Prior to FranConnect, Sunil was the CTO at Strut Learning, a spin-off from Flatworld Education. Sunil served as the VP of Engineering at SAP, where he managed the R&D team for the SuccessFactors Learning Management System (LMS), a globally deployed solution used by over 18M learners.  He became part of SuccessFactors/SAP through the acquisition of Plateau Systems, where he transformed an on-premise LMS solution to a SaaS platform deployed on the cloud.  Sunil earned his computer science and engineering degree at Pondicherry University in India. He later earned an MBA from Virginia Tech. 

Bill Howard

Bill Howard is a Principal at Ai and is a champion for leading team collaboration, healthcare innovation, organizational growth, and technology-driven solutions. More specifically, Mr. Howard drives product development of ADT Alerts, Smart Routing, and Data Quality, among several other custom software development initiatives. His background spans 20+ years of experience with Healthcare IT product and process development focused on creating new solutions to support streamlined healthcare delivery and healthcare reform initiatives. By delivering results for a wide variety of startups, acquisitions, and global Fortune 100 companies, he has encountered multi-system, multi-vendor, complex IT system integrations, which serves as a strong foundation for challenges that lie ahead. Prior to Ai, Mr. Howard provided his expertise to 3M, Roche, IDX, GE, and was most recently the VP of Product Management and Solution Architecture at Caradigm. His BS in Engineering was obtained from the University of Vermont.

Greg Farnum

Greg Farnum is a Senior Vice President leading Ai’s federal business. Using his subject matter expertise in health IT and policy, coupled with program management capabilities, he  has demonstrated success of rapidly and reliably executing federal and state contracts of all sizes.  Mr. Farnum has 25+ years in leadership roles as a SME and relationship manager for state, federal and commercial clients. Mr. Farnum currently oversees Ai’s federal portfolio to ensure quality control and stakeholder satisfaction. Currently he supports various strategy, services and software contracts across numerous federal clients, and leads Ai’s hospital association work as well. In addition to his work with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services , Mr. Farnum has operated and worked with multiple health information exchange organizations to deploy population health tools, in support of health reform objectives. Before joining Ai, Mr. Farnum was the founder and CEO of the Vermont Health Information Exchange, called Vermont Information Technology Leaders (VITL). He was the former Vice President/CIO for the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems Network Services Organization (VAHHS/NSO), and he co-founded the New Hampshire/Vermont Strategic HIPAA Implementation Project (NHVSHIP). His Bachelors Degree was obtained through the University of Vermont.

Zack Novak

Zach Novak is a versatile executive specializing in the strategy, vision, and execution of product development.  Before joining Ai, Zach served as the SVP of Product Management at RLDatix (formerly Verge Health), where he directed the product and design efforts for 12 product lines serving health system customers across the US.  Zach has dedicated his entire career to improving healthcare in roles including engineering, sales, manufacturing, supply chain, and M&A.  He holds a BSE in biomedical engineering from Duke University and an MBA and MS finance from Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

Michele Hall

Michele is a seasoned HR leader with extensive background in all facets of human resources and a passion for building and sustaining workplace culture and developing strategies in collaboration with leaders and employees that influence engagement and productivity. Michele has spent the past 12 of her 15 years working in the healthcare industry in a variety of senior leadership roles working for Amerigroup and Anthem. Most recently, she served as Senior Director, HR Planning & Project Management for Inovalon Inc., creating and upgrading resources, practices and policies used by HR and the workforce. Primary responsibilities included partnering across HR and executive leadership to define talent and organizational challenges and build sustainable and scalable processes and solutions. Prior to Inovalon, Michele served as the CHRO for a provider of custom fixtures and programs for retail, technology, hospitality, food service and grocery industries, with state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities on the east and west coast. Michele earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in Human Resource Management from Pace University.