The New York Academy of Sciences
Guiding the Reopening of American Business

Posted May 22, 2020
Presented By
Calls have been made to open the U.S. economy and return to normal as quickly as possible, but there is much still unknown about the path that the COVID-19 pandemic will take. In partnership with Deloitte, the New York Academy of Sciences assembled scientific, technological, risk, and operations experts to discuss guidelines and protocols for businesses to follow as they transition from modest reopening to full-scale operations. These conversations provide information on reports and tool kits available to date from multiple industries and provide informed guidance to help business leaders and employees evaluate risk as they begin to reopen safely.
In a roundtable discussion, leaders from four critical disciplines – law, medical science, risk and insurance, and AI – discussed the key elements of a coordinated and scientifically sound road map to provide the nation’s businesses (and their employees, customers, and suppliers) greater clarity and certainty as they transition back to business in the “new normal.”
In This eBriefing, You’ll Learn:
- How can businesses best ensure the health and safety of their employees and customers while mitigating operational risks and legal liability?
- Across industries, do best practices exist for businesses to design a plan, implement procedures, and monitor outcomes?
- What new solutions are available to address managing key business activities such as payments, customer contact, and employee/customer interactions in the “new normal”?
Speakers
Caitlin Rivers
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Mark Moitoso
Lockton
Elizabeth Milito
National Federation of Independent Business
Wolfgang Haupt
Augustus Intelligence
Caitlin Rivers, PhD
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Dr. Rivers is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on improving epidemic preparedness and response through the use of modeling and forecasting, data standards and data sharing, and public health policy. She is currently focused on the US response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Prior to joining the Center, Dr. Rivers worked for 2 years as a civilian epidemiologist at the Army Public Health Center, where she served as acting Branch Chief in the Disease Epidemiology Division, Chief Epidemiologist of the Health of the Force surveillance report product line, and manager of the Acute Respiratory Disease Surveillance Program. In those roles, Dr. Rivers worked with a team tasked with monitoring the health of army soldiers and their families. During that time Dr. Rivers also participated in a National Science and Technology Council interagency working group aimed at bringing pandemic prediction and forecasting in capabilities into the federal government.
Dr. Rivers holds an MPH in infectious disease, which she earned while concurrently studying for a PhD in genetics, bioinformatics, and computational biology, with a specialization in computational epidemiology. During her doctoral studies, Dr. Rivers was awarded a Department of Defense Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation Scholarship, which allowed her to join the federal government upon graduation in 2015. She was also awarded an Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Fellowship through the Center for Health Security in 2015.
Mark Moitoso
Lockton
As the risk practices leader, Mark is responsible for Lockton’s national practices, delivering customized solutions in the areas of property, casualty, captive consulting, risk finance, private equity, analytics, global services, risk control and claims. These solutions are delivered within a strategic risk consulting framework aligned with clients’ corporate operational and financial goals. Mark spends significant time delivering customized solutions to clients using advanced actuarial and statistical methodologies to help identify and assess risks, consult on how to best manage risk, optimize the purchase of insurance and lower their total cost of risk.
Having developed more than 25 years of underwriting company experience prior to joining Lockton, Mark leverages quantitative capabilities to drive decision-making and deliver superior results. He has spent the bulk of his career building a specialty in casualty products, including workers’ compensation, commercial auto and liability. Mark has experience both as a practitioner and user of advanced actuarial, underwriting and credit models. He graduated with a BA in Mathematics from Boston College.
Elizabeth Milito
National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)
Elizabeth Milito serves as Senior Executive Counsel with the NFIB Small Business Legal Center. Milito is responsible for managing litigation and amicus work for NFIB. She frequently counsels businesses facing employment discrimination charges, wage and hour claims, wrongful termination lawsuits, union avoidance and, and in most other areas of human resources law. She also provides and develops on-line and on-site training on a variety of employment law matters and is a frequent media spokesperson on employment and labor matters.
Milito is a graduate of The George Washington University and the University of Maryland School of Law, where she was editor of notes and comments for the Maryland Law Review. She served as a clerk to the Hon. Alan M. Wilner on the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.
Since March 13, 2020, Milito has been conducting weekly COVID-19 webinar briefings for small businesses.
Wolfgang Haupt, MD
Augustus Intelligence
Dr. Wolfgang Haupt is an entrepreneur working in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. A trained medical doctor, Haupt has founded and led several companies over the course of his career. Currently, he serves as Founder and CEO of Augustus Intelligence, an enterprise AI provider working to accelerate human progress by creating secure AI products that can be deployed by any business.