Program Summary: Meet Our Newest Members, June 24, 2021

Our program Thursday morning, June 24, featured get-to-know-you introductions from some of our new members: Joseph Diehl, Paul Meehan, John Pierce, and Roger Wylie. The addition of these four new members has substantially raised the average IQ of the Club.

Joe Diehl has credentials as both an accountant and a lawyer. He is the Principal at Joe Diehl & Co. LLC with over 50 years of experience in association management and accounting/finance. His most recent role was serving as Deputy Director of the National American Indian Housing Council (NAIHC) in Washington, DC. Joe has provided contract and consulting services to Nationwide Insurance, Northwest Indian Housing Association, AHMA of Washington and the Affordable Rural Housing Council (among others) over the past 25+ years. Joe graduated from Northern Illinois University with a BS in Accountancy and from the John Marshall Law School in 1979 with a Juris Doctor degree. He passed the CPA Examination in 1974 and the Illinois Bar Examination in 1979. A highly regarded speaker on a number of topics, he will address our club on Networking in the weeks to come.

Paul Meehan is a scientist with wide experience in biotechnology. He has a B.S. from the University of California at Irvine and received his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California in Physiology and Biophysics. He did Post Doctoral research at Tufts University in the lab of Klaus Miczek, Ph.D. studying the effects of anti-hypertensive drugs and benzodiazepines on aggression induced changes in heart rate and blood pressure in rats. He is now self-employed as a biotechnology consultant/professional. He has worked at Northwestern Health Sciences University, Zymogenetics, Artemisia BioMedical, UCLA and USC. He is yet another former Scoutmaster in the Club!

John Pierce is a Partner in Perkins Coie’s Energy and Environment and Resources and Business Practice Groups where he focuses on the representation of project sponsors and developers, financing parties and, occasionally, utilities in North America, Latin America, throughout Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia. John leads the firm’s carbon credit and hydrogen practices. He is the Co-Chair of the Perkins Coie CleanTech Practice; was co-founder and Chair of the Algae Biomass Organization; founder of the Pacific Northwest CleanTech Open; serves on the Board of the University of Washington School of Law’s Global Business Institute; and advises US Departments of State and Commerce on certain Southeast Asian and North Asian countries.

Roger Wylie is Managing Partner of the national law firm of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. He serves as the Scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 80 in Magnolia. As a registered patent attorney, he helps his clients protect and monetize their intellectual property assets. He manages several large groups of patent prosecutors to aid clients in obtaining patents for their technologies. He manages a team for patent prosecution and related services to an American international electronic commerce company and the world’s largest online retailer. Clients startups and include a well-known American outdoor recreation company specializing in camping gear and an American multinational software corporation that develops software. He has worked in a large number of industries, including software, medical devices, automotive, aircraft parts, consumer goods, complex machinery and sporting goods.

Paul Weibel and Jim Miller: Classification Talks

Our June 4, 2020 program:

Our program on the morning of June 4, 2020, featured two long time Club members giving re-introducing themselves to the Club (what is known in Rotary jargon as Classification Talks).

Paul Weibel retired from a large fundraising organization (the Internal Revenue Service) after a career 38 years. Now, he is active in Rotary, the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Project, and as a tax volunteer for the AARP. He grew up in West Seattle and volunteered for Army service out of high school. After a short career in the Army that included Vietnam, Paul received his degree in Accounting and went to work for the IRS. He has visited 30 countries, has 25 nieces and nephews, and has been with his wife, Roberta, since 1975.

Jim Miller, CPCU, is President of American Business and Personal Insurance, a firm that has provided insurance services since 1993. He has three children, all of whom reside in the Seattle area and three grandchildren (one of whom resides in China). He was born in Yellowstone National Park and received his BBA in Business Administration from the University of Iowa. He spent all four years in ROTC at Iowa, but emerged from college as the Vietnam war was ending. He is a retired Army Reserve Lt. Colonel with twenty years’ service in the Quartermaster’s Corp.

Classification Talk: Holly Henry

On October 13, Holly Henry gave us a zip-fast tour through her early years and thence into the pharmaceutical interest that first asserted itself during her days as a WSU undergraduate. Throughout her life, there has also been an undercurrent (so to speak) of aquatic activity, i.e., swimming and boating.

Her first exposure to pharmacies came with a job at Pay & Save. This was followed by one doing seminars for the WA State Pharmaceutical Assn. With a partner, she bought her first pharmacy at View Ridge. Thus began a series of ownerships varying from one to a maximum of seven. The last store was sold in March.

Then began a happy occupancy, with husband Mike, of a houseboat in which they traversed the route encompassing waters north of Vancouver Island.

Her passion has been community pharmacies and politics. She has chaired The WA State Pharmaceutical Assn. as well as the national organization. Of the latter she was but the second female president in its long history. The National Community Pharmaceutical Association has pulled away from the parent organization due to the latter’s lack of political action. She has lobbied for pharmaceutical issues both in Olympia and DC. An act was passed in 1979 for the maintenance of patient profiles including all medicines being taken. This guards against allergies and interactions. A provision has the pharmacist counsel patients with new Rx’s. to ensure good outcomes. Often (but not always–ed.) the doctor writes a prescription and has little follow-up. The statistics regarding outcomes for hypertensive and cholesterol-lowering drugs are consequently not good, as examples. This has given rise to legislation allowing pharmacists to order lab tests, modify drug therapy, and to prescribe. Such is the case with vaccines, under “collaborative contract”. WA was the first state to pass such legislation.

The question of compensation for pharmacists has arisen. While this has been a difficult area, it is now ordained that the payer must compensate another professional if his/her scope of practice is utilized. Drug pricing: There is “discriminatory pricing.” That is, different prices are assigned to a hospital pharmacy than, say a community one. While it appears that things are cheaper in Canada, our various prices average out to about the same. Much of the disproportionate pricing can be traced to two major “Benefit Managers”. These middlemen control most of the pricing to the extent that, for doing little of the work, they derive most of the profit. This helps drive prices up to their current stratospheric levels.

Comment: In that some of her drugs are given by the intravenous route, it can sometimes be a matter of The Holly and the IV.