Webinars

Paul McKellips

Paul McKellips is a professional communications trainer, motivational speaker, author, director, and humanitarian. McKellips was the writer, director, and producer of four family motion pictures that are still in worldwide television and streaming distribution after limited theatrical releases and long runs on premium cable channels like HBO, Starz, and Showtime.

After 9/11, McKellips left Los Angeles for Washington, DC to apply his skills in the Global War on Terror. He was a national TV news correspondent covering the Pentagon, Supreme Court, and the State Department before joining the U.S. Department of Agriculture as Deputy Press Secretary. McKellips was detailed to the State Department and deployed to Iraq as the Global Outreach Officer and Crisis Communications expert. He was NATO’s Public Affairs trainer to the Afghan National Army in Afghanistan serving at a remote military base in the Hindu Kush region along the Pakistan border. From 2007 to 2015, he served as the Executive Vice President, Public Affairs at the Foundation for Biomedical Research before receiving a White House appointment to serve as Press Secretary for FEMA during the hurricanes of Harvey, Irma, and Maria as well as the devastating California wildfires. From 2015 to 2023, McKellips served as the Director of Strategic Communications for various U.S. Army divisions at the Pentagon. He currently serves as the contracted Chief of Communications for USAID, Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance in Washington, DC.

McKellips created and produced the “Bench to Bedside” episodic television series on biomedical research, earning 11 regional Emmy® nominations and worldwide distribution. McKellips has written six novels and is often used as a motivational guest speaker, coaching scientists and early career professionals on how to be effective public speakers and platform presenters with dynamic mastery. In the past year, he has been a featured speaker for NIH, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, and the American College of Toxicology.

His three sons are military officers, two in the Navy and one infantry officer in the Marine Corps who is currently deployed in the eastern Mediterranean. McKellips and his Golden Retriever, Mac, live on a lake in Virginia.

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Jay Stallons, PhD, DABT, Tiresias Consulting, LLC

Dr. Jay Stallons is a preclinical toxicologist and the founder and principal at Tiresias Consulting, LLC. He provides strategic and operational support for preclinical development of human and veterinary medicines with a specialty in AAV gene therapy.

Prior to starting his own firm in 2023, Dr. Stallons was Associate Director of Nonclinical Safety Evaluation at Sangamo Therapeutics where he was responsible for development and implementation of nonclinical strategies for AAV gene therapy products for treatment of rare neurologic disorders. In this role, Dr. Stallons was responsible for design of the preclinical development strategy and disease model selection on one program as well as gap analysis and oversight of report completion for IND-enabling studies on another program.

Before joining Sangamo, Dr. Stallons was responsible for all aspects of safety in product development roles with increasing responsibility at Elanco Animal Health. At Elanco, he was responsible for design and implementation of global safety strategy for companion animal products. He developed therapeutics in areas including dermatology, pain, metabolic diseases, and parasiticides. He wrote regulatory submissions for the US, Canada, EU, Australia, Japan, and Brazil, and concurred protocols with FDA/CVM. Dr. Stallons represented Elanco at industry consortia including the Animal Health Institute, at meetings with Regulatory Authorities, and in the scientific community via publications and presentations.

Dr. Stallons holds a PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of Louisville where he studied environmental mutagenesis and carcinogenesis. During a postdoctoral fellowship with Rick Schnellmann at the Medical University of South Carolina, he focused on development of animal models for kidney disease and screening drug candidates for safety and efficacy. He maintains active certification as a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology.