New Hires and Promotions: Spring 2019

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Alissa Drescher, MA, LPC, GC-C
Alive Grief Center Director

Alissa Drescher joins Alive from the Grief Center of Middle Tennessee (which she founded in 2018). She also served as a speaker with PESI Education, educating mental health providers on grief. Her prior experience includes serving as the interim executive director and senior program director at the Tristesse Grief Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and teaching as an adjunct professor at Southern Nazarene University. Drescher holds a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy with a focus in Play Therapy.


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Corrinne Ehlert
Senior Director, Quality and Compliance

Corrinne Ehlert brings 30 years of health care clinical operations and quality and compliance to Alive. Prior to joining Alive, she served as vice president of clinical operations for Compassus Hospice and Palliative Care. She is a certified trainer for the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium and earned a bachelor’s degree in health care administration from St. Joseph’s College in Maine.


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Ashley Kowalski, RN
Director of Maple Team

Ashley is a registered nurse with deep experience caring for terminally and chronically ill patients. She joins Alive from Tennessee Oncology where she was a clinical manager. Prior to that she was a central nursing team manager for Aspire Health. She earned her BS in Nursing from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.


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David McCray, MD
Alive Pediatric Team Physician

Dr. McCray joins Alive’s pediatric care team from Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital in Murfreesboro. He also teaches in the Department of Family Medicine, College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center/Memphis. Dr. McCray earned his Doctor of Medicine from Northwestern University in Chicago and did his residency in family practice at John Peter Smith Hospital, Fort Worth, TX. He is a certified by the American Board of Family Practice and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians.


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Martha Presley, MD, JD
Medical Director, Alive Palliative Care

Dr. Martha Presley joined Alive as medical director of palliative care services and will manage the expansion of Alive Palliative Care. She comes to Alive from Aspire Health, where she was senior consultant to the CMO, lead physician for Tennessee, and lead physician for oncology. Prior to that she was a clinical fellow in palliative medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and served as a policy associate to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD. She holds a MD from Vanderbilt University Medical School and a JD from Vanderbilt Law School.


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Jessica Turley, MSN
Director of Alive Palliative Care

As director of Palliative Care at Alive, Jessica oversees operations for both inpatient palliative care with our Tri-star hospital partnerships as well as our new partnership to provide palliative care at Tennessee Oncology clinics. Prior to Alive, she was the regional vice president of clinical operations over the Southeast at Aspire Health. She received her MSN from Belmont University in Nashville and is board certified in hospice and palliative care.

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