Department Heads

Chris Hardeman

Vice President of Operations

Chris is an accomplished and energetic leader with a background comprised of 15 years of operations leadership experience in the military, intelligence community, and healthcare environments. He has a proven track record of successfully leading highly skilled and diverse teams, solving complex problems, and achieving high impact results. Chris seeks to create a culture of trust through creativity, accountability, and by uniting team members around a common vision of success.

Chris attended The United States Military Academy at West Point for his undergraduate education and went on to attend Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management to earn his MBA. Chris is a board member of a healthcare nonprofit organization called the Willie Stargell Foundation, which aims to support patients and family members battling Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). He also enjoys volunteering as youth sports coach in his local community.

Kayla R. Meyer

Director of Human Resources

Kayla is an accomplished HR leader in the healthcare industry. She has experience working across a spectrum of settings, from independent physician practices up to a large multi-state healthcare system. Most recently, she was the Senior HR Director for US Radiology Specialists, a national PE-backed radiology company, where she provided executive HR leadership, partnered with operations and physician leaders to achieve strategic objectives and growth targets, and provided M&A integration support.

Throughout her career, she has successfully led process-improvement initiatives across all major HR disciplines including recruitment, benefits, employee and physician engagement, HRIS and payroll systems, employee training and leadership development, talent management, and compensation and incentive programs.

She is passionate about employee engagement and ensuring that company culture and HR practices create an environment of success for all. Kayla is based in the Charlotte, NC metro area and enjoys spending time with her two children, hiking, playing tennis, practicing yoga, and traveling in her spare time.

Michelle Vaughn

Vice President, Revenue Cycle

Michelle Vaughn is a seasoned professional with 36 years of revenue cycle experience. She worked with Mayo Health Systems for 17 years, moved on to Emdeon (ChangeHealth) for nine years and returned to the provider side in 2013 as a Senior Director of RCM for SunCrest, a home health agency with multiple locations. She eventually became AVP of Revenue Cycle for PhyMed and was responsible for RCM across the PhyMed organization and its subsidiaries, including Anesthesiology Medical Group.

Michelle and her husband have four children and three grandchildren and now live in Tennessee. They love to spend time hosting family and friends at their home and spend summers camping. A Minnesota native, she still loves hockey is forever a Vikings fan.

Amy L. Brunson

Head of Marketing and Communications

With 25 years of healthcare marketing and communications experience working in academic medicine, ambulatory surgery centers and outpatient addiction treatment, Amy’s focus is now primarily digital marketing, research and reputation management. With deep experience in vendor and digital platform management, directly increasing patient admissions via SEO and SEM while improving ROI has been at the recent forefront of her accomplishments. Enjoying the proactive pace, Amy has worked with numerous Private Equity backed firms as an employee as well as a consultant. Before joining Skin & Aesthetic Centers, Amy was Director of National Marketing for both Symetria Recovery and CleanSlate Outpatient Addiction Medicine (80+ centers), Director of Creative and Brand Marketing at AmSurg - an Envision Healthcare Solution (over 200 centers during her tenure) and Assistant Director of Marketing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (overseeing primary VUMC brand in addition to the Cancer Center, Heart Institute and Children’s Hospital).

Paul Ferguson

Director of IT

Paul has been working in healthcare IT for over 20 years, in multiple specialties. He has a wealth of experience in multisite, multi-region healthcare businesses where he gained expertise in the design, installation and configuration of scalable technological solutions. He’s a strong project manager and builds tenured teams that support practices through large and small changes while ensuring that S&A achieves its vision as a tech enabled organization driving positive change in the industry.