Lake Nona Impact Forum Team

Gloria Caulfield leads health and wellness strategy and planning for the Lake Nona Institute. Gloria is passionate about identifying partners who are skillful at collaboration and have the desire to innovate solutions that have the potential to move the needle on community health and wellness.

Mr. Rasesh “Sesh” Thakkar serves as Senior Managing Director of Tavistock Group and has been with the Group for 25+ years. Mr. Thakkar’s areas of experience ranges across industries such as life sciences, financial services, real estate, and leisure services as well as corporate finance and structures, mergers and acquisitions, strategic planning and operations. He’s also known for being one of the visionaries behind Lake Nona.

Mr. Thakkar serves as a Director of Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, the Orlando Economic Development Commission, the Central Florida Partnership, the University of Florida Cancer Center at Orlando Health, and The Florida Council of 100.

Ally received her Bachelor of Science Degree (majoring in Biology and minoring in Cultural Anthropology) along with a Certificate in Global Health from Duke University and her MD from Emory University School of Medicine. She also obtained a master’s degree in Public Health from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She completed her internal medicine residency at New York University (NYU) where she trained at NYU Langone Medical Center, the Manhattan VA Medical Center, and Bellevue Hospital. Ally then chose to work as a board-certified academic hospitalist at University Medical Center in New Orleans and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta for the diversity of patients and cases those two inner city hospitals represented. She also supplemented her casework there by assuming the role of assistant professor at both Tulane University and Emory University, where she educated medical students and residents while publishing peer-reviewed research in national journals.

Working in concert with our Tavistock Development team, Ally is responsible for engaging with Lake Nona’s seminal projects such as our medically integrated sports, fitness and performance center including leading edge workplace wellness programs emanating from this enterprise that will be available to thousands of employees across the community, the Lake Nona Impact Forum which is focused on health innovation, the Lake Nona Life Project and the interplay between Lake Nona’s full range of medical facilities and community health and wellbeing programs.

In addition to Ally’s medical degrees and experience, her master’s degree in Public Health engenders greater sensitivity to keeping us on the forefront of predictive and preventive care benefiting a large community, all with a view to scale our learnings well beyond the borders of Lake Nona’s living lab environment.

Jessi Blakley, APR, is a Vice President with the Tavistock Group, working across the international investment organization’s broad portfolio that includes significant real estate interests both here in the United States and abroad. As Vice President of Strategic Communications for Tavistock Development Company, she leads public relations and public affairs strategies across the development portfolio, including the large-scale, master-planned communities of Lake Nona and Sunbridge in Central Florida, and Pier Sixty-Six in Fort Lauderdale.

An accredited public relations veteran, Jessi has a strong background as a strategic planner and counselor in the corporate, media, non-profit and consulting arenas, with an emphasis on reputation and issues management. She is an effective corporate advocate with policymakers and community stakeholders.

Prior to joining Tavistock, Jessi was a communications consultant with Consensus Communications in downtown Orlando, where her clients included Fortune 500 companies CSX and Walmart. She began her career with the Cable News Network (CNN) as a publicist for CNN, CNN Headline News and CNN en Español on-air talent, executives and programming initiatives. Located at CNN’s global headquarters in Atlanta, Jessi handled numerous successful media campaigns centered around major world events, including the War in Iraq, the Shuttle Columbia tragedy, the capture of Saddam Hussein and the 2004 political season.

Jessi is actively involved in the community and currently serves as an executive board member for the Greater Orlando Sports Commission, and board member for the East Orlando Chamber and The Christ School. She was previously appointed by the Governor and served a two-year term on the board for the Early Coalition of Orange County and is a Past President of the Orlando Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

A Fort Lauderdale, Fla. native, Jessi is a graduate of Auburn University.