Executive Leadership

Board of Directors

Executive Leadership

Loy Howard
President and CEO, Tanner Health System

Loy Howard is only the fifth administrator/CEO in Tanner’s 50-year history. Howard came to Tanner as president and CEO in 1994 from the Union Hospital District in Union, SC, where he had served as CEO and CFO.

Howard is a certified public accountant. He earned his master’s degree in business administration from the University of South Carolina and his bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of West Florida. He is also a graduate of Leadership South Carolina.

Since coming to Tanner, Howard has served as chairman of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, been a member of Atlanta Business Chronicle's "Who's Who in Atlanta" 2006-2010, and earned the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce's Citizen of the Year award in 2008, the Chamber's Horizon Award in 2002 and the Visionary Award from the Follow Me Foundation in 2000.

Lee Sherseth
Senior VP, Chief Financial Officer, Tanner Health System

Lee Sherseth has served as chief financial officer of Tanner Health System since joining the organization in 1984. As CFO of Tanner, Sherseth oversees all business-related activity for the system, including accounting, health information management, transcription and coding, patient financial services, materials management and more. He is also responsible for Tanner Medical Group, consisting of more than 20 primary care and specialty practices operated by Tanner Health System.

Sherseth has previously served as chief financial officer at Wayne Memorial Hospital in Jesup, GA, Southeast Alabama Medical Center in Dothan, AL and Berea Hospital in Berea, KY. He has also served as an accountant at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, KY.

Sherseth is a certified public accountant (CPA), a member of the Georgia Hospital Financial Management Association and the West Georgia Chapter of the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants. He is also past president of the West Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants. Sherseth earned his bachelor’s degree in accounting from Eastern Kentucky University.

Larry Steed
Executive VP, Chief Administrative Operations Officer, Tanner Health System

Larry N. Steed is a lifelong resident of Carroll County, having grown up and attended public school in Bowdon. He attended West Georgia College – now the University of West Georgia – and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration.

Steed has been employed with Tanner Medical Center, Inc. since 1981. He began his work in the healthcare industry as human resource director in the Carrollton facility and moved into a senior management position in 1983 with responsibilities including both support services and clinical services over the next 12 years.

In 1995, he accepted the position of administrator for Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica and remained in that position until September 2007 when he was promoted to senior vice president with responsibility for Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica, Willowbrooke at Tanner and Higgins General Hospital in Bremen.

In 2011, Steed was promoted to chief operating officer for Tanner Health System. He assumed responsibility of all operations of Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton, Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica, Higgins General Hospital and Willowbrooke at Tanner. He also will continue to be responsible for support services, including food and nutritional services, engineering, environmental services, security and emergency management.

Steed is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives, a member of the American Hospital Association and the Georgia Hospital Association.

He is a member of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, where he previously served as a member of the board of directors. He is also a founding member of the Villa Rica Sertoma Club, and has served as president and chairman of the board for the organization.

Denise L. Taylor
Senior VP, Chief Community Health Strategy and Brand Officer, Tanner Health System

Denise Taylor joined Tanner in 1989, establishing Tanner Medical Foundation and serving as the foundation’s president and CEO. Taylor also serves as chief development officer of Tanner Health System, where she is responsible for marketing and public relations, programs for business and industry including occupational health and immediate care services, employee and community wellness initiatives and volunteer services.

She has previously served as the director of financial development for the YWCA of Greater Atlanta. Taylor has also worked as the director of development and was responsible for marketing and community development for West Penn Hospital, where she founded the hospital’s foundation in Pittsburg, PA, and the director of annual giving at the St. John Medical Center Foundation in Tulsa, OK.

Taylor earned certifications in planned gifts, capital campaigns and major gifts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor’s degree in business administration and marketing from the University of West Georgia. She is a member of the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development and a founding board member of the Community Children’s Home.

William C. “Bill” Waters IV, MD
Senior VP, Chief Medical Operations Officer, Tanner Health System

William C. “Bill” Waters, MD, joined Tanner in 2003 as an intensivist and medical director of the 12-bed ICU at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton, where he succeeded in setting a new standard for patient outcomes and providing an unparalleled level of patient care.

Dr. Waters was appointed to the senior leadership role of chief medical officer in 2007, where is he now responsible for a wide range of quality and process improvement initiatives, working to recruit and retain medical staff, overseeing infection control policies and procedures and more.

He has also been instrumental in developing and recruiting physicians to join Tanner Intensive Medical Services, delivering hospitalist services at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton and Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica and nocturnist services at Higgins General Hospital in Bremen.

Dr. Waters is board-certified in internal medicine and nephrology. He earned his medical doctorate from the Emory University School of Medicine and completed his specialty training in nephrology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He completed his residency at the Emory University School of Medicine and the University of Alabama Medical Center. He was named a Hospital Hero by the Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) in 2006.

Maria Russo
Senior VP, Chief Information Officer, Tanner Health System

Maria Russo joined Tanner in 2011 as the CIO, where she provides leadership, strategic direction and oversight for all aspects of Tanner's information technology department.

During the 24 years prior to joining Tanner, Russo amassed a broad base of operations and consulting experiences while serving multi-billion dollar organizations with thousands of employees. Most recently, she served as the chief information officer for Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s Healthcare in Louisville, KY. As a senior manager and outsourcing account executive at Ernst & Young/Capgemini in Philadelphia, PA, Russo served as a chief information officer for Tenet HealthSystem's eight-hospital eastern region. She also previously served as the applications domain managing director for Continuum Health Partners in New York, NY.

Russo earned her bachelor’s in management information systems from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA, where she graduated magna cum laude. She was a member of the Alpha Sigma Nu academic honor society and was the president/co-founder of the Information Systems Society at St. Joseph's.

She is a member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

Wayne Senfeld, Ed.S., LPC
Senior VP, Behavioral Health and Business Development,
Tanner Health System

Wayne Senfeld joined Tanner in 1998 as a program manager for the Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) at the Tanner Center for Behavioral Health in Carrollton. He worked his way up to assistant director, then director, and was promoted in 2008 to the position of administrator of Willowbrooke at Tanner, which opened in 2009 in Villa Rica and was, at that time, the first new behavioral health hospital built in Georgia in at least 20 years.

In 2010, Senfeld accepted GHA’s Community Leadership Award on behalf of Tanner Medical Center and Willowbrooke at Tanner. In 2011, former Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed Senfeld to a committee to evaluate and update the state’s Certificate of Need law, and he was elected to the Georgia Hospital Association’s Board of Trustees. He currently serves as the GHA’s board chair for the Psychiatric and Substance Abuse Division committee.

In 2012, Senfeld was promoted to senior vice president of behavioral health and business development for Tanner Health System. He is now responsible for Willowbrooke at Tanner’s inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services, as well as for developing and promoting growth and expansion for Tanner Health System.

Senfeld received a 2012 GHA Healthcare Heroes Award for his rigorous advocacy of patient care in the area of mental health and his outstanding progress in behavioral health program growth in the West Georgia area.