Our Team

Mr. Beilis is the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer for the Department of Surgery at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the Executive Director of Columbia HeartSource. Mr. Beilis has over 15 years of executive management and expansive expertise in operations management, business economics, and hospital information systems.  He has worked with the HeartSource team for over 10 years. 

As the Executive Director of HeartSource, Mr. Beilis applies his expertise in developing faculty practice strategies, program management in academic institutions, community hospitals, and private practices.  He has extensive experience in program development, operations, quality management, service line expansion, physician practice management, database architecture and implementation.

Ms. Fisher is the Chief Administrative Officer for the Division of Cardiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.  She receieved her MPH from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and has over 30 years of experience in academic medicine and hospital administration.  Her areas of expertise and leadership include planning and project management, organization of complex situations, business development, practice acquisition and integration, physician practice management, and information system implementation.

Ms. Fisher has been involved with Columbia HeartSource for over 7 years.  Her areas of responsibilities with HeartSource include program and services development and management oversight. 

Paul A. Kurlansky, MD received his baccalaureate degree (cum laude) from Harvard University and received his medical degree from Tufts University Medical School.  He completed his post-graduate training at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. Dr. Kurlansky is boarded in Surgery, Thoracic surgery and with the American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review.

Dr. Kurlansky is the former Director of Research at the Florida Heart Research Institute in Miami, Florida.  In 2003, he joined the Columbia HeartSource team as the Director of Research, Recruitment and Continuous Quality Improvement.  An Associate Professor of Surgery at Columbia, Dr. Kurlansky is the Associate Director for the Center of Innovation and Outcomes Research.  He serves on the Quality Measure Task Force of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons as well as on the editorial board of several peer review journals, and has published extensively on cardiac surgery and quality outcomes.

Ms. Schnell earned her Baccalaureate degree in Nursing from University of Delaware and her Master’s degree from New York University where she was inducted into Sigma Theta Tau International, as well as honored with the Distinguished Scholar Award.  She has also received national certification as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner from the American Academy of Association of Critical Care Nurses.

With more than 25 years in healthcare, her clinical experience includes cardiac care unit (CCU), cardiothoracic step-down unit and both inpatient and outpatient heart transplant care.  Ms. Schnell is one of few clinicians that have experience with transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) from research to commercialization, and was a pivotal member in the development of The Heart Valve Center at Columbia University.  She has been an invited speaker at TVT, TCT, TCT @ ACC-i2 and ACC scientific sessions.  She has also served as a faculty member and consultant for TAVR staff and commercial program development.  As the nurse administrator for the group, Ms. Schnell applies her expertise in cardiovascular program development to support the daily operations of HeartSource.  

Ms. Smith has been a nurse for almost 30 years and a Perfusionist for 20 of those years. Her Clinical experience is in Cardiac ICU, General ICU, and CTOR. Additionally, she has almost 20 years’ experience in data collection and reporting to the New York State Department of Health and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Her primary focus for HeartSource is training and assisting our affiliates to collect and maintain accurate cardiac surgery data for internal reporting as well as reporting to agencies such as the New York State Department of Health and the Society for Thoracic Surgeons.