Lake Charles Memorial Health System Board of Directors
Denise Rau
Chairperson
As Chairperson of the Memorial Health System Board of Trustees, Denise presides over a group of community leaders in finance, media, public policy and business who volunteer their time and talents to advocate for the hospital.
After graduating from LaGrange High School in Lake Charles, LA, Denise earned her BS in Psychology from Tulane University and her MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her career began with 18 years of commercial banking in Dallas, Charlotte, and Lake Charles. In 2001 she founded Rau Financial Group, an independent financial services firm.
Denise believes strongly in community, having served on numerous community boards/fundraisers over the years. She currently serves on the Lake Charles Memorial Hospital Board of Directors, the Chennault International Airport Authority Board of Commissioners, and as Treasure of the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. She is also a Sustaining Member and Past-President of the Junior League of Lake Charles.
Louis M. Todd, Sr.
Chairperson-elect/Vice Chairperson and Secretary
Louis M. Todd, Sr. is Senior Vice President of HUB International. His commercial insurance agency, Todd & Associates, LLC was acquired by HUB on September 1, 2020. Louis has 40 years' experience as an insurance professional. A native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, Mr. Todd is a graduate of McNeese State University with a degree in Business Administration. His mission is to provide the highest level of service along with the most comprehensive professional insurance coverages. Mr. Todd and his HUB team value relationships with their clients based on integrity, results, and experience. Mr. Todd has a wide range of commercial insurance clients including a specialization with healthcare clients, such as hospitals, surgery centers, clinics, individual physicians, and physician groups.
Louis attained the professional designation of Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) in 1998. He has served on the Board of Trustees for Lake Charles Memorial Hospital for fifteen years and is currently Chairman Elect (he previously served as Chairman). He also served on the Memorial Hospital Foundation Board for nine years. Mr. Todd serves on LAMMICO Insurance Company's Agent Advisory Board and is Past Chairman. He has served on numerous other boards including Christmas In April, Junior Achievement, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Lake Charles Country Club, and Imperial Calcasieu Museum. Additionally, he has been part of a small nondenominational men's group for 25 years that meets every Monday at noon to pray for family, friends, our businesses, and our community. Louis has been married to Lisa for thirty-six years. They have three children and five grandchildren. Louis loves God, family, work, music, fishing, playing golf, and helping people.
Dr. Neil Aspinwall, EdD
Past Chairperson
Dr. Neil Aspinwall is the Chancellor of Sowela Technical Community College. Since 2012, he has led a dynamic and growing community college during a time of exponential growth driven by massive industry expansions in the Southwest Louisiana region.
Ranked the #1 community college in Louisiana for five years by WalletHub and Niche, SOWELA was also recognized as a “Great College to Work For” in 2021 by ModernThink. SOWELA has been providing higher educational training opportunities to the citizens for SW Louisiana for over 85 years and has become a strong economic engine helping to strengthen the regional economy.
With over $100 billion in industry expansions in the Lake Charles area, SOWELA is designing and implementing new programs and services to help provide the training needed to fill the thousands of jobs that will be created by these expansions. The college also continues to expand and add the facilities needed to keep pace with this thriving and diversified economy.
Dr. Aspinwall has served on the board of the Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance and is a Certified Economic Developer Trainer (CEDT). He also serves on the board of the Safety Council of Southwest Louisiana, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Board, and the Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS) Foundation Board.
Benjamin Azevedo, MD, MPH, FACP
Medical Staff President
Dr. Benjamin Azevedo serves on the Memorial Health System Board of Trustees as president of the medical staff. Dr. Azevedo will be responsible of performance improvement, quality assurance and physician advocacy.
Dr. Azevedo is a board-certified internal medicine physician who has worked as a hospitalist at Lake Charles Memorial Health System for six years. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and received his medical degree from Tulane University School of Medicine. Dr. Azevedo’s post medical training included a residency at Scripps Clinic/Green Hospital, where he served as chief resident.
Dr. Azevedo is a well-published physician and assistant professor at LSU Health Science School of Public Health. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Medical Association.
Edward Bergen, DO
Medical Staff Past President
As past-president of the Lake Charles Memorial Medical Staff, Dr. Bergen was involved with many aspects of Memorial Health System, including performance improvement, quality assurance, and physician advocacy.
Dr. Bergen is a fellowship-trained interventional cardiologist with the Memorial Medical Group. He is a graduate of Rutgers University and he received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey – School of Osteopathic Medicine. His post-graduate medical training includes an internship/residency in internal medicine and fellowships in cardiology and cardiac devices, at Brooke Army Medical Center. He also completed an interventional cardiology fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center – San Antonio.
Before moving to Lake Charles, Dr. Bergen served 14 years as a U.S. Army doctor at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso and Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He also served in Operation New Dawn in the 86th Combat Support Hospital at Sather Air Base, Baghdad, Iraq.
Alyson Jones, MD
Medical Staff President - Elect
Dr. Jones serves on the Memorial Health System Board of Trustees as president-elect of the medical staff. In the absence of the president, Dr. Jones will assume the responsibility of performance improvement, quality assurance and physician advocacy.
Dr. Jones received her undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Southern Mississippi and her medical degree from Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans.
She went on to complete an internship in internal medicine at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans and a residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas.
Dr. Jones specializes in inpatient care in the rehabilitation setting to a multitude of diagnosis including stroke, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, and orthopedic diagnosis. She is a member of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
Dr. Mitch Adrian
Trustee
Mitchell Adrian is the JP Morgan Chase Bank Endowed Professor of Management at McNeese State University. He is the recipient of a number of teaching and advising awards, including the Fuqua Award for Teaching Excellence. His research interests include organizational culture, business ethics and diversity issues as well as pedagogy in higher education. His academic publications include journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Business Administration, International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, the Journal of Hospitality and Leisure Marketing, and the Journal of Education for Business.
Dr. Adrian’s work experience includes retail operations, logistics, and project and construction management. He currently serves on numerous advisory and management boards including the Angels of Southwest Louisiana (angel investor group), Habitat for Humanity, and the Coushatta Economic Development Board.
Ulysses Gene Thibodeaux
Trustee
A retired chief judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeal, Judge Thibodeaux has been a member of Memorial Hospital's Board of Trustees since 2000. Prior to his election to the bench in 1992, Judge Thibodeaux practiced law for 17 years in New York City and Lake Charles and served as a Lake Charles City Court Judge for a year.
An honors graduate of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, Judge Thibodeaux earned his law degree from Tulane University Law School.
He is a member of the American Bar Association, American Judges Association, the Judicial Council of the National Bar Association, and the National Board of Trustees of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He is also a member of the Board of Governors of the Louisiana Judicial College, serves on the Louisiana State Law Institute, and is Vice-Chairman of the Louisiana Judicial Compensation Commission and past chairman of the Conference of Court of Appeal Judges. He is past president of the National Council of Chief Judges. Judge Thibodeaux also serves as president of the Lake Charles Charter Academy Foundation, Inc.
Amanda Ellington, MD
Trustee
Amanda Ellington, MD, is a board-certified general surgeon with the Memorial Medical Group.
Dr. Ellington graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in biological sciences from Louisiana State University. She went on to achieve her medical degree from Louisiana State University Medical Center in Shreveport. Her post-graduate training includes an internship and residency in general surgery at Louisiana State University Medical Center in Shreveport.
Dr. Ellington is board-certified in general surgery with a focus in breast cancer and surgical breast disease. She is a Fellow in the American College of Surgeons, a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society, a member of the American Society of Breast Surgeons, Isidore Cohn, Jr. – James D. Rivers Surgical Society and the John C. McDonald Surgical Society.
Clifford Courville, MD
Trustee
Clifford Courville, MD, is a fellowship-trained pulmonologist/critical care physician with Memorial Medical Group Pulmonary Associates.
Dr. Courville received his bachelor of science degree from Louisiana State University A&M, where he graduated with a 4.0 grade point average. He then graduated from the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans, where he received many awards for his outstanding performance, including the John B. Bobear Pulmonary Award, the ACP Internal Medicine Award of Excellence and the Richard M. Padison, MD Award for Physician’s Physician. Dr. Courville then headed east to the University of Alabama at Birmingham to complete his internal medicine internship and residency, as well as his fellowship in pulmonology. While there, he once again received several awards including Best Teaching Intern and Best Teaching Resident.
A member of the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Thoracic Society, Dr. Courville diagnoses and treats a variety of diseases and conditions of the chest including COPD, pneumonia, asthma, emphysema, lung cancer, critical care and other pulmonary and respiratory conditions.
William "Randy" Condos, MD
Trustee
Dr. Randy Condos, a retired cardiologist with Memorial Medical Group, serves on the Memorial Health System Board of Trustees.
After graduation from West Point, he completed airborne and ranger training before serving as an Army officer in Germany and Vietnam. Following his military service, Dr. Condos completed a masters degree in operations research/system analysis and taught mathematics at West Point for two years. He then attended medical school, internal medicine and cardiology training.
After cardiology service at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, Dr. Condos joined Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in 1991 with an interest in cardiovascular and peripheral vascular interventions. Dr. Condos served as the medical director of cardiology from 1997 to 2012 and was a cornerstone of Lake Charles Memorial Hospital's cardiovascular services for more than two decades. In 2016, Lake Charles Memorial Health System named its non-invasive cardiology unit the "Dr. William R. Condos, Jr. Cardiology Studies Unit" in his honor.
Continuing to serve the health system, not only as a valuable board member, Dr. Condos strives to educate the public, community leaders, medical professionals, business owners and legislative leaders on the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement program, an alternative to open heart surgery for low to high-risk patients.
Joe Miller, Jr.
Trustee
A native of Lake Charles, Joe Miller Jr. is Chief Financial Officer for the Dunham Price Group. He previously served as CFO at F. Miller and Sons, and, as a Registered Representative for the New York Life and Annuity Corporation, representing NYLIFE Securities and Mainstay Funds. After finishing at LSU in University College, he later obtained an Associate Degree in Finance from the American College.
Active in the community, Miller served as President of the Calcasieu Area Council of The Boy Scouts of America, a Chairman of The United Way Campaign, Advisor to the LSU Tiger Athletic Foundation and Co-Chaired the American Heart Association Gala. He is an alum of the Gamma Chapter of Kappa Sigma Fraternity and attends First United Methodist Church. He has three children, Dietz, Grayson, and Rosamond.
