Welcoming New Board Members

By George Eighmey, President

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In 2016, Death with Dignity National Center is increasing its efforts to pass more physician-assisted dying laws throughout the nation. To help accomplish this goal we have added two incredibly knowledgeable and influential members to the Board of Directors.

We are fortunate to include Stephen Dunn from New York, who has business and financial background with numerous contacts throughout the East Coast, and Lisa Vigil Schattinger from Ohio who, as a nurse, is well-connected within the medical community in the Midwest.

With the addition of Stephen Dunn and Lisa Vigil Schattinger our Board of Directors has members coast-to-coast, from Arizona, New York, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington, and former, yet still active, board members from Colorado, Utah, and California—all states having a huge impact on our movement.

On behalf of the Board, staff, and volunteers of the Death with Dignity National Center, I welcome our new directors and look forward to working with them to advance Death with Dignity legislation around the US.

New Director Bios

Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Government. He studied Business Administration at the graduate level at both UCLA and USC. His early career was in hospital administration where he eventually served as CEO of Multi-Hospital Shared Services, Inc., a consortium of non-profit health care facilities.

Following a career shift, Dunn owned and managed S Dunn & Co, a real estate investment and brokerage company that handled a variety of commercial and industrial transactions. From this activity grew City Escrow, Inc. where he served as CEO, and the development of The Bank of Orange County where he was a founder and director and chairman of the bank’s loan committee. While still involved in the banking and finance field, he became aware of the introduction of electronic draft capture of bank credit card transactions. Bancard Systems, Inc., which Dunn founded in 1986, grew rapidly to become one of the largest card-processing companies in the nation; he led the company as Chairman and CEO until its sale in 1998 to one of the ten largest financial institutions in the nation.

Stephen’s retirement was “an utter failure”: he soon found himself serving on a number of non-profit boards principally centered around musical and theatrical activities. Additionally, he began an active enterprise consulting in the area of financial services and electronic funds transmission.

Stephen and his wife, Judy, live in New York and can often be found at one of a number of performance venues listening to and enjoying theater, classical music and jazz.

Lisa Vigil Schattinger, MSN, RN

Lisa grew up in Oregon and attended Linfield College. After earning her B.S. in Biology she worked in an Internal Medicine Office. In the early 1990’s, she followed and supported the push for Oregon Death with Dignity legislation.

In 1993, she moved to Budapest to work as a regional financial project manager for the U.S. Agency for International Development. She moved to the greater Cleveland, Ohio area in 1997 where she attended the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University, earning an MSN. She then worked as an RN and a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner.

In 2014, Lisa’s stepfather, Dr. Jack Rowe, died peacefully using physician prescribed medication permitted by Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. This sharpened her desire to bring Death with Dignity style laws to other states. In 2015, she founded Ohio End of Life Options and serves as its executive director. Lisa has also written numerous newspaper articles on the topic and spoken widely at conferences and medical schools.