About

Common Practice is a healthcare innovation company that focuses on one of the most pervasive problems in healthcare today: the avoided conversations about serious illness and death.

Jethro Heiko, CEO and Founding Partner

Jethro is the CEO of Common Practice, leading the company’s mission to make better conversations about advance care planning, serious illness, and death a common practice.

Jethro has over 20 years of experience applying his skills in community organizing, strategic nonviolence, and bereavement to authentically and deeply engage individuals, organizations, and communities. He brings his skills in leadership development, organization-building, and guiding multi-stakeholder initiatives to Common Practice’s drive for meaningful and systemic change.

Following the death of his father 20 years ago, Jethro founded a bereavement support organization which helped college students cope with the serious illness or death of a loved one. Jethro learned how meaningful these conversations about what matters most can be, and was struck that people do not have to wait until there is a health crisis to benefit from these conversations.

Jethro grew up in Boston and lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Chelsea, and his children, Hazel and Orson.

Nick Jehlen, Founding Partner

Nick leads the design and research practices for the company. Applying his background in human factors engineering and design, Nick has been creating innovative social interventions for over 20 years. These interventions are informed by his ongoing study of Gandhian nonviolent methods, including research into how popular movements create change on a societal level. His practice in nonviolent direct action focuses on bridging barriers to communication and the power of action to move both participants and audience to rethink problems and conflicts and come to lasting and ethical resolutions.

In 1993 and 1994, Nick traveled to Haiti on human rights observer missions and interviewed members of the resistance to the military coup. His reporting on these interviews was published in the Boston Globe. From 2006 to 2010, Nick was the lead designer and organizer of the Enough Fear campaign, which set up public phone hotlines between the US and Iran and used online tools to facilitate large-scale citizen diplomacy between Iranians and Americans through Facebook.

Nick is the lead designer of My Gift of Grace, a game that transforms anxiety about death into conversations about living.

Nick grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts and now lives in New York city with his wife, Amber.

Jeff Cohn, MD, MHCM, Medical Director

Jeff brings to Common Practice his deep experience in direct care for patients, and in ensuring that on an organizational level health systems have the processes and policies in place to continually improve quality throughout their operations. Jeff works directly with clients on the use of Common Practice tools and with the Common Practice design team on the development of new tools that support improved communication and effective decision-making in healthcare.

Jeff is a long-time change agent and student of behavior change. He is particularly drawn to the solutions like the Positive Deviance framework, which helps communities solve complex, intractable problems by identifying and building on what works. Jeff graduated from Jefferson Medical College, did his Internal Medicine Residency at Einstein Medical Center and his fellowship in Hematology/Medical Oncology at Emory and Johns Hopkins. He received a Masters in Health Care Management from Harvard School of Public Health.

For 11 years, Jeff was Chief Quality Officer and Patient Safety Officer for Einstein Healthcare Network in Philadelphia. He also served as Chief of Hematology at Einstein, and spearheaded the creation of the palliative care program at Einstein. Most recently, Jeff was President and CEO of Plexus, a non-profit focusing on improving health of communities and organizations by using innovative methods focusing on the sociocultural aspects of change.

Jeff is a native Philadelphian and lives in Ambler, a northern suburb. He has been married to his high school sweetheart, Marcie for 38 years and has two children, Alison and Josh who are married to two great children-in-law, Rob and Natalia. He is a former rock and roll drummer with a passion for music and a talent for retaining mindless trivia.

Nikki Torres, Office Manager

Nikki joined the Common Practice team in June 2015. With an extensive administrative background, Nikki oversees a variety of essential administrative and financial processes to help streamline systems and keeps the company running smoothly. She works closely with the CEO and partners to manage scheduling, sales support, and customer service issues. Her experience has become vital in supporting the growth of the company.

Before joining Common Practice, Nikki worked for a healthcare advertising agency, where she oversaw a large office. There, she learned how to manage an office that was experiencing a host of changes and growth. Prior to that, Nikki has held administrative positions allowing her to hone her skills. Nikki attended York College of Pennsylvania graduating with a Fine Arts degree in Photography and Painting.

With her father serving in the Air Force, Nikki grew up mainly in Germany and England. She was fortunate enough to travel the world but has settled down in Philadelphia since 2005. In her spare time you will often find her in the kitchen cooking up something new.

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