Troy A. Stefano, PhD

Bio

Dr. Stefano is a professor, consultant, researcher, and AI entrepreneur. His path began with software development and web design, but a calling to a life of faith and service led him to study Greek and Latin classics, philosophy, and theology. He started as a non-profit grant writer to support educational opportunities for underserved families and soon amplified this service as CEO of a consulting firm that provided capacity-building, community and economic development, and integrated advancement services to non-profits, institutions of higher education, and faith-based organizations.

Recognizing that sustainable impact required more upstream, structural, and systemic solutions, Dr. Stefano transitioned to academic health settings where research, institutional capacity, and sustained interdisciplinary work could support this work at greater depth and population scale. Over the last decade, he has served as a research, advancement, and AI health innovation consultant at FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine (HWCOM) and Roseman University of Health Sciences (RUHS). This work encompasses strategic funding advancement, research, and development in education, community health, and AI-enabled health solutions – contributing to over $80 million in funding cycle contributions spanning grant applications, grant administration and implementation, multiple national and international awards, and numerous commissioned research projects.

This trajectory culminated in founding and leading Health Copilot AI (HCAI), a growth-stage technology company pioneering entrustable AI — transparent, reliable, useful, person-centered — across healthcare and social services, education, workforce development, and faith formation. HCAI's flagship CareOrb AI platform represents over $7 million in research and development over 6+ years and is now being deployed statewide in Nevada in partnership with Roseman University's EMPOWERED program. Supported by SAMHSA, the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, and the Fund for a Resilient Nevada, the platform addresses critical challenges in social risk management, maternal health, and substance use recovery through a comprehensive suite of integrated AI applications, ranging from personalized care plans to case management, reporting, and analytics. His distinctive development philosophy, coined "integrated intelligence", aims to cultivate AI that is person-enhancing rather than person-replacing. It holds that AI's value emerges not from isolated capability-testing, but from seamless, ethical integration with work and life in service of human relationships and flourishing.

Dr. Stefano served as co-PI and co-Lead of FIU Thrive, a fully bilingual social risk assessment and care navigation system funded by the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade and the CDC ($3M+). He is also Senior Advisor of Artificial Intelligence for St. Thomas University and co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence Research and Ethics Network (AiREN) – a premier research and resource library dedicated to advancing ethical AI leadership and systems that promote human flourishing.

Dr. Stefano is also President of the International Institute of Catholic Leadership (IICL), a non-profit developing Transfigured, a platform for personalized faith formation journeys serving individuals, families, and faith communities. For the past decade, he has served as Professor of Systematic Theology, Historical Theology, and Metaphysics at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary, teaching courses ranging from Trinity, Christology, and Mariology, to Ecclesiology, Eucharist, Metaphysics, and the entire Church History curriculum. His theological, philosophical, and health science research exhibits extraordinary breadth. He co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Christology (Oxford University Press, 2015) and more recently the three-volume Empowered Life Series (Precision Publishing Press, 2025), the leading maternal recovery health education curriculum. He has produced over 80 published works of scholarship and over 5,000 pages of scholarly translations from German, French, Latin, and Ancient Greek — reflecting his commitment to rediscovering the riches and wisdom of tradition to open new possibilities and guide leadership for the future.

Dr. Stefano earned his Ph.D. and M.T.S. from the University of Notre Dame (with high honors). He was among the youngest to enroll in the Florida university system at the age of 13 and has done graduate study at University of Miami, University of Chicago, and University of Paris-Sorbonne.

In 2022, he was appointed by Governor DeSantis to serve as Commissioner — and now Vice-Chair — of the Florida Department of Education's Commission for Independent Education. He and his wife are raising four boys in Wellington, Florida, where he coaches two of their travel basketball teams. For Dr. Stefano, leadership means being set apart for service.