David Qualls, PT
PTPAC Chair
David Qualls is owner of Rehab Institute, doing business as Qualls & Co., providing rehabilitation services in Southwest Louisiana. He received a bachelor's degree in physical therapy from Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans. Immediately after graduation, he began his career practicing at West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital in Sulphur, Louisiana. He left the hospital setting to open a private practice and has now been practicing for 46 years — 41 in private practice.

Volunteer service has always been a part of his career. He has served on the Nominating Committee, Governmental Affairs Committee, Ethics Committee as chair, vice president, and president of now APTA LA. He has served as alternate delegate, delegate, and chief delegate from Louisiana to the APTA House of Delegates over the past 20 plus years. He also served as chair of the Committee on Chapters and Sections for APTA. He has been an LPTA PAC trustee for many years. He received the APTA LA Dave Warner Physical Therapist Service Award in 2003, and he received the APTA Lucy Blair Service Award in 2014. He was inducted into the APTA LA Hall of Fame in 2018. The local high school has honored him with a service award and the local Rotary Club awarded him a Service Above Self Award. He is a Rotary Paul Harris Fellow and is proud to be an Eagle Scout. He has served his church at the local, district, and state levels over the past 25 years.

Qualls, or Poppa, as many call him, has served on the PPS Board of Directors and the PPS Institute Board of Directors. He served on the PPS Nominating Committee. He received the PPS Robert G. Dicus award. He also represented PPS on the Louisiana Legislative Patient Access Resolution Committee whose recommendation provided huge input supporting passage of the Patient Access to Physical Therapy Legislation in Louisiana. He understands the importance of the role of the PTPAC and is honored to be a new Trustee.

Jeremy Foster, PTA
Jeremy Foster has been working in physical therapy for 30 years. He is a graduate of the Physical Therapist Assistant program at Salt Lake Community College. He is a staff PTA at North Sunflower Medical Center in Ruleville, Mississippi. Throughout his career, he has worked with patients in multiple settings, from seeing them in the hospital to treating them in their homes. He sits on the PTA Advisory Board at Holmes Community College and Mississippi Delta Community College. He is a national speaker on rural health care and critical access hospital, and he has been active in the American Physical Therapy Association and APTA Mississippi for the past 21 years. He is the current PTA at large for the APTA Academy of Acute Care, and he just finished his second term as the PTA Caucus representative for the state of Mississippi. He was the Mississippi Physical Therapist Assistant of the year in 2017 and APTAs Outstanding Physical Therapist Assistant of the year in 2019. Striving for excellence, he has achieved Advanced Proficiency from APTA in the areas of geriatric, integumentary, and acute care physical therapy. He is a credentialed clinical instructor. He has been a strong advocate for leadership roles for PTAs at the state and national levels. He is a member of APTA's Academy of Geriatrics, Academy of Acute Care, and the Academy of Clinical Electrophysiology and Wound Management, and Home Health and Federal Physical Therapy sections.

Linda John, PT
Linda John has been a practicing physical therapist for over 20 years, working in a variety of settings with a primary interest in outpatient orthopedics. She received a bachelor's degree in physical therapy from the University of Oklahoma and is an active member of APTA. She served as Government Affairs chair and APTA Federal Affairs Liaison for the Oklahoma Physical Therapy Association before moving to North Texas. She was appointed Federal Affairs Liaison for the Texas Chapter in 2010 and continues to serve in that role. She served as a PTPAC Ambassador since the inception of the program and now proudly serves as a PTPAC Trustee. She has presented at numerous state and district meetings over the years to educate members about and encourage involvement in the legislative process and importance of building an effective PAC. Since beginning as an FAL, she has been able to improve interest in professional advocacy among PT students, resulting in a significant increase in student attendance at the APTA Federal Advocacy Forum. She also is a member of the Health Policy & ctice, and Orthopaedic sections of APTA.

Peggy DeCelle Newman, PT, MHR
Peggy DeCelle Newman, PT, MHR has practiced as a physical therapist for forty years in a variety of settings including acute care, outpatient orthopaedics, institutional long-term care and home health. Additionally, she has managed allied health professionals in each of these settings.

Peggy’s teaching experience began as Academic Coordinator of Clinical Education (ACCE) at the University of Oklahoma from 1988 through 1993. She then served as the PTA Program Director at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC) for eleven years from 1995 - 2006. After leaving OCCC, she practiced clinically for a year returning to the University of Oklahoma Department of Rehabilitation Sciences faculty in 2007 as the Director of Clinical Education and Assistant Professor.  Peggy returned to OCCC and PTA education in January 2013. A scholarship in her name was created upon her retirement from fulltime faculty in May 2021. She is currently serving as Interim ACCE for the Seminole State-Gordon Cooper PTA Program in Shawnee.

Peggy has served the American Physical Therapy Association Oklahoma in many roles including Chapter President and Chief Delegate. She completed two consecutive terms as Chief Delegate in 2012.  She currently serves as Delegate to the APTA House of Delegates and as Western District Director.

She was selected as a 2010 APTA Lucy Blair Service Award recipient.  She was elected in June 2013 to the APTA Nominating Committee (NC) and appointed as the NC Liaison to the APTA Leadership Development Committee in 2014.  Peggy was appointed by the APTA Board of Directors to the National Awards Committee - Subcommittee on Lectures and the APTA NEXT Planning Committee beginning July 2016 through June 2020.  The OPTA honored Peggy with the Mark Acker Memorial Mentor Award in 2017.

She was appointed to the Oversight Panel for the Analysis of Practice for the PT and PTA Licensure Examination by the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy 2005 - 2007. She was appointed by the Federation as a Core Member Continued Competency Certification Reviewer in 2011 and subsequently invited/appointed to serve as a “Final Reviewer” for the Continued Competency Certification in 2012.

Sandra Norby, PT, DPT
Sandra Norby, PT, DPT is CEO and Co-Founder of HomeTown Physical Therapy, LLC.  This Iowa based corporation provides a practice model for ownership and leadership by Physical Therapists.  Sandra has served on many leadership positions in APTA and PPS, including being a Delegate and Chief Delegate of APTA Iowa, a member of APTA PPAC: two terms as a Director on the PPS Board and serving as president of the Private Practice Section –APTA from 2018-2020.  She was awarded the 2016 Charles A, Harker Advocacy Award and the 2017 APTA Federal Advocacy Leadership Award for her instrumental work on making Locum Tenens a reality for physical therapists.

Sandra received her BS in Athletic Training and Masters in Physical Therapy from the University of Iowa in 1989 and her DPT from the University of Montana – Missoula/Rehab Essentials in 2016.  She has an expertise in compliance and billing and has been a speaker at many state and national events on topics that include compliance, technology, leadership, and championing the success of women in physical therapy.

Ali Schoos, PT
Ali Schoos, PT, graduated with her bachelor’s degree from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma WA in 1982. Between then and 2000 she worked in a private practice, managed a hospital based sports medicine clinic, opened a private practice in 1987, and worked for a national PT company for six years as their group director in the greater Seattle area.  She then returned to private practice in 2000, after co-founding Peak Sports and Spine Physical Therapy with her husband, a group of 8 private practice clinics, practicing in Bellevue, WA. She has been a board certified orthopedic specialist from 1993-2023. She retains a small ownership in the clinics that have largely been sold to the partners she and her husband developed from their employees.

Ali has long been an active volunteer and advocate for the PT profession. She has been the secretary and chair for the Orthopedic Special Interest group, state insurance liaison for APTA Washington for nine years, a delegate to the HOD, past board member for Washington state PPSIG, served on the APTA Private Practice Section Board of Directors for six years, as well as the Covid advisory task force. She served on the APTA advisory group for primary care PT and the development of the APTA telehealth certification series. She currently serves on APTA PPS Nominating Committee, the telehealth subcommittee for APTA PPS payment policy committee, and is an APTA PAC Trustee. She is a key PT for APTA and APTA PPS and active in legislative advocacy in Washington state. She was awarded the Washington state PT of the Year in 1993 for her insurance advocacy and again in 2021 for her work on obtaining telehealth payment and delivery parity in Washington during the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. She also advocates for Alzheimers’ and ALS research, medication access, and patient resources. She has presented on numerous topics, most recently for APTA and APTA PPS webinars on telehealth, advocacy, and marketing, as well as developing and moderating “Chelan Chat” for the Washington State PPSIG annual meeting in 2022 and 2023. Ali has served her local community on the Alzheimers’ Regional Advisory Board, the Bellevue YMCA board, her parish council, fundraising efforts for her children’s school, and coaching her kids in soccer when they were young enough to not be too technical yet! She loves the physical therapy profession and is happy to serve in any way that facilitates our movement forward as a profession and helps us to better meet the needs of our patients, while keeping us financially viable as a profession.

Arie J. van Duijn, PT, MSPT, EdD
Arie J. van Duijn has been a practicing physical therapist for 35 years, and currently is a Professor of Physical Therapy at the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program at Florida Gulf Coast University. His current area of practice/teaching includes orthopedic physical therapy with a special interest in manual therapy of the spine and the extremities, Ultrasound Imaging, and EBP.

He has served as FPTA SW District Chair and Regional Director, served on the FPTA Board of Directors from 2004-2008 and from 2018-present, and served as Chair of the FPTA Conference Committee from 2006-2009 and committee member until 2019. He served on the FPTA Nominating Committee from 2008-2011. He served as FPTA Chief Delegate from 2018-2022 , has served as FPTA HOD Chapter Delegate from 2001-2022, and currently serves on the APTA HoD Reference Committee. He is a member of the APTA workgroup for the Revision of the Manipulation Education Manual. He was the founding president of the Academic and Clinical Faculty Special Interest Group of AAOMPT, and serves as the Chair of the AAOMPT Practice Affairs Committee.  He has served on the AOPT Research committee, and is currently a member of the AOPT Education Committee Ortho DPT Faculty Work Group.

Sheree Chapman York, PT, DPT
Sheree Chapman York is a board-certified clinical specialist in pediatric physical therapy and an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She retired from Children's of Alabama in 2019 with more than 20 years as director for the Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy Department and Early Intervention Services. She received a bachelors' degree and a master's degree in physical therapy from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a doctor of physical therapy degree from Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions. She completed a Maternal and Child Healthcare Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She has worked in pediatric physical therapy since 1979, including schools, preschools, clinics for a variety of diagnoses, and for the State Department of Education as a specialist in PT and OT services and preschool and early intervention programs. Her most recent clinical work includes Newborn Follow-up Clinic, early intervention, and neonatal intensive care units. In her assistant professor role she teaches courses in pediatrics, management, and professional practice. She continues to work in the UAB Newborn Follow-up Clinic. Her research interests include outcomes for premature infants, effective interventions for children and adults with cerebral palsy, and constraint-induced therapy for both children and adults.

She has had many professional volunteer responsibilities during her career, including an appointment to the Alabama Governor's Early Intervention Interagency Coordinating Council and various committees focusing on training EI providers. She has served the American Physical Therapy Association in various roles, such as governance review, CSM review, and Learning Center Task Force; president, legislative chair, chief delegate, and delegate for the Alabama Chapter; and vice president, president, regional director, state representative, Education Committee chair, and Hospital-based Special Interest Group chair for the Academy of Pediatric Physical Therapy. In 2007 she was elected secretary and in 2015 president of the WCPT International Organisation of Physical Therapists in Paediatrics. She continues to serve in this role through 2023.