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Center for Health Policy Development Board Announces New Members

The Center for Health Policy Development (CHPD) is the official non-profit corporation that assures the independence of the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) and supports its work. CHPD recently held elections and instituted term limits for its board members.

Members retiring due to term limits include immediate past chair Maggie Alegria, PhD, chief of the Disparities Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Mary Kennedy, former vice president of the Association for Community Affiliated Plans and past director of Minnesota’s Medicaid program.
Susan Reinhard, AARP senior vice president and long-time CHPD board chair, will assume the role of immediate past chair on Jan. 1, 2019.

These members have provided incredible service to the organization and their legacy will live on as NASHP welcomes the following newly elected CHPD officers and board members:

  • Chair Nikki Highsmith Vernick, MPA, president and chief executive officer of The Horizon Foundation;
  • Vice Chair Anne Barry, JD, MPH, senior lecturer, Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota;
  • Secretary Marcia (Marci) Nielsen, PhD, MPH, president and chief operating officer of PolicyPRN Consulting; and
  • Treasurer Janette Burke, CPA, principal of Cordia Partners.

Newly elected board members include:

Richard Figueroa, director of Prevention and Affordable Care Act for The California Endowment. He was previously an active NASHP member while serving as deputy cabinet secretary and health care advisor in the Office of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as deputy legislative secretary in the Office of Gov. Gray Davis, as principal consultant to the Senate Committee on Insurance and senior consultant to the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, as a legislative budget analyst in the Office of the Legislative Analyst, and as the legislative director for California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. He is currently a voting member of the State of California’s Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board.

Shannon M. McMahon, MPA, Kaiser Permanente (KP) executive director of Medicaid policy. She leads KP Governmental Relations’ national public, regulatory, and legislative policy development on Medicaid across KP’s eight regions, which serve nearly 1 million Medicaid members. McMahon joined KP after a 20-year career leading state publicly financed health care programs, including service as deputy secretary of health care financing at Maryland’s Department of Health. In this role, she served as Maryland’s Medicaid director. As the chief executive of the Medicaid program, she implemented several initiatives to improve and expand coverage for over 1.3 million members.

Debra J. Pérez, senior vice president of Organizational Culture, Inclusion & Equity at Simmons University. Pérez earned a bachelor’s degree in communication from Douglass College, a master’s in social science and women’s studies from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England; a master’s of public administration from Baruch College; and a doctorate in health policy from Harvard University. She previously served as the chief evaluation and learning officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Palo Alto, as vice president of Research, Evaluation and Learning at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and as assistant vice president for research and evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The new members join current board members:

  • John Morrison, Esq., senior partner at Morrison, Sherwood, Wilson and Deola PLLP
  • Carolyn Magill, chief executive officer of Aetion, Inc.
  • Trish Riley, president of the Center for Health Policy Development and NASHP executive director
  • Ex Officio MaryAnne Lindeblad, BSN, MPH, Medicaid director at the Washington State Health Care Authority

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