I am an attorney with over twenty years of experience offering a blend of law, communications, public health and public relations. I have designed communications campaigns and built coalition grassroots support efforts targeting public health and health policy issues at state, federal and global levels. My expertise has been put to work in two primary areas as they are related to health policy – public health and medical product development, with an emphasis on regulatory approval and reimbursement strategies.

In medical product support, I have worked in a broad array of therapeutic areas to ally with third party organizations to effect awareness campaigns for the testing and treatment of particular conditions. I have served as a senior strategist for pharmaceutical companies bringing new products to market to align pre-approval communications with post-launch messaging and to reinforce regulatory compliance and to maximize the reimbursement environment and I have helped prepare pharmaceutical presentation teams before regulatory bodies and I am also a highly experienced issues management crisis counselor. My medical product crises and issues management work has included a broad range of issues of such as pricing, company boycotts, clinical trial issues (adverse events and withdrawal of trials), serious adverse event communication, compulsory licensing issues and product labeling. My work has led to extensive experience in several therapeutic areas, including diabetes, HIV/AIDS, osteoporosis, allergy/asthma, oncology and gastroenterology as well as consumer and public health work in HIV/AIDS.

In arenas of public health, I have experience in designing a global communications plans for clients such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the National Institutes of Health and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as public health communications plans in the U.S. for organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.

I currently work at the international communications firm of Fleishman-Hillard where I have worked for nearly three years and prior to that was the National Director of Health Policy at Manning, Selvage & Lee where I was responsible for providing strategic communications counsel on a wide range of public health and health policy issues and community relations. My work included designing and leading a team to execute a communications plan for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Pursuing Perfection grant program to raise consciousness on the rate of medical error and showcasing potential solutions to the problem.

I obtained the bulk of my public health and communications experience in HIV during my combined 14-year tenure with AIDS Project Los Angeles and prior to that with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) in New York, the two largest HIV service providers in the nation. While there, I worked on campaigns that included advocacy as well as public health, in encouraging people to be tested and treated for HIV, having to target multiple and varied audiences.

I received my Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Illinois and my law degree from Brooklyn Law School. I have authored several magazine and newspaper articles as well as three books examining issues of law, health policy and HIV as well as the rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community.