Experience

UNITE HERE HEALTH

• United States
• Hospitals and Health Care
• 100 - 200 Employee

• • Sep 2022 - Present

  Overseeing benefit design, participant engagement and managed care contracting and vendor administration. At UHH we control our benefit design and constantly look for ways to modernize, streamline and maximize the ways in which benefit design promote savvier use of healthcare by our members. I also lead a large team of Health Promoters (community health workers) who engage in care coordination, diabetes management, navigation, enrollment and social determinants of health with our members. Finally, I oversee our team of contract experts who not only manage current vendor relationships but also look for new opportunities for value-based contracts. Show less

• • Jan 2012 - Sep 2022

  At UNITE HERE HEALTH -- a Taft-Hartley Fund (a non-profit jointly governed by labor and management) dedicated to providing healthcare for over 220,000 unionized hospitality workers and their families – I oversee the work of directors in Los Angeles/Orange County, Chicago, Atlantic City, New York, Boston, Monterey and as well that of as directors who have members dispersed across the country in large employer accounts. The current cost of healthcare is unsustainable. The simple fact is that every dollar UHH spends on healthcare is a dollar that could have gone to a worker in wages, wages that would help lift hospitality workers out of poverty and likely do more for their health than increasing spending on their healthcare. UHH believes its challenge is to radically bend the cost curve while maintaining quality coverage. My team is driven to get the biggest bang for our members’ healthcare buck. This starts by constantly analyzing cost trends and monitoring members’ experiences with healthcare together with our clinical and Informatics teams. We activate members to become better stewards of their own health and savvier consumers of healthcare; negotiate the best deal possible with vendors, including shared savings and quality metrics; provide direct services from disease management programs to Health Centers; and apply lean thinking to our operations to save on administrative costs. We accomplish this wide variety of tasks by having high expectations for what our members and staff are capable of achieving, working collaboratively with our partners, and drawing on the expertise of a wide variety sources from the members to the trustees to experts in the field. Show less



Los Angeles Employer-Union Hotel-Restaurant Trust Funds

• Los Angeles, CA

• Acting Plan Administrator

  • Jan 2011 - Jan 2012

  UNITE HERE asked me to take over leadership of its health and welfare Fund in Los Angeles at a time when significant changes were needed to reverse its health plan’s slide into impending insolvency. I immediately stepped in to take over operations and lead the staff; communicate and coordinate with the union and employers; and strategize with UNITE HERE HEALTH to come up with a recovery plan. Once the plan was stable, I helped lead the Fund’s merger into UNITE HERE HEALTH and also started Stanford’s Chronic Disease Self-Management Program for the participants. The union had previously asked me to work with UNITE HERE HEALTH to increase its understanding of how immigrants and those with complex health needs experience the healthcare system. I spent almost a year in Las Vegas in 2000 interviewing workers about their experiences to provide granular data that would inform communications and plan design. I also spent time in Atlantic City visiting workers with complex health needs who were candidates for a new A-ICU clinic in order to understand what it would take for these workers to switch providers. Show less



UNITE HERE

• • 2000 - 2012

  The bulk of my time as an Organizing Director was spent organizing workers at Indian Casinos in the Sacramento and Palm Springs areas. This work was particularly challenging at the time as there was uncertainty over whether labor laws applied on sovereign territory. Besides the regular work of organizing, I also spent time working on legislative and political campaigns to strengthen workers’ rights in Indian casinos. I was also deeply involved in negotiating the first enforceable union contracts in Indian casinos, playing a key role in analyzing economic components of the contracts.During these years I also helped modernize Local 49 in Sacramento and spent nearly two years defending Local 57 in Pittsburgh, PA from a hostile takeover by another union. Finally, I also worked with the union’s Strategic Affairs department to lobby public pension funds in California to invest responsibly in the hospitality industry. Show less

• • 1997 - 2000

  I spent three years in Monterey at Local 483 helping to transform the local from a servicing to an organizing local and learning to be a lead organizer with staff oversight and greater campaign responsibility. During this time, we moved the members away from relying excessively on union staff to building their abilities to represent themselves through a shop steward and committee structure. I also led the successful bottom-up organizing drive to bring Asilomar Conference Center into the union.

• • 1993 - 1997

  During graduate school at Yale, I became involved in an organizing drive for graduate students, eventually elected as Chairperson. Inspired by the work the labor movement had done to provide concrete improvements in the lives of working people, particularly in my area of study (healthcare) and for people with my background (women and immigrants) ,I decided to leave academics to work for the union that had helped organize graduate students. I spent my first years as an organizer in Oakland, California at Local 2850 where I continued learning organizing skills in both union and non-union settings. As part of a small local, all staff performed a variety of roles -- I also learned the basics of community outreach, media relations, political campaigning, advanced grievance handling and contract negotiations. Show less