Staff

Leadership

Henry E. Simmons, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.P., Founder and President Emeritus

Henry Simmons, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.P., served as president of the National Coalition on Health Care from the organization's inception in 1990 through 2009. In January 2010, he assumed the title President Emeritus. The Coalition is the nation's largest and most broadly representative alliance working to improve America's health care system.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Simmons held a variety of distinguished posts in both the public and private sectors. During the Nixon and Ford administrations, Dr. Simmons served as deputy assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), director of the Office of Professional Standards Review at HEW, and director of the Bureau of Drugs at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). President Reagan appointed Dr. Simmons as one of two physician members to serve on the Grace Commission.

Following his federal service, Dr. Simmons became a senior vice president at the J. Walter Thompson Company. Dr. Simmons has also held the posts of president and chief executive officer of the Hunterdon Medical Center, Flemington, New Jersey, as well as senior vice president and director of the Health Care Division of Sears World Trade, Inc. In addition, Dr. Simmons was director of the Health and Medical Consulting Division at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Company.

Dr. Simmons has been associated with numerous universities and medical centers across the country. He was appointed visiting research professor at the George Washington University School of Business and Government; served as faculty member and consultant in rheumatic diseases and internal medicine at Tufts New England Medical Center; professor of community and family medicine at Rutgers University School of Medicine; assistant clinical professor of medicine at Georgetown University; and associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine.

Throughout his career, Dr. Simmons has testified before the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Dr. Simmons has received frequent recognition for his service in both the private and public sectors. Among his honors have been the FDA Award of Merit, the HEW Certificate of Merit, and the Annual Oliver Wendell Holmes Society Lectureship.

Dr. Simmons received undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University.

Ralph G. Neas, President and CEO, National Coalition on Health Care and NCHC Action Fund

Over the past three decades, Ralph has compiled an extraordinary track record of collaborative and visionary leadership, coalition building, bipartisan legislative accomplishments, and effective advocacy campaigns, including policy, communications, and organizing strategies.

Ralph began his public service career as Chief Counsel to Republican U.S. Senators Edward W. Brooke (1973-1978) and Dave Durenberger (1979-1980). From 1981 through 1995, he served as Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the nation's oldest and largest coalition.

At LCCR, Ralph directed two dozen successful national campaigns that strengthened every major civil rights law, in a political climate not particularly hospitable to civil rights. Landmark laws enacted, with huge bipartisan majorities and many times with the help of the business community, include the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, the 1988 Fair Housing Act Amendments, the Japanese American Civil Liberties Act, and the 1982 Voting Rights Act Extension. Senator Edward Kennedy, in a 1995 Senate floor statement, described Ralph as the "101st Senator for Civil Rights."

From 1999-2007, as President and CEO of People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation, Ralph increased the number of members and supporters of People For from 275,000 to more than one million. He was a national leader in the efforts to preserve an independent and fair judiciary, to block a permanent and massive tax cut, to enact the 2006 Voting Rights Act Extension, to protect civil liberties, and to defend and reform our nation’s public schools. In addition, he helped put together civic engagement partnerships to recruit and manage 25,000 volunteers in 2004 for the non-partisan and nationally recognized Election Protection program (to help ensure every vote counts), to direct nonpartisan PFAWF programs that registered 525,000 African American and Latino voters in three years and to establish youth leadership development programs across the country.

In 2007, colleagues and friends persuaded Ralph to become active in the resurgent health care reform movement. First, he became a senior advisor to the president of the National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC), a nonpartisan centrist coalition of more than eighty national organizations (large and small businesses, unions, religious denominations, medical societies, disability, senior citizens, and civil rights groups, pension funds, and good government organizations). For 20 years, NCHC, the oldest, and most diverse health care reform coalition, has helped coordinate nationwide efforts to enact comprehensive reform. In February, 2009, Ralph became the CEO of NCHC. And in early 2010, the NCHC Board of Directors asked Ralph to become the Coalition’s President and CEO.

Ralph is a consistent presence in the national media, interviewed regularly by the major TV, radio and print media, including: CBS’s Face the Nation; ABC's Nightline; CBS’s Sunday Morning; NBC's Today Show; ABC's This Week; PBS Lehrer News Hour; the nightly news shows of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox; National Public Radio; cable television and radio talk shows; and prominent national, regional and local newspapers.

Ralph is the author of over forty published articles, op-eds, and commentaries in national media outlets, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, The Nation, National Public Radio, USA Today Magazine, and Roll Call.

He has been profiled multiple times in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Other media entities that have profiled Ralph include: USA Today, Congressional Quarterly, St. Paul Pioneer Press, The New Republic, the Washington Star, the Legal Times, the Associated Press, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and The Baltimore Sun. Ralph has also been featured in a number of books including: The Second Civil War (Ronald Brownstein), Giant Killers (Michael Pertschuk), The Battle for Justice (Ethan Bronner), The People Rising (Michael Pertschuk), and the Power to Persuade (Richard Haas).

He has been honored by organizations representing the spectrum of issues to which he has devoted his career, including the Benjamin Hooks "Keeper of the Flame" Award from the national NAACP; the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award from LCCR; the Public Service Achievement Award from Common Cause; the Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund; the “National Good Guy Award” from the National Women's Political Caucus; the Isaiah Award for the Pursuit of Justice from the American Jewish Committee; the Flag Bearer Award from Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (P-FLAG); the Edison Uno Memorial Civil Rights Award from the Japanese-American Citizens' League; the University of Chicago Alumni Public Service Citation; "Citizen of the Year" from the Guillian-Barré Syndrome Foundation International; and named in 2004 one of Vanity Fair’s “Best Stewards of the Environment.” In May of 2008, the national Legal Times designated Ralph one of the 30 “Champions of the Law” over the past three decades. In 2009, Ralph received the Soar High Leadership/Eagle Fly Free Award from the Institute for the Advancement of Multicultural and Minority Medicine alongside Senator Arlen Specter, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Ralph, a native of Brookline, Massachusetts, earned his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. Ralph has taught courses on the legislative process and public policy at the University of Chicago Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In 1998, Ralph was the Democratic candidate for Congress from Maryland's 8th Congressional District.

From 1995 through 1999, he was president and CEO of The Neas Group. Clients of The Neas Group included the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, the National Coalition on Health Care, the National Council on Disability, AARP, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Major League Baseball Player’s Association, fair housing organizations, IBM, People for Better TV, and The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Grace L. Mastalli, Chief Operating Officer & General Counsel

Grace L. Mastalli is the co-founder and president of Ethos International, Inc. which she co-founded in 2007 following an extensive federal career, primarily in the U.S. Department of Justice. During her federal service, Ms. Mastalli had the distinction of serving six Attorneys General and of becoming one of the highest ranking career officials not only of the Justice Department but also of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In the Justice Department she held three of the most senior positions available to non-Presidential appointees--Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Associate Deputy Attorney General, and Deputy Associate Attorney General.

Post 9/11, Ms. Mastalli served the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from where, as the highest ranking career official in the Office of the General Counsel, she helped to manage the work of the more than 1700 lawyers serving the new 180,000 person agency and directed the Information Sharing and Collaboration Office.

During her career, Ms. Mastalli was instrumental in the development of many federal laws, policies, and regulations related to education, civil rights, disability rights, employment, crime and drug control, health care fraud, terrorism, national security, and information management. She served in a number of other key operational and policy positions, including as Associate Director of an education association’s Title IX project, legislative strategist for an education coalition, a trial attorney, legal advisor for a Presidential Advisory Council and as the Senior Counsel for Civil Rights in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). At Justice, she was tapped to become one of the youngest members of the career Senior Executive Service, serving as a deputy first in the Associate Attorney General’s Office and then successively in the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, Office of Policy Development, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, and Foreign Terrorism Tracking Task Force.

For more than a quarter-century at the Justice Department, she managed a broad portfolio of strategic legal policy issues, including criminal justice, environmental and civil rights matters. She specialized in coordinating interagency and public/private sector teams of lawyers and subject matter specialists to better represent client agencies and officials before the United States Congress, regulatory bodies, the media, public interest groups and business organizations. She participated on and chaired numerous interagency task forces, including coordinating the Department’s District of Columbia Revitalization efforts from 1997-2001. Ms. Mastalli has served on and advised numerous intergovernmental advisory boards and working groups. She has testified before Congressional committees and addressed many trade and professional organizations, frequently appearing as an organizational spokesperson.

Ms. Mastalli attended Reed College, the University of Denver, University of Maryland College of Law, and Georgetown University Graduate School of Government. She is an active Member of the Bar of the District of Columbia and serves as an adjunct professor at American University.

Staff

Kendra Janevski, Director of Administration

Kendra Janevski, the Director of Administration, joined the Coalition management team in March 2009. She holds a Master’s of Arts in International Administration from the University of Denver and a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from Bard College. She has close to 10 years of experience working to support and develop organizations in the non-profit sector and is a recent transplant to Washington D.C.

Prior to moving to the area, Ms. Janevski lived in the Republic of Macedonia where she served in the US Peace Corps and worked on several USAID and OSCE funded projects. While her focus was primarily on assisting struggling non-governmental organizations to effect change in their local community, she also worked with governmental and business sectors in rural communities. Her varied background and experience has helped her become a true asset to the Coalition administration.

Emmanuel B. Adepoju, IT Manager

As an IT Administrative Assistant, Mr. Adepoju is responsible for all Tier 1 and Tier 2 troubleshooting and maintenance of all in-office equipment and software, in addition to providing administrative support for all on-going projects. Mr. Adepoju has coached on various youth sports teams in an effort to help guide and build leadership qualities in under privileged youths in his community. Currently, Mr. Adepoju is a student at the University of Maryland, University College pursuing a degree in Business and Management with a focus on Management Studies as well as a certificate in Database Management and Project Management for IT Professionals.

Amelia J. West, Executive Assistant and Media Liaison

Amelia West serves as the Executive Assistant with the National Coalition on Health Care. A recent graduate of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Amelia holds a BA in Public Policy with specific focus in Healthcare policy; Amelia also minored in Sociology, where she concentrated in poverty and urban studies. During her tenure at GW, Amelia worked with the University to schedule speakers, plan events, and send students across the country to campaign for the 2008 presidential election. A native of Westport, CT, Amelia founded the non-profit “Kakes for Kids” which delivers birthday cakes to kids in homeless shelters, and remains deeply committed to issues of poverty and education among children.

John Kane, Program Development and Policy Analyst

John Kane joined the National Coalition on Health Care in May 2009, as NCHC’s Policy Analyst and Political Strategy Associate. Mr. Kane has examined the potential impact of various health care reform policies on the sustainability of such reform packages and aided in the development of the Coalition’s strategies for gaining the support of moderate and conservative members of Congress for policies and programs aligned with the Coalition’s overall mission. He has also represented the Coalition at a variety of stakeholder meetings hosted by Congressional leaders.

Kane holds a master’s degree in Philosophy from Virginia Tech and is currently pursuing a master’s in Public Administration through the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech, with concentrations in Policy Analysis and Policy Systems Management. Kane’s research interests lie in the areas of education and health policy, and he has written extensively on issues related to bioethics and the public interest. He is currently writing a treatise on the increased regresses of federal and state taxation policies resulting from the technology gap between urban and rural America.

Alix Pereira, Policy Attorney

Alix Pereira joined the National Coalition on Health Care in February, 2010, as NCHC’s Policy Attorney. Alix joined NCHC after serving as Policy Coordinator for the Small Business Majority where he helped deliver to Congress the message that the status quo in the health care system does not work for small businesses.

Alix holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and a Bachelor’s in Economics from Wesleyan University. He completed a health law clinical program with the Harrison Institute of Public Law as well as serving as a fellow for the O’Neil Institute for National and Global Health Law. Alix has prior careers in employment litigation and financial services project management.

Catherine Doyle, Development Assistant

Catherine Doyle joined the National Coalition on Health Care in August 2009. A recent graduate from Sargent College at Boston University, she received a B.S. degree in Health Science. During her senior year, Catherine worked for the Massachusetts Coalition of School-Based Health Centers where she helped to secure funding for school-based health centers across Massachusetts. Catherine was also actively involved in a recent Boston City Council campaign, working to successfully elect the first woman of color to the Council.

Staff

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