I’m pleased to announce that Annette LoVoi of Austin will chair Public Health Watch’s nine-member governing board.
It’s hard to summarize Annette’s remarkable career in a few sentences, but I’ll try.
She chaired the board of Consumer Reports from October 2017 through October 2020. She’s worked at all levels of government and advised, among others, Ann Richards, the late Texas governor. She was the first executive director of Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit created to enlist top-flight lawyers to do pro bono social-justice work. She was the driving force behind a Texas law that provided consumer protections to immigrants who send home tens of millions of dollars in money transfers each year; that law became model for federal legislation.
She’s been appointed to an advisory panel by the World Bank, has addressed the United Nations and the European Union, among other institutions, and has worked with the Clinton and Obama administrations. She’s twice been elected to public office.
“I’ve spent my career working for immigrants and others in need,” Annette said. “I believe in investigative journalism and telling the story, as PHW does, of how Texas is missing out on billions in Medicaid dollars, allowing low-income residents to be poisoned by air pollution and making women second-class citizens by depriving them of reproductive care. I am supporting PHW as we aim to fix these and other problems, within and beyond Texas.”
Annette will be joined on the board by me, Linda Alexander, Howard Berkes, Robert Harrison, Anne Robertson, Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, Susan White and Chris Worthington. I’m immensely thankful to the advisory board that has guided us since our launch last year.