Available Spokespersons

Learn more about available spokespersons who can talk about the Covering Kids & Families Initiative. To request to speak to one of these spokespersons, please contact Traci Siegel at (202) 572-2966 or traci.siegel@gmmb.com.

Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
John Lumpkin, senior vice president and the director of the Health Care Group, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Elaine Arkin, special communications officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Sarah C. Shuptrine, Founder, President and CEO, Southern Institute on Children and Families

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A.

Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national leader in transforming America's health systems so people live healthier lives and receive the health care they need. A practicing physician with business credentials and hands-on experience developing national health policy, she was drawn to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation by the opportunity, as she puts it, to "alter the trajectory and to push society to change for the better."

Driven by the belief that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a steward of private resources that must be used in the public's interest, particularly to help the most vulnerable, Lavizzo-Mourey combines the values she learned as a doctor--commitment to others, a sense of altruism--with the skills and knowledge from her business training--the importance of measuring results and outcomes, of clear accountability, of taking a disciplined approach to managing resources and motivating people. Through it all, she is guided by the conviction that philanthropy is about simultaneously improving individual lives, transforming systems and in turn, achieving lasting social change.

Under Lavizzo-Mourey's leadership, the Foundation has restructured its strategic investments to target a set of high-impact priorities, among them:

• Designing a more effective, performance-driven, patient-centered health system.
• Improving the quality and safety of patient care.
• Strengthening state and local public health systems.
• Halting the rise in childhood obesity by 2015.
• Easing the crisis in the nursing profession.
• Covering the uninsured.
• Developing the next generation of health leaders and policy-makers.

Lavizzo-Mourey was a leader in academic medicine, government service and her medical specialty of geriatrics before joining RWJF in 2001 as senior vice president and director of the health care group. Previously, at the University of Pennsylvania, she was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of medicine and health care systems and director of Penn's Institute on Aging. In Washington, D.C., she was deputy administrator of what is now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of The National Academies.

Raised in Seattle by physician parents, Lavizzo-Mourey earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania; and trained in Geriatrics at Penn. Always a physician as well as an agent for wide-scale social change, she still treats patients at a community health clinic in New Brunswick, N.J. She and her husband of 30 years have two adult children.

Sarah C. Shuptrine

Sarah Shuptrine is founder, President and CEO of the Southern Institute on Children and Families. Celebrating its 15th year in 2005, the Southern Institute is a nonprofit, public policy organization that focuses on 17 southern states and the District of Columbia and also directs national programs related to its mission.

The Southern Institute promotes knowledge, leadership and action on issues related to health coverage, child care, early education, income support and transportation. The Southern Institute combines a broad understanding of policy and program implementation with the capacity to inspire others to create positive changes that can improve the lives of lower-income children and families.

Ms. Shuptrine is National Program Office Director for Covering Kids & Families, a health coverage initiative focused on outreach, simplification and coordination of Medicaid and SCHIP enrollment policies and procedures. Ms. Shuptrine also is Chairman of the Southern Regional Task Force on Child Care, a collaborative involving 17 southern states and the District of Columbia. Additionally, she directs the work of the Southern Business Leadership Council to engage business, community and public policy leaders in communities across the South in the development of comprehensive solutions to societal issues that impact the stable employment of the lower-income workforce.

Ms. Shuptrine previously served as chief policy advisor for Health and Human Services to then South Carolina Governor Richard Riley and served as staff director of the South Carolina Children's Coordinating Cabinet. In addition, she chaired the Work Group for the Southern Regional Task Force on Infant Mortality. The Task Force report served as the catalyst for 1986 congressional amendments allowing pregnant women and infants to be eligible for Medicaid without being enrolled in welfare. Ms. Shuptrine was a member of the National Commission on Children and Co-Chairman of the Commission's working groups on collaboration and coordination and family support programs. She also served on the Carnegie Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children that published the Starting Points report. She is the author and co-author of numerous reports on improving access to health and social services, the need for outreach and the removal of barriers to Medicaid eligibility.