Meet Woman to Watch: Nancy-Ann DeParle, JD

If high expectations at a young age are indeed something of a curse and a burden, Nancy-Ann DeParle would have had every reason to crumble before her career was well underway.  As an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee, she was elected student body president and named by a national magazine as one of the nation’s top ten college women.  Then, in 1994, TIME Magazine included DeParle, then a graduate of Harvard Law and a Rhodes Scholar, as one of “America’s Top 50 Most Promising Leaders Under 40.”
This is not a story, though, of someone sinking under the weight of publicized promise and potential.  To the contrary, DeParle has transcended the expectations surrounding her.  In discussing her, one doesn’t immediately turn to her personal successes, but rather to the millions of previously uninsured Americans who today have health care security because of the historic law she was instrumental in creating.
For DeParle, this was less a professional opportunity than a calling.  In her teen years, her mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer.  Rather than take the time to focus on her health, DeParle’s mother had to keep working in order to maintain her employer-provided health insurance.  This experience led DeParle into a career focused on health policy.
And it’s been a career that, in a tremendous understatement, has made a difference in people’s lives.  In 2009, she began work in the White House as a counselor to President Obama ...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - October 23, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Advocacy Health Reform Source Type: blogs