Joe Angelelli

PA State Director
(412) 304-1463
JAngelelli@PHInational.org

Joe Angelelli is the Pennsylvania State Director for PHI. Since joining PHI in July 2007, Joe has begun working with a range of long-term care partners to ensure quality jobs for direct care workers throughout the Commonwealth. He is responsible for fostering collaboration and coalition building among direct care workers and their representatives, consumers, employers/providers, researchers, workforce agencies, and government decision-makers. Joe is now helping to facilitate the implementation of recommendations made by the state’s multi-stakeholder Direct Care Workforce Workgroup in 2006-2007.

Joe comes to PHI from the Pioneer Network, where he helped to develop statewide coalitions around the country in his role as Director of Networking and Development. Before joining the Pioneer Network, Joe served on the faculty at Brown and Penn State, where he taught and produced numerous articles for peer-reviewed journals about nursing homes and the culture of aging in the United States. Joe holds a PhD in gerontology and public policy at the University of Southern California, and is a 1992 graduate of Penn State.

Radha Biswas

Policy Analyst
RBiswas@PHInational.org

Radha Biswas is PHI’s Policy Analyst. Radha researches and analyzes state and national direct care workforce issues and trends to support PHI’s policy work

Before joining PHI, Radha worked for over five years at the Boston-based research and consulting firm, Jobs for the Future. At JFF, Radha conducted research and analysis, and authored several publications on a wide range of workforce and economic development issues, practices and policies concerning the education of adult learners in community colleges, re-credentialing of foreign trained workers in health care, and alternative financing for workforce intermediaries. Prior to her work in Boston, she engaged in research on the US and Indian high-tech workforces at the Center for Industrial Competitiveness at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She received her MA in Regional Economic and Social Development from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2001.

Henry Claypool

Washington D.C. Liason
henry.claypool@verizon.net

Henry Claypool serves as the Washington D.C. Liaison for PHI. Henry represents the organization and its Quality Care through Quality Jobs approach to long-term services and supports to legislative offices, executive agencies, and other national advocacy organizations. He helps guide PHI’s programmatic work on the workforce implications of consumer-directed care. Henry also serves as Policy Director for Independence Care System, a PHI affiliated organization that coordinates Medicaid long-term services and supports for over 1,400 people with disabilities in New York City.

Henry is the former senior Advisor for disability policy to the administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While at HHS, he played a key role in marshalling a comprehensive implementation effort in response the Olmstead decision – the Supreme Court decision that directed states to provide services to people with disabilities in the least restrictive setting. Key activities of that effort included an extensive review of federal policy and development of guidance to states on the operation of the Medicaid program.

Steven Edelstein

National Policy Director
(718) 402-7413
SEdelstein@PHInational.org

Steven Edelstein is PHI’s National Policy Director. In that role, he directs PHI’s national policy agenda to improve the quality of long-term care by creating quality direct-care jobs and guides PHI’s state efforts in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Northern New England. Through the Direct Service Workforce Resource Center, funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, he oversees PHI’s technical assistance activities supporting state-based efforts to improve recruitment and retention of direct-care workers. Previously, he managed PHI projects funded by the US Departments of Health and Human Services and Labor, as well as PHI’s role in the Better Jobs/Better Care National Demonstration program. At PHI, Steven has also been involved in analyzing state wage pass-through initiatives, developing a model to illustrate the economic and social implications of potential wage increases for home and community-based services workers, and examining the policy implications of current training requirements for direct-care workers.

Steven has over 20 years of health policy experience, including 8 years as a policy analyst and advisor in Washington, D.C., specializing in government health programs and long-term care and health access issues. Steven is a graduate of Duke University with a degree in public policy studies; additionally, he earned his law degree from the University of Southern California.

Alexandra Olins

Northern New England Director
(802) 655-4615
AOlins@PHInational.org

Alexandra Olins is PHI’s Northern New England Director. Based in Burlington, Vermont, she works with a variety of stakeholders to improve quality long-term care and quality jobs across the three New England states’ long-term care continuum. She has managed PHI’s Northern New England LEADS Institute, including coordinating communication among the state partners and with funders, managing logistics, tracking lessons learned, providing consultation to the state partners and provider organizations as needed, and coordinating public education campaigns across the three northern New England states.

Alexandra has worked in the field of workforce development for several years. She came to PHI from the Boston Private Industry Council, Boston’s workforce investment board, where she managed a two-year $1 million grant to provide skill upgrade training to entry-level financial services employees. She also provided technical assistance to long-term care career ladder projects and to the Boston Workforce Development Initiative, now SkillWorks, a $10 million public-private partnership to develop industry-driven job training partnerships in Boston. Alexandra also worked at Jobs for the Future, where she provided technical assistance and consulting services for national workforce development demonstration projects. Prior to her work in workforce development, Alexandra was an elementary school teacher in New Orleans and Los Angeles. Alexandra is a graduate of Wesleyan University and holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Amy Robins

MA State Director

Amy Robins is the Massachusetts State Director for PHI. She is responsible for developing and executing a state-wide strategy for advocacy, research, and policy analysis on behalf of both direct-care workers and their long-term care clients. She works closely with key state officials, advocates and stakeholder groups to promote PHI’s health care and employment initiatives.

Amy came to PHI from Jobs for the Future, where she researched and disseminated best-practice advancement strategies for low-wage workers. Following welfare reform efforts in the late 1990s, Amy helped develop, implement and manage a $15 million Welfare-to-Work program at the Seattle-King County Workforce Development Council. An assistant to the director of the Women’s Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor during the Clinton administration, she also spent five years as a legislative aide for the U.S. Congress. Amy is a graduate of Wesleyan University and holds a Master of Public Administration from the Evans School at the University of Washington.

Carol Rodat

NY Policy Director
(718) 402-7226
CRodat@PHInational.org

Carol Rodat is the New York Policy Director for PHI. She is responsible for strategic advocacy, research, and analysis on behalf of the state’s direct-care workers and long-term care consumers, improving the health care delivery system by emphasizing the policy and practice learning derived from PHI and its affiliates. She works closely with a variety of stakeholders in New York’s health care system, including consumers, workers and their representatives, and providers.

Carol has over 20 years of policy experience, having worked first in the field of child welfare policy for the Child Welfare League of America in Washington, D. C., and then as executive director of Hospital Trustees of New York State, where she initiated one of the first quality improvement projects in the state’s hospitals. She was also a contributing editor to Health System Leader, which studied the development of integrated health systems. Most recently she served as president of the Home Care Association of New York State, a statewide not-for-profit organization active in state and federal home care policy. While there, she published reports and studies on the importance of the workforce in long-term care and testified frequently on the role of the direct-care worker. A founding board member of the Direct Care Alliance, she holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Oklahoma.

Dorie Seavey

Director of Policy Research
(617) 630-1694
DSeavey@PHInational.org

Dorie Seavey, Ph.D., PHI’s Director of Policy Research, supports PHI’s state policy directors and is responsible for research, analysis, and writing on economic, financial, and policy issues affecting the direct-care workforce and the long-term care industry. Her recent work has addressed topics such as the cost of frontline turnover, strategies for improving wages and benefits for direct-care workers, the intersection of family and paid caregiving, strategies for linking public workforce investment systems with the workforce needs of the long-term care industry, and reforming Medicaid payment policies for home- and community-based services.

Trained as a labor economist, Seavey received her Doctorate in Economics from Yale University in 1987. Over her career, she has specialized in workforce development and labor market difficulties for low-income individuals, including issues for frontline health care, social service, and childcare workers. Seavey has served as a senior member of several national evaluation and research teams investigating sectoral employment initiatives and employment brokering programs for low-income and disadvantaged job seekers. She is a former Senior Research Scientist at the Heller School at Brandeis University.

Hollis Turnham

MI State Director
(517) 327-0331
HTurnham@PHInational.org

Hollis Turnham is the Michigan State Director for PHI. She has over 24 years experience in poverty and aging issues, first as a legal services attorney in Adrian, Michigan and, then, as Michigan’s State Long Term Care Ombudsman for almost 16 years. Prior to joining PHI, Hollis was the 1999-2000 John Heinz Senate Fellow in Aging working on aging and long-term care issues for then-Chairman James Jeffords (R-VT) of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. She has a J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

With PHI, Hollis is working to improve the quality of direct-care jobs for home health aides, certified nursing assistants and other direct care workers in Michigan. She works with provider, consumer and worker organizations across the long-term care continuum as well as public policy makers, researchers, workforce agencies, and the foundation community to shape new policy initiatives and improve workplace and caregiving practices. She is the author of Michigan’s Care Gap: Our Emerging Direct Care Workforce Crisis.