Rachel Weiss
Vice President of Health Care Advocacy
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Rachel directs the federal and state advocacy portfolio for health care at Arnold Ventures. In this role, working closely with the health care team, she leads efforts to develop and implement effective advocacy campaigns focused on lowering health care costs while maintaining and enhancing access to needed, high-quality care.
Rachel’s background in the health care ecosystem spans the public and private sectors. She has focused on developing and implementing innovative strategies to advance policy priorities by bringing together diverse stakeholders as part of a comprehensive approach to advocacy. Most recently, Rachel served in the Biden Administration as Director of Communications at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs. She led all stakeholder communications and outreach efforts, including a slate of COVID-19 initiatives, addressing the formula shortage, confronting our national mental health crisis, and working through the unprecedented resettlement of refugees. Also, while at HHS, Rachel managed external engagement and communications related to the unaccompanied children mission during the height of the 2021 surge.
Before her public service, Rachel was Director of External Affairs at UnitedHealth Group. She led public affairs campaigns to shape public sentiment and advance policy change. Rachel designed comprehensive messaging and communications strategies and directed the external affairs approach to policy coalition engagement. Prior to that, at Leavitt Partners, Rachel managed non-partisan policy coalitions in diverse policy areas, including health IT, diagnostic testing, and drug pricing reform. Earlier in her career, she focused on health technology at Underwriters Laboratories and worked on implementing the Affordable Care Act at Deloitte.
Rachel received her master’s degree in Public Policy and her bachelor’s degree in Communications, Law, Economics, and Government from American University.
Rachel and her husband live in Washington, DC, with their 2-year-old daughter.
