Board & Staff
HCAO Board Members
Wes Brain (Ashland, SEIU, Southern Oregon Jobs with Justice, Southern Oregon Central Labor Council)
Wes is a retired member-activist with the Service Employees International Union Local #503. He is also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Lane Branch. He worked previously as a Firefighter for 16 years with Jackson County Fire District #5 followed by 15 years employment with Southern Oregon University providing occupational health and safety services for campus employees. Wes hosts the Brain Labor Report, an hour-long radio show every Wednesday at 9 a.m. on KSKQ, the Rogue Valley's community radio station, www.kskq.org. For 15 years he has been a delegate to the Southern Oregon Central Labor Council and he is on the board of Southern Oregon Job with Justice, www.sojwj.org. Wes believes very strongly that Health Care is a Human Right!
Joanne Cvar, Communications Committee Chair (Waldport, Rural Organizing Project, IIRT, Northwest)
Joanne participated in OSPC preparatory work for launching the expanded Coalition. After 20 years in banking, she earned an MA in English at Portland State University in 1988 and taught writing classes there and at the Oregon Coast Community College. She has served as executive director of Vision Northwest, a 501(c)3 network of peer support groups for severe vision loss; reporter and editor for the South Lincoln County News; media coordinator for the Pacific Green Party of Oregon; and managing editor of Green Pages (newspaper of the Green Party US). She is a published author of nonfiction and currently publishes CoastNet, a weekly email newsletter of activities in Lincoln and South Tillamook Counties. She is also active with the Immigration Information Response Team, working for public education about immigrants' rights and issues. Her past activism in defending human and civil rights brings her a fresh commitment to the cause of making quality affordable health care available to everyone who needs it, regardless of ability to pay.
Jana Gregory, Mobilization Committee Co-Chair (Portland Jobs with Justice, Faith Caucus, Metro)
Jana served as co-chair of Portland Jobs with Justice, leader of the Faith Caucus and member of the HCAO Organization Development Committee until she was appointed to fill the HCAO Mobilization co-chair position. She continues to serve under Rosalie Pedroza as a data doctor for HCAO and is a member of the task group organizing the 2014 Inner City Blues Fest. Jana brings an understanding of the data base as well as the Mobilization Tools and how they might be used together to build the movement for Health Care for All-Oregon. Jana is a retired lawyer and teacher. She pays attention to detail and brings skills in organization, analysis and writing to her volunteer work with HCAO.
Sandra Hernandes (Portland, The TREE Institute, communities with barriers, communities of color, education, Metro)
As executive director of THE TREE Institute, Sandra uses liberatory theatre techniques that evoke power-sharing with poor and marginalized immigrant communities. She offers organizational experience and important connections to organizations struggling for health equity. Sandra is a critical and popular educator who engages people to discover and practice what they know and use their experience to organize for change, crucial elements of our base-building methods. She has high energy, determination and clear vision of what matters and ways to achieve it.
Betty Johnson, Nominations and Elections Committee Chair (Corvallis, Mid-Valley Health Care Advocates, faith communities, Valley)
Betty is a stalwart for universal health care in Oregon, active in the 2002 Measure 23 campaign and before, who offers her experience with wisdom and grace. Service on an advisory committee for the CCO process under the OHA is a recent example of her extensive work on boards and public policy committees. She has chaired the OSPC By-laws Committee and now chairs the Nominations and Elections Committee, guiding with patient clarity about key issues. Motivated by her own faith, one of her abiding concerns is engaging faith communities to act on the moral and ethical demands of health care reform.
Mark Lindgren, Secretary: (Corvallis, HCAO, Small Business, Valley).
Mark is a meeting minutes recorder and Corvallis area family farmer. He was HCAO Chair from 2001-2011, including the campaign for the single payer ballot initiative Measure 23 in 2002. He helped transition HCAO into its current form in 2011, and also to develop and promote HB 3510 that year. He served as the Secretary for the 501c3 Universal Health Care for Oregon (UHCO) (now the HCAO Education Fund) from 2000 to 2012, and currently serves as President.
Reyna Lopez (Portland, Causa, Communities of Color, Metro)
Reyna is Civic Engagement Director for Causa Oregon, the largest immigrant rights organization in the Pacific Northwest. She has served as Causa representative to HCAO, testified on behalf of Causa in support of HB 2922 at the May 13 House Health Care Committee hearing, and has been active around health policy and health equity issues since 2011. Before going to work for Causa she was involved with the BUS Project.
Chris Lowe, Vice-President (Portland JwJ, Metro)
Chris assisted in developing HCAO and assisted in drafting its by-laws. He has been a member of the Portland JwJ Health Committee Steering Committee and the Economic Crisis Committee. He is on the Environmental Health Committee and a member of the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Chris brings research, writing skills and excellent judgment from his education and experience as a college professor, editor and his studies in public health and history.
Peter Mahr M.D. (Portland, Physicians for a National Health Plan, Oregon)
Peter is the president of the Portland Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. He is a family physician who currently works at the Student Health and Counseling Center at Portland State University and is attending Portland State University's Masters in Public Health program. He previously worked for 10 years at East County Health Center in Gresham, which is a primary care clinic run by Multnomah County. He is dedicated to the care of the under-served and a strong proponent of a national, single-payer health program. He is also a clinical assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University in the Department of Family Medicine. He graduated from Dartmouth Medical School in 1998 and finished his residency in Family Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in 2001.
Cydnie Meyer (Corvallis, OSEA, Education, Valley)
Cydnie is State Secretary of OSEA and Co-President of Local OSEA #2 (past 8 years). She is currently on the Classified Insurance Committee. Cydnie previously served as Building representative, Secretary, Treasurer, and Vice-President , Local OSEA #2.. Cydnie values her union and its members, sees the big picture, and can also work with details. She wants to be sure that groups are taken care of in order to achieve success.
Michael Moore, President (Portland, Sisters of the Road, Communities with Barriers, Metro)
Michael served as the Vice-President for the Coalition since April 2012 and has recently filled the president position. He previously served as Interim President for HCAO’s founding, and helped draft Coalition’s by-laws. Michael serves on the board of Right 2 Dream Too in Portland, and served on the board of Sisters of the Road before accepting a staff position. He has visceral knowledge of how lack of access to health care both hurts the most vulnerable in our communities and in itself becomes a further barrier to the ability to get needed care.
Rosalie Pedroza, Executive Committee Member at Large: (Turner, Rural Organizing Project, labor, barriers, Valley)
Rosalie has built community support for defense of human dignity and rights with the Rural Organizing Project. She serves on the ROP Board, and as a rank and file activist and elected board officer of SEIU Local 503, which organizes most public employees, home health workers, child care workers and nursing home workers. She also serves on the Executive Board of the Marion, Polk, Yamhill Central Labor Council. Her political and organizing experience is of direct relevance to building our statewide movement and communicating effectively about health care as a human right in small town communities. Since mid-2011 Rosalie has been working on developing the plans for the expanded Coalition.
Terry Rogers, Finance Committee Chair (Portland, JwJ)
As the chairperson of the Finance Committee, Terry additionally has responsibility for fundraising. She joined the Portland Jobs with Justice Health Care Committee in 2010 and participated in the activities of the Oregon Single Payer Campaign. She has fundraising experience both professionally and as a volunteer with various non-profit community groups. She practiced law for seventeen years at Multnomah County Legal Aid Service and subsequently lived abroad for 11 years working in international development of the rule of law.
Cheryl Simpson, MSW, Mobilization Committee Co-Chair (La Grande, Oregon Rural Action Health Care Action Team,)
Cheryl’s social work career includes a wide range of community and organizational development positions in the U.S and abroad. In 2003 she founded and led the Idaho Statewide End-of-Life Coalition, Inc., now Idaho Quality of Life Coalition, Inc. During her tenure the Coalition won the prestigious Rallying Points Emerging Coalition Award of Excellence from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In 2009 Cheryl took part in the Mad as Hell Doctors Tour traveling from Ohio to Washington DC. As co-chair she organized the Oregon Rural Action Health Care Reform Action Team and has worked on a variety of organizational development activities with HCAO since 2012. Cheryl appreciates the opportunity of co-chairing the HCAO Mobilization Committee, which she sees playing a key role, with other HCAO committees, in bringing universal, publicly funded, affordable health care to all people in Oregon – and the U.S.
Lou Sinniger, Organizational Development Chair, (Eugene,AFSCME)
About seven years after receiving a BA in Social Anthropology from the University of Oregon, Lou helped organize a union with his co-workers at the Bureau of Land Management in Eugene. He left BLM to become a union representative and continued representational work as a lifelong passion. The last 20 years of his career were spent with AFSCME Council 75. Throughout his career of bargaining for the members he observed health insurance costs always increasing and benefits decreasing. Now it is an obstruction to contract negotiations and is lowering the standard of living for most union employees. He decided upon retirement to work towards correcting this erroneous attempt to provide health care to people and.found HCAO, an alternative for decent publicly funded health care for everyone in Oregon and throughout the United States.
William (Bill) Whitaker, Treasurer (LaGrande, Oregon Rural Action, Education, Cascades-East)
Bill currently serves as treasurer of both HCAO and the HCAO-Education Fund. Professor emeritus of social work at Boise State University, Bill taught community organizing and social policy for 35 years. He is currently co-chair of the Oregon Rural Action Health Care Reform Action Team, organizing in five counties in eastern Oregon, and board member of the Rural Organizing Project. Bill’s strong motivations are rooted partly in a background in the Civil Rights movement. He brings understanding of the crises in rural health care, how a single payer system can help address these crises, and a commitment to ensuring those concerns are reflected in the Coalition’s work, as true statewide organizing requires. Bill is committed to leaving a livable and just world to grandchildren everywhere.
HCAO Staff
Ross Lampert, HCAO Organizer, (Portland) 503-206-6709.
Ross has been a professional organizer since 2004. He has worked for political, community, and labor organizations winning legislative and electoral victories and gaining real improvements in people's daily lives. During his time in Tucson, he organized tenants to win needed housing improvements, fought predatory lending practices, and worked to raise the minimum wage. Since moving to Portland, he's helped pass the 100% Smoke Free Workplaces Law, won a rule change at the OLCC, and started the Fair Trade Music campaign. Additionally, he led a team of registering 20,000 voters in 2010, registering over 2,000 himself. Since joining HCAO in 2012, he's held over 40 training meetings, organizing local groups around Oregon.