Tufts Health Plan Foundation announces addition of four new board members

WATERTOWN, MA – Sept. 12, 2019 – Tufts Health Plan Foundation welcomed Benjamin Perkins, Jo Ann Simons, Mary Skelton Roberts and Kristin Lewis to its Board of Directors, broadening its leadership and expertise in community. The Foundation, which recently celebrated its first decade, works collaboratively to make communities great places to grow up and grow old.

“Our board brings diverse, lived, professional expertise to our work, but most importantly a passion for community,” said Thomas P. O’Neill, III, who chairs the Tufts Health Plan Foundation board of directors and serves on the Tufts Health Plan board.

Nora Moreno Cargie, president of Tufts Health Plan Foundation and vice president for corporate citizenship at Tufts Health Plan, added, “We know our new members’ insights and wisdom will advance our mission and enrich this very important work.”

An avid social-justice practitioner, intellectual, and creative thinker, Benjamin Perkins is the vice president of Health Equity Strategies for the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. He has extensive experience in public health and health disparities and inequities. An ordained minister, Mr. Perkins received a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, a Master of Arts in clinical psychology from Antioch University in Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Arts in geography from the University of California at Los Angeles. He serves a multicultural congregation in the Boston area.

Jo Ann Simons, the chief executive officer for Northeast Arc, also serves on the Governor’s Commission on People with Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities. She has spent her career working on behalf of people with intellectual and development disabilities. Ms. Simons is a past chair of the National Down Syndrome Society, past president of the National Down Syndrome Congress, and a consultant to Special Olympics. Simons received her Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Wheaton College and a Master’s in Social Work in Policy, Planning, and Community Organization from the University of Connecticut.

Mary Skelton Roberts is co-director of the climate program at the Barr Foundation. In that role she is a thought leader, strategist and change maker, leveraging the Foundation’s resources to ensure that Massachusetts’ transportation system works for the lives we live today. Ms. Skelton Roberts currently chairs the board of Hispanics in Philanthropy and is former board member of The Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. Locally, Ms. Skelton Roberts is a trustee at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and on the Milagros Para Niños Advisory Council at Boston Children’s Hospital. Ms. Skelton Roberts has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Southern California and a Master in City Planning from MIT. She also earned mediation and facilitation accreditations from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the Center for Dispute Resolution in London, England, where she served as lead faculty. She is a first-generation American of Cuban decent. She was born and raised in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, where she currently resides.

As senior vice president and chief public affairs officer at Tufts Health Plan, Kristin Lewis leads the company’s public policy, government and public affairs work as well as strategy and implementation of health reforms at the state and federal level. With more than 20 years of experience in health insurance and government affairs, Ms. Lewis serves as a trustee and executive committee member for the Massachusetts Tax Payer’s Foundation and is on the board of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans. Ms. Lewis received a Master of Business Administration from Boston College and a Bachelor of Arts in classics from the University of Vermont.

Complete list of Tufts Health Plan Foundation Board of Directors