Staff

Jennifer Adams-Dunwell (jdunwell@milbank.org) is the Fund’s accounting officer. Previously Ms. Adams-Dunwell worked as a bookkeeper for Best Deal Trucking Company and prior to that for Brylane Inc. She earned a BA degree in accounting from Lehman College and completed a certificate program in nonprofit accounting.

A program officer at the Fund, Michelle M. Alletto (malletto@milbank.org) provides support to the Reforming States Group and Emerging Leaders Program. She comes to the Fund from Louisiana where she served as deputy secretary for the Department of Health (LDH). In that position, she provided leadership in several areas, including services for the aging and disabled, mental health and substance use disorder, and public health. Prior to that, she led the state’s family planning program and served as the deputy director for the LDH Birth Outcomes Initiative, an effort that led to impressive improvements for newborns in Louisiana. Ms. Alletto was also the assistant director for public policy at the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs in Washington, DC. She earned a master’s degree in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and has over a decade of experience working in public health and public management.

Rachel Block (rblock@milbank.org) is a program officer at the Fund. An independent consultant who worked for the Fund and other organizations focusing on federal and state health policy issues, she has served in numerous executive roles in the public and private sectors, including spearheading development of New York state’s health information technology strategy as deputy commissioner for Health Information Technology Transformation in the New York State Department of Health and as the founding executive director of the New York eHealth Collaborative. Ms. Block has also worked at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where she held several senior management positions directing policy development and operations for Medicaid, State Children’s Health Insurance, and federal survey and certification programs.

Gail Cambridge (cambridge@milbank.org) is the Fund’s administrative services manager. Prior to joining the Fund, she was employed at the Guyana National Cooperative Bank. During her eleven years at the bank, she held several senior positions and was instrumental in implementing new procedures and training. She graduated magna cum laude with a BS degree from the City University of New York and an MS degree from Central Michigan University.

Alan B. Cohen (abcohen@bu.edu) is editor of The Milbank Quarterly. He is a research professor in the Markets, Public Policy, and Law Department of the Questrom School of Business and professor of health law, policy, and management in the Boston University School of Public Health.

Cohen was the national program director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program from 2013 to 2018, and also directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program from 1992 to 2016. At Boston University since 1994, he directed the Questrom School’s Health Care MBA Program for nine years (1994-2003) and the Boston University Health Policy Institute for 10 years (2003-2013). His current research interests include: national health policy and health system reform, comparative health care systems, and evaluation of quality improvement initiatives.

Earlier in his career, Cohen held faculty positions at Johns Hopkins University and Brandeis University, and spent eight years at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, serving as vice president for research and evaluation for five years.

Cohen is principal author of Technology in American Health Care: Policy Directions for Effective Evaluation and Management (Michigan, 2004); co-editor of Medicare and Medicaid at 50: America’s Entitlement Programs in the Age of Affordable Care (Oxford, 2015); and co-editor of “The Politics and Challenges of Achieving Health Equity,” a special issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (Duke, 2017).

Cohen is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and previously served on the editorial boards of Health Affairs, Inquiry, and the Journal of Health Organization and Management. He received his BA in psychology from the University of Rochester, and his MS and ScD in health policy and management from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Katelynn Sedan (ksedan@milbank.org) is an administrative assistant at the Fund. She joined the Fund in the summer of 2010 after graduating from Loyola University Chicago. She earned two BA degrees from Loyola: one in philosophy with an emphasis in social justice and another in political science with an emphasis in military intervention. She also minored in international studies.

Tara Strome (tstrome@milbank.org) is managing editor of The Milbank Quarterly. She was previously publications associate and administrative assistant at the Fund. Prior to that she worked as a committee assistant for the Oregon Senate and as a data specialist for the Multnomah County Department of Human Services. She holds a BA in sociology from Colby College and an MPA in health policy and management from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.

Lisa Dulsky Watkins (lwatkins@milbank.org) is the director of the Milbank Memorial Fund Multi-State Collaborative, a consortium of 18 state and regional multi-payer programs designed to transform primary care. She is actively engaged in advocacy for new and continued support for these efforts and other innovations at the state and federal levels. She is the former chief of operations for the Vermont Blueprint for Health, one of the founding members of the Collaborative. She received her MD degree from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and her BS from the City College of New York. She completed her internship and residency in pediatrics at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and was in primary care practice as a board-certified pediatrician in Middlebury and Essex Junction, Vermont.

Judith Zimmer (jzimmer@milbank.org) is the Fund’s communications director. She comes to the Fund with more than 20 years of experience in health care communications. Previously, she worked for a New York City-based cancer research foundation and at several medical centers, including Mount Sinai. A journalist by training, Ms. Zimmer has written about health for magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times. She is the co-author or author of several books, including The Cardiovascular Cure (Broadway) and Labor of Love, Women Share the Joy of Childbirth (John Wiley). Ms. Zimmer has a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College. Members of the press can contact Judith at the email address above or 212-355-8400.