Angela Ortiz
CEO, Massachusetts Health Council
Angela Ortiz is a proven leader who has successfully driven system change at the grassroots level, fostering collaborative relationships with state and local policymakers, providers, payers, and advocates across the ecosystem, becoming as she puts it, a positive disruptor to meaningfully advance health equity and inclusion. Hired as CEO of the Massachusetts Health Council in August 2024, Angela focuses her creative and visionary brand of leadership to revitalize this 106-year-old legacy organization, spearheading the organization’s strategic planning, advancement, partnerships, financial and day-to-day operations and membership.
A health care advocate at heart, Angela’s work is shaped by the systemic barriers she faced in finding skilled pediatric nursing care for her own daughter, Ayla, who has complex medical needs. Today, Angela is well-known as one of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts leading advocates in the disability. She launched a statewide grassroots coalition, Massachusetts Pediatric Home Nursing Campaign, to address the crisis families like hers confronted following a decade of no reimbursement rate increases that severely decimated the industry’s workforce, and jeopardized the ability to keep the state’s most medically fragile children safe–at home and in the community. She is a Governor’s appointee as Commissioner for the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Persons with Disabilities, and a former Governor’s appointee to the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, elected Chair of its Public Policy Committee, later serving as that quasi-state agency’s Policy Analyst.
Angela completed the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) fellowship at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center at UMass Chan Medical School while earning her second masters, Master of Public Administration in Health & Disability Policy, from Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School. Angela also holds a Master’s in Business Administration from Assumption University. Named a 2018 Commonwealth Heroine following her nomination by Senator Cindy Friedman, this annual initiative of the Massachusetts Status on the Status of Women honors women who make outstanding contributions to their local communities, businesses, and non-profits.
