Kody Kinsley

Secretary, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services

Kody H. Kinsley was the 18th secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Kinsley secured and implemented bipartisan policy reforms to make the healthcare system easier to access and more efficient. He led the state’s Medicaid expansion, secured $835 million in new behavioral health funding, and brokered a deal that relieved $4 billion in medical debt for two million individuals. Kinsley championed federal reforms to modernize blood donation policies, enabling gay and bisexual men to donate blood for the first time in decades.

Kinsley served two Presidents as the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  A native of North Carolina, he is a first generation college graduate from Brevard College and received his Master of Public Policy from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Civil Society Fellowship and an Adjunct Professor of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.