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Neda brings to PC4AA something rare and deeply needed, a combination of lived experience, clinical insight, policy expertise, and movement-building leadership. As a physician serving in the safety net in Los Angeles, Neda cared for patients navigating a broken system where access too often depended on income and coverage status. She watched as patients were lost in a system due to insurance gaps or delayed medical care due to cost. These were not abstract policy problems, they were daily realities.
They were also personal.
Neda’s commitment to this work is rooted in her own family’s experience. Unfortunately, after years without access to a primary care provider, Neda’s mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Her mother fought for 12 years and during this time, Neda learned first-hand what financial toxicity meant. When her family could no longer afford treatment, Neda’s mother passed away.
“I find myself returning to a simple conclusion,” Neda writes. “Lasting reform starts with universal access to primary care.” That conviction has guided more than a decade of work across organizing, policy, and clinical care.
Neda has led national advocacy campaigns, including the American Medical Student Association’s Lower Drug Prices Now initiative, coordinating organizing efforts across more than 30 chapters nationwide. Through her leadership with Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, she helped build coalitions that expanded access to lifesaving medications globally, work recognized in the documentary White Coat Rebels.
Her impact extends directly into policy. While working in the California legislature, Neda authored the first bill in the United States requiring Medicaid reimbursement for street medicine, bringing primary care to people who are too often excluded from traditional systems. She didn’t just write policy; she built the coalition that made it possible, founding the California Street Medicine Coalition to generate the public momentum needed for passage.
At the same time, she co-founded ProtectUS, a public health nonprofit focused on expanding access, strengthening public health infrastructure, and combating misinformation. There, she led fundraising, built strategic partnerships, and helped guide long-term organizational strategy, experience that will be critical as PC4AA continues to grow.
After serving as Associate Director of Health Policy at the Center for American Progress, Neda recently stepped into a new role as Director of Federal Affairs at the American Medical Association, where she advocates on behalf of clinicians and patients on Medicare Advantage policy, Medicaid, and primary care reform—the very issues at the core of PC4AA's mission.
Across every role, one thread is clear: Neda is not only a thinker, but a builder. She understands that policy alone is not enough. Change requires organizing. It requires translating values into durable systems that people can rely on.
That is exactly what she hopes to do at PC4AA.
“As Executive Director,” she writes, “I will work to translate the organization’s grassroots energy into a durable national movement, one capable of reshaping how primary care is valued, funded, and delivered across the country.”
This is a pivotal moment for our movement. Across the country, clinicians, patients, and communities are recognizing that the current system is not designed around people, it is designed around transactions. PC4AA exists to change that by making primary care a public good: accessible to every person, in every community.
Neda’s leadership comes at exactly the right time.
She brings the credibility of a primary care clinician, the strategic vision of a policy leader, and the urgency of someone who has seen firsthand what happens when primary care is absent. She knows that primary care is not just another part of the system, it is the foundation that determines whether the system works at all.
With Neda at the helm, we are poised to deepen our impact, expand our reach, and accelerate the movement for Primary Care for All Americans.
Please join us in welcoming her– including in person at our first National Summit, May 20th, in Cambridge, MA!
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