WASHINGTON – The National Indian Health Board announced that Jennifer Cooper joined its staff as legislative director. She started the beginning of March.

Cooper is an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians. Prior to joining the NIHB, she served during the general election as a Get-Out-The-Vote Organizer for Obama’s Nevada Campaign for Change. Like many others across the country, she made numerous telephone calls and knocked on countless local constituents’ doors. In addition, she brought the Obama campaign to the doorstep of many tribal communities in rural northern Nevada.

Cooper holds a Master’s of Public Administration degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a Juris Doctor from Cornell Law School. With the combination of her advanced degrees and various professional experiences in the nonprofit, government and private sectors, Cooper understands and appreciates the complexity of legal and policy issues affecting Indian country today.

“I would like to thank Stacy Bohlen and NIHB for this opportunity to join the staff. I have tailored my career for a position such as this one and I am honored to serve Indian country and work to advance tribal health care policy,” she said.

Cooper’s prior professional experiences include serving as a policy analyst for the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. For a summer during law school, she also worked as a law clerk for the California Indian Legal Services in Oakland. After law school, she started with the law firm of Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth in San Francisco, and later worked at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., a subsidiary of Kaiser Permanente, in Oakland, before joining the Campaign for Change in Nevada.

Cooper grew up in Irving, N.Y. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in Native American Studies and Economics from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. She is also a graduate of the Pre-Law Summer Institute at the American Indian Law Center, Inc. in Albuquerque, N.M.

Cooper can be reached at jcooper@nihb.org.