Nancy-Ann Min DeParle Commission for Women's 2005 Notable UT Woman

BIOGRAPHY

Nancy-Ann Min was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but spent most of her early years in Rockwood, Tennessee. Entering the University of Tennessee on an Andy Holt scholarship, Ms. Min majored in history and was a College Scholar (B.A., highest honors, 1978). Her honors research project dealt with the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, “Uncle Sam, Hirohito, and Resegregation: The Tule Lake Segregation Center, 1943-1946.” Min’s achievements at UT are numerous: Student Government Association president, the first woman ever elected; Women’s Coordinating Council charter member and co-chair; Mortar Board; Phi Beta Kappa; Phi Kappa Phi; Omicron Delta Kappa; Torchbearer; and student member of the Board of Trustees. She was selected as ODK’s national “Leader of the Year” for 1978 and named one of Glamour magazine’s “Top Ten College Women.”

In Min’s first year of Harvard Law School she was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and went on to earn an Honors B.A. degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from Balliol College, Oxford University, England, in 1981. She also holds a master’s degree from Oxford (M.A., 1986). She credits Dr. Milton Klein with encouraging her to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship. Ms. Min returned to Harvard and completed her doctor of jurisprudence degree in 1983; her legal career began as a law clerk for the Honorable Gilbert S. Merritt, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit. While Min was an attorney with Bass, Berry & Sims in Nashville, Governor Ned McWherter tapped her to head the state Department of Human Services office, an agency of 6,000 employees that determined Medicaid eligibility and provided food stamps and child welfare services to more than a million Tennesseans every year.

Nancy-Ann Min rejoined her private legal practice in Nashville in 1989, and in September 1991 moved to Washington, DC, to join the law firm of Covington & Burling. Little more than a year later, Min, only thirty-six years old, was named the associate director for Health and Personnel at the federal Office of Management and Budget and served as the OMB’s representative on health care reform for President Bill Clinton’s administration. Such a responsible position at such a young age induced Time magazine to select Min in 1994 as one of its top fifty future leaders. In July 1997 she transferred to the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA, now the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), first as deputy director and later administrator, a post she held for three years until becoming a fellow of the Institute of Politics and the Interfaculty Health Policy Forum at Harvard University.

Nancy-Ann Min DeParle is now a senior advisor to JPMorgan Partners, LLC, in Washington, DC, and is an adjunct professor of Health Care Systems at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. She is also a Commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) that advises Congress on Medicare policy and payment issues. She serves on the boards of directors of several corporations, including the Cerner Corporation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the DaVita Corporation. She is married to Jason DeParle, author and New York Times senior writer, and the mother of two sons.

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