Alumni Changemakers: Kristi Guillory Reid
To honor our 40 years, we're celebrating our most valuable resource - our alumni - through 40 profiles highlighting their leadership. Alumna Kristi Guillory completed the Junior Summer Institute at UT Austin in 1994.
Creating Social Impact through Storytelling
Kristi Guillory Reid embodies the values of family, gratitude, and communication. Kristi Guillory Reid earned her B.A. in Political Science from Loyola University, a M.S. in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University, and a J.D. from Duke University School of Law. With her academic excellence and leadership potential, she was chosen to be a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. During this two year fellowship, she gained experience working at the Executive Office of the President and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Following her tenure as a fellow, Kristi became a Program Analyst at the Administration for Children and Families. In this role, she not only drafted reports to Congress and developed agendas for national conferences, but contributed research and technical assistance to the National Employment and Retention Project that served eight states.
Kristi later served as Senior Policy Analyst & Assistant Counsel for the Council of State Governments. She developed and implemented federal policy and advocacy strategies on healthcare, transportation, and education. She also drafted and disseminated a weekly policy newsletter for elected and appointed officials across the country. She led and managed the organization’s legal task force where she summarized Supreme Court cases with significant impact on states.
While she served as a Senior Policy Analyst at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Kristi not only developed and analyzed policy but provided legal counsel on healthcare issues. She also prepared and delivered testimony on the topic of graduate medical education before the Institute of Medicine. At the Lewin Group, Kristi played a key role in the planning and recruitment efforts for the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative that offered support to over 140,000 physicians. She led a team that researched and drafted 108 awardee summaries for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s HealthCare Innovation Awards project that awarded up to $1 billion to awardees.
"My participation in the JSI changed the trajectory of my career, and for that, I am truly thankful. I thought that the only path to creating and advocating for better policies for communities of color was to obtain a law degree, but my public policy education provided me with an additional path and training to not only be a public policy thought leader but to also serve as a change agent.
I later earned my law degree, but my policy education provided me with an additional perspective and analytical ability that my peers didn't possess. I made lifelong friends in my JSI and am lucky to be a part of the PPIA community!"
Kristi served as Senior Associate Director of State Policy at the Alzheimer’s Association, where her leadership and communication efforts continued to have an impact. In this role, she served as both a liaison and an in-house expert on home and community-based services and the healthcare workforce. She also led various training and advocacy initiatives related to healthcare policy, authored several national policy toolkits, and analyzed state and federal legislation.
Her current role is President and CEO for Kristi Guillory Reid Enterprises LLC. In this role, Kristi provides consulting services in the areas of policy, advocacy, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has created racial equity policy rubrics and is guiding organizations as they seek to build health equity institutes. As a children's book author, she is working to inspire potential in today’s youth. Her children’s book, Harper Counts Her Blessings, teaches children the timeless themes of gratitude and thankfulness. “Sadly, we rarely see children’s books that feature a strong, positive African-American girl as the main character, and this is a void that I wanted to fill.”
Kristi Guillory Reid is helping organizations and individuals to create, convey, and align their priorities to produce thoughtful public policies through her dedication to public service. Whether she is developing visionary healthcare policy or writing diverse children’s literature, her leadership is creating meaningful social impact.
Thank you, Kristi, for helping to build a world that prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusion. Your willingness to engage at all levels from research, to development, to implementation, and to advocacy, and through your work by creating thoughtful children’s literature is transforming our society for the better.
Read more Changemaker profiles here!