| Donna Lenhoff  Donna
R. Lenhoff, Esq., is a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest attorney
with over 25 years of experience in advocacy on behalf of employees
and consumers.
Most recently, from 2001 through 2003, Lenhoff served as Executive
Director of the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform,
whose mission is to achieve quality care for people with long-term
care needs. In that capacity, Lenhoff represented the consumer perspective
in the National Quality Forum's Nursing Home Performance Measures
Project, a consensus effort to select public indicators of quality
nursing-home care; in the Assisted Living Workgroup, created at
the behest of the Senate Committee on Aging to bring together stakeholders
to develop standards for assisted living; and on the Board of the
Direct Care Alliance, a coalition of workers, consumers, and providers
in the long-term care field.
Prior to taking the helm of NCCNHR, Lenhoff was Vice President
and General Counsel of the National Partnership for Women &
Families, where she directed government-affairs advocacy and litigation
to achieve equal opportunity and family-friendly workplaces. She
is one of the key architects of the Family and Medical Leave Act
(FMLA), led the coalition that advocated for its enactment before
Congress and successive Administrations, and monitored its enforcement.
She is a nationally known expert on balancing work and family and
has written and spoken extensively on women's employment issues,
women's and civil rights, access to justice, and public-interest
advocacy. In 1978, Lenhoff joined the National Partnership, then
the Women's Legal Defense Fund, as its first Staff Attorney,
and assumed positions of progressively greater responsibility throughout
her tenure there.
Lenhoff's experience has also included lobbying on judicial
nominations and other public-interest issues; planning and implementing
major conferences; writing and publishing key reports; and extensive
media experience as spokesperson and resource, including published
op-eds and letters to the editor. From 1976 through 1978, she was
a Trial Attorney in the United States Department of Justice's
Antitrust Division. Lenhoff has also served on the Boards and supported
the fund-raising efforts of a number of organizations, including
Women Empowered Against Violence (WEAVE), the Alliance for Justice,
the National Committee for Pay Equity, and My Sister's Place.
Now an independent consultant, Lenhoff's recent projects
include a writing an Issue Brief on low-income workers' self-sufficiency
for Wider Opportunities for Women, giving a speech at a symposium
on health-care regulation at Southern Illinois University Law School
(to be published in the Journal of Legal Medicine), writing a proposal
on a new campaign to build grass-roots advocacy for the Alliance
for Justice, and pro bono proposal-writing for her daughter's
school.
Lenhoff was awarded the 2001 Work/Life Achievement Award by the
Metropolitan Washington Work/Life Coalition in December, 2001. She
was named a Parenting Leader' by Parenting Magazine
in 2000, and, along with then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton,
one of the "25 Most Influential Working Mothers" by
Working Mother Magazine in 1997.
Lenhoff received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and
her B.A. from the University of Chicago where she was elected to
Phi Beta Kappa. Lenhoff lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband
Michael Jacobson, daughter Sonya, and dog Trixie.
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