Washington, D.C. — Today, the Center for American Progress announced that Jamila Taylor and Maggie Jo Poertner Buchanan have joined the Women’s Health and Rights Program at American Progress as a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the program, respectively. In their respective roles, Taylor and Buchanan will help CAP develop and advance policies to promote women’s health care and rights.
“Through politically motivated and often medically inaccurate means, conservative legislators across the country have implemented an alarming number of anti-women health measures in recent years,” said Carmel Martin, Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress. “Such efforts effectively erode a woman’s right to seek the care that is best for her and her family. As CAP continues to promote policies that ensure that all women have full access to quality, medically accurate care, Jamila and Maggie’s demonstrated leadership and expertise will be invaluable resources.”
Prior to joining CAP, Jamila Taylor served as a senior policy advisor at Ipas, a global nongovernmental organization dedicated to ending preventable deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortion and helping women realize their sexual and reproductive rights. In this role, she led the organization’s global policy team on matters related to U.S. policy and abortion. Taylor previously worked as a senior public policy associate for the Center for Health and Gender Equity, or CHANGE; worked on HIV/AIDS policy and advocacy for The AIDS Institute; and worked on domestic abortion policy and advocacy for the National Network of Abortion Funds. She began her career as a congressional staff member in the office of Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), working on issues related to health and education.
Taylor has published and presented on a number of topics related to reproductive health and rights and public policy. She holds a bachelor of arts from Hampton University and a master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2010, Taylor received a Ph.D. in political science from Howard University. Taylor started at CAP on March 21.
Maggie Jo Poertner Buchanan previously served as a senior legislative assistant for Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), handling health care, education, Social Security, and the congressman’s work as the ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources. During her time on the Hill, Buchanan worked closely with diverse groups of stakeholders and advanced several of her office’s legislative priorities into law, including a standalone bill on medicare billing practices. Buchanan also previously led NARAL Pro-Choice America’s policy work on young women, women in the military, and crisis pregnancy centers and has worked for Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), the Texas Democratic Party, and the Center for Women in Law. For the past six years, she has been a volunteer on a legal hotline for pregnant minors in Texas.
Buchanan has presented on a variety of topics related to women’s rights and has been published in the Texas Journal of Women and the Law and the Texas Review of Entertainment & Sports Law. Buchanan received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law, where she was recognized for her extensive pro bono work. Buchanan started at CAP on March 28.
For more information or to speak to an expert, contact Chelsea Kiene at [email protected] or 202.478.5328.
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