Amanda Pears Kelly is the CEO of Advocates for Community Health (ACH) where she spearheads the coalition’s work to advance the delivery of health care to underserved populations and achieve health equity for communities in need. She was also one of ACH’s founding members. Amanda has more than 15 years of experience translating complex issues into easily understood trainings and resources leveraged widely across the health center community and beyond.
A fierce advocate for health equity, Amanda is also the executive director of the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved (ACU). In this role, she leads organization vision and strategy and manages all aspects of the Association, providing overall leadership and management services to the board of directors and membership. Amanda oversees ACU fundraising, advocacy, communications, membership as well as organization projects and programs. She brings extensive experience to her role, including campaign development, communications strategy development, crisis management, leadership, team development and training, consulting, logistics, and policy/regulatory analysis. Additionally, Amanda has a proven record of dynamic, resourceful, and agile leadership with noted expertise launching grassroots advocacy initiatives and healthcare policy issues to lead advocates and define initiatives that positively impact tens of millions of patients living in underserved communities across the United States.
Amanda maintains deep expertise and established leadership in providing training and technical assistance to health centers and other organizations caring for underserved populations. She has spent much of her career developing multimedia content for diverse audiences with a shared mission of caring for the underserved. In her current role at ACU, she has helped to develop and lead new educational initiatives geared at supporting clinical workforce recruitment and retention. Under her leadership, ACU’s STAR2 Center has produced and widely distributed resources, training, and technical assistance with focus on provider resilience, burnout and wellness. Her depth of knowledge and years of work with underserved communities has enabled Amanda to share recognized best practices and lessons learned relative to healthcare workforce recruitment, retention, pipeline programming and more.
Prior to joining the ACU, Amanda held leadership positions working in government affairs, policy, and advocacy as the vice president of grassroots & internal advocacy at the American Diabetes Association, and as the national director of advocacy and civic engagement at the National Association of Community Health Centers. She holds a BA in political science from the University of New Hampshire and is a graduate of the Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership at Boston University.
Learn more about the National FQHC Advisory Board, Advocates for Community Health (ACH) or Association of Clinicians for the Underserved.
