Victoria Wachino, a long-time health-policy expert, was named to head the Center for Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) Services on April 17, 2015. Wachino had been acting director of the center since January, when Cindy Mann left the agency.

Wachino attended Mount Holyoke College, earning a BA in 1989. She went on to earn a master’s in public policy from Harvard.

Wachino worked for the federal government in the Clinton administration, serving in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from 1995 to 2000 as a budget analyst for public health programs. She subsequently worked as a consultant for the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and as Associate Director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Beginning in 2004, she served as Health Policy Director for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In 2008, Wachino served on the OMB transition team for the incoming Obama administration. She joined the administration shortly thereafter as Director of the Children and Adults Health Programs Group in the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services. There, she helped with the initial rollout of the Affordable Care Act services to Medicaid recipients.

In 2013, Wachino stepped away from government service to be a Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago, which conducts social science research. She remained there for only about a year until returning to federal service as the deputy director for Medicaid and CHIP Services.

Wachino is married to Daniel Byman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and the director of research in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

-Steve Straehley

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