Robert Phillips, Community Catalyst Board Chair, is President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of West Oakland Health, a federally qualified health center founded in 1967 to improve the health and socioeconomic status of the Bay Area’s Black and low-income communities; and managing partner of Griffin McKenzie LLC, a strategic consultancy that provides strategy development, executive coaching, and interim CEO services to non-profit organizations, health conversion foundations, and health care agencies who are addressing racial, gender, and economic injustice.
In the years before West Oakland Health and Griffin McKenzie LLC, Robert held a few positions that have provided him with a wealth of relationships, experiences, perspectives, and working knowledge. Robert was President, CEO & Founding Board Member of Alluma, a non-profit technology social enterprise that connected women of color and their families to health and human services to improve racial/economic health equity. He was Executive Director, Community Benefits and Corporate Strategy for Kaiser Permanente, where he managed national external affairs and communications, implementing numerous strategies for Kaiser Permanente’s national program office. He was the Managing Director of Health Programs for the Sierra Health Foundation, leading a philanthropic intermediary program providing programmatic and capacity-building support to the safety net health programs throughout Northern and Central California. He was a Managing Director and Senior Fellow, among other positions, for The California Endowment, where he managed its health and human services program, and boys and men of color initiatives. Robert spent the early part of his career in the labor movement as a political director and capital strategies rep for SEIU and a health policy analyst for the AFL-CIO.
In addition to his professional experience, Robert is ABD in Health Policy from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, possesses a Master of Public Health (MPH) in health policy and management from Harvard University, an MPA in Social Policy-Public/Nonprofit Management from Syracuse University, and a bachelor’s degree in political science/economics from Morehouse College. Robert has a Certificate of Business Excellence in Executive Education from UC Berkeley and a Certificate of Investment Stewardship from the Commonfund Endowment Institute at Yale University.