Board Members
The Silver State Health Insurance Exchange Board of Directors consists of seven voting members and three ex officio nonvoting members. The Governor shall appoint five voting members of the Board; the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the Assembly shall appoint one voting member of the Board. The voting members of the Board represent a range and diversity of skills, knowledge, experience and geographic and stakeholder perspective. A voting member of the Board may not be a Legislator or hold any elective office in State Government.
Voting Members
Valerie Clark
Chair
Valerie Clark is the President of Clark & Associates Insurance Services, an insurance brokerage firm specializing in the development of creative health insurance plans for employer groups of all sizes. She joined Clark and Associates in 1993. She is a Partner in Solutions At Work which helps companies focus on their core business strategies by providing high quality Human Resource Consulting Services, HRIS and Payroll Technology Solutions at a competitive price. President of Altus Insurance Group, an affiliate of Clark and Associates, providing Commercial and Personal Insurance products to the Nevada market. Products include Worker’s Compensation, General Liability, Commercial/ Personal Auto, Homeowner’s, Professional Errors & Omissions, and Surety Bonds among an array of others.
Jonathan Johnson
Vice Chair
Jonathan brings 14 years of experience to Distinctive Insurance, a full-service agency, and is responsible for strategic direction and continued agency growth. He consults with businesses locally with respect to employee benefits and other insurance needs. Jonathan is a 2005 graduate from UNLV, with a Bachelor of Science in Finance. Jonathan sits on the board of the Clark County Association of Health Underwriters, a nonprofit association that supports the insurance industry. Jonathan is a native Las Vegas resident, married with five children and family dog. He enjoys attending sporting events and boating on Lake Mead in the summer months. He currently volunteers with Boy Scouts.
E. Lavonne Lewis
Board Member
Ms. Lavonne Lewis, a 45 year resident of Las Vegas is a Senior Executive with over 40 years of experience, possessing expertise in all Human Resources and Management functional areas in diverse domestic and international environments. Presently Ms. Lewis is the Director of Business for The Salvation Army Clark County where she uses her management expertise to coordinate the Business Activities of this diverse community organization. Ms. Lewis is responsible for the local operation of Finance, Human Resources and Grant Compliance.
Previously Ms. Lewis was Interim President/CEO for the Las Vegas Clark County Urban League. As President/CEO of the Las Vegas Urban League, Ms. Lewis was responsible for all of the operations of the agency, including Supportive Services for Veteran Families, Education, Public Computer Centers, Women, Infants, Children Centers, the William U. Pearson Community Center just to name a few. She received the Dedicated Service Award from the organization.
Sarah Friedman, Ph.D.
Board Member
Dr. Friedman is an Assistant Professor in Health Administration and Policy at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) School of Community Health Sciences. She studies and teaches health policy, policy analysis, and health economics, and is currently engaged in research funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and VA Health Services Research and Development. She also serves as an Evaluation Consultant for Project ECHO Nevada, an initiative of the UNR School of Medicine’s Office of Statewide Initiatives. Dr. Friedman earned a master’s in public health from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 2009, and a doctorate in Health Policy and Management from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2017, where she was a CTSI TL1 Translational Science Fellow.
Quincy L. Branch
Board Member
Quincy is a second-generation insurance professional who started his insurance career working for his father’s agency. He would later expand on the family-owned business creating Branch Benefits Consultants.
A man with a heart for service, he is active as a deacon at his church and volunteers at various charities. He has served in voluntary leadership positions on the Urban Chamber of Commerce, National Association of African American Insurance Agents and The Quiet Storm Foundation Board of Directors. In 2011 he was appointed to sit on the IIABA’s National Young Agents Committee and served as Chairman He is recognized as one of Las Vegas’s 40 under 40, featured as one of Employee Benefits Advisors 10 Rising Stars, along with being honored as one of Insurance Business Americas Hot 100 for 2015. In 2016, he was also appointed to the Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance. With all of his accolades in business and the community, Quincy continues to value family time with his wife of 16 years-Tamika and two children-Quamir and Sanai.
Sam Kumar
Board Member
Sam is a leader in healthcare analytics at Nevada’s biggest regional hospital. He brings decades of expertise in data, statistical analysis, and process engineering from diverse industries, with a deep understanding of analytics for hospital, medical group, and health insurance lines of business. His objective at SSHIX is to improve quality of care for its beneficiaries. A Reno local for over thirty years, Sam earned an electrical engineering master’s from Montana State University and an MBA from the University of Nevada, Reno. He has two commercialized patents, an IEEE publication, and served as the former President of Northern Nevada Mensa. Additionally, he is a world traveler with visits to more than 75 countries and holds over 60 tennis and track and field championships.
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