Lauren Padilla-Valverde

Lauren Padilla-Valverde is the daughter of Indigenous Guatemalan parents who organized for justice in their homeland. She has maintained her parents’ commitment to justice throughout her career in academic medicine, patient care, and health justice philanthropy. Lauren is Managing Director of Racial Equity, Culture, and Practice at The California Endowment. In this role, she oversees the foundation’s efforts to become an embodied, anti-racist health foundation. Under her leadership, The California Endowment engages in deep communal work to align its values with its practices and to be a trusted partner to its grantees. Before this appointment, Lauren was Senior Program Manager in the Salinas Valley, where she developed a grantmaking strategy to build organized power and promote meaningful community-led change as part of the Endowment’s $1 billion, 10-year Building Healthy Communities initiative (2010-2020). 

Before joining The Endowment, Lauren was an assistant professor and director of the Joint Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies and Master of Public Health Program at Touro University-California. She oversaw the development of a joint Master’s degree program designed to prepare a healthcare workforce that reflects and serves California’s racially and culturally diverse population. The program has become a national model for physician assistant and public health education, training healthcare practitioners who go on to work in Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs). She practiced family medicine for 10 years, serving farmworkers and the unhoused as a physician assistant. 

Earlier in her career, Lauren served as senior analyst for the Division of Health Affairs at the University of California, Office of the President, where she developed growth and enrollment recommendations to increase the number of underrepresented students in medicine and public health. Lauren has been recognized by the National Compadres Network and Health Career Connection for her dedication to establishing and sustaining pathways for the next generation of leaders in health and justice. 

Lauren is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, Stanford University, and Pace University. She lives in Richmond with her partner Jeremy Valverde, and they are proud parents of Stella Magdalena.