Alister Martin is from Neptune, New Jersey and is placed at the Office of the Vice President and the White House Office of Public Engagement. Alister is a practicing emergency physician and former Chief Resident at Massachusetts General Hospital. He served as a former Health Policy Aide to Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont and Congressman Raul Ruiz of California. He works at the intersection of public policy and medicine as research faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School Behavioral Insights Group and as clinical faculty at Harvard Medical School in the Center for Social Justice and Health Equity. He leverages his background in politics, policy, and the field of behavioral economics to use the ER as a place to build programs that serve the needs of vulnerable patients. He is the founder of Vot-ER, a nonpartisan voter registration organization that has organized over 26,000 healthcare providers and 300 hospitals to help non-urgent patients register to vote. He is the founder of Get Waivered, a program that is converting our nation’s ERs into the front door for opioid addiction treatment. He also co-founded GOTVax, an initiative aimed at leveraging a get out the vote framework to deliver vaccines directly to vulnerable communities throughout Boston via hyper-targeted vaccine pop up clinics. Alister earned his MD from Harvard Medical School as a Presidential Scholar, his Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School as a fellow in the Center for Public Leadership, and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Rutgers University where he was a Division 1 tennis player.
About the Program:
The President’s Commission on White House Fellows announced the appointment of the 2021-2022 class of White House Fellows, the most diverse class in the history of the program. The prestigious White House Fellowship program embeds professionals from diverse backgrounds for a year of working as a full-time, paid fellow for White House staff, Cabinet Secretaries, and other senior government officials.
President Lyndon B. Johnson created the White House Fellows Program in 1964 with the purpose of “give[ing] the Fellows first hand, high-level experience with the workings of the Federal Government and to increase their sense of participation in national affairs.” The Fellowship functions as a non-partisan program maintained throughout both Republican and Democratic administrations. Throughout the year, Fellows actively participate in an education program that expands their knowledge of leadership, policy-making, and contemporary issues. The mission of the White House Fellows Program is to encourage active citizenship and service to the country.
Selection into the program is based on a record of professional accomplishment, evidence of leadership skills, the potential for further growth, and a commitment to service. This year’s White House Fellows advanced through a highly competitive selection process, and they are a remarkably gifted, passionate, and accomplished group. Over half of the fellows are women and overall reflect the diversity of America. These fellows bring experience from a broad cross-section of professions, from the private sector, local government, academia, medicine, law, and the military.
