Dr. Rae Grad, Assistant to the President and Director of Federal Relations, began her career as a Labor and Delivery Nurse in Alexandria, Virginia and also taught in the School of Nursing at George Mason University.

Her experience in maternal and child health led to her being named the founding Executive Director of the Southern Regional Task Force on Infant Mortality, a project of the Southern Governors' Association.

From there, she was asked by the late Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida to become the Executive Director of the National Commission to Prevent Infant Mortality, a bipartisan Congressional Commission.

Following her Congressional career, Dr Grad was a founder of the Institute for Community Collaborative Studies at the California State University System, which set up the first undergraduate major in community collaborative studies. She also was the initial director of a charter high school for adjudicated youth located on the campus of University of California Santa Cruz.

Upon returning to the East Coast, Dr Grad helped organize the Presidents' Summit for America¹s Future and then subsequently served under General Colin Powell as Executive Vice President for America's Promise: The Alliance For Youth.

She then served as CEO of PowerUP: Bridging the Digital Divide, a foundation that distributed computers to underserved youth.

After a brief consulting role with the Greater Washington Board of Trade in the area of emergency preparedness, Dr Grad has now assumed her role at the University of Maryland.

Dr Grad received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Cornell University, Master¹s in Education from New York University, and Ph.D. from University of Maryland.