Jeffrey Sánchez joined the TCB board in February 2020. Born in the Washington Heights in New York City, Jeffrey was raised in the Mission Main Housing Development in Boston. He has represented Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain and Brookline in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for 16 years where he has been lauded as a leader in healthcare reform, housing and infrastructure, gun laws, violence prevention, criminal justice reform, the environment and youth empowerment. He finished his last term serving as the Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. Previously, Jeffrey served as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing and the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Public Health as well as the Vice Chair of the Joint Committee on Economic Development.
Throughout his time in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Jeffrey has emphasized bringing people together to work out their differences and pass laws that improve the lives of residents in the Commonwealth, especially the most vulnerable. In 2018, he was successful in nearly unanimously passing a $41.8 billion budget that was applauded by individual citizens, stakeholders, and business and fiscal watchdogs. He also drafted the largest Housing Bond Bill Authorization in the Commonwealth’s history, $1.8 billion. Under his leadership, Massachusetts continues to lead on gun control by implementing a ban on bump stocks and passed legislation allowing for courts to issue extreme risk protection orders while at the same time ushering in a massive law that enacted wholesale criminal justice and court system reforms.
Jeffrey has advocated for healthcare reform for over 20 years. In 2006, he worked to pass landmark legislation which affirmed health care as a right in Massachusetts. Since then, he has crafted laws that support and enable the life sciences industry to grow and thrive, establish a statewide health care cost benchmark, and worked to protect and ensure 98 percent of the state’s population has health insurance. He authored, and successfully ushered into law, comprehensive legislation to close the racial health disparities gap, compounding pharmacy practice, and improve school nutrition programs.
In all of his endeavors, Jeffrey has sought to find equity and opportunities for those most vulnerable and those who often get overlooked in opportunities in joining a thriving economy. He proudly fought and successfully defeated efforts to repeal gay marriage, and he is a successful advocate for English language learners. After 15 years of advocacy, Jeffrey’s Language Opportunities for Our Kids (LOOK) bill was signed into law, overturning a one-size-fits-all policy to educate English language learner (ELL) students and create a pathway to ensure ELL students receive a quality education.
Jeffrey attended Roxbury Community College and received a bachelor’s degree in legal education from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is currently an instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the principal of Sánchez Strategies and senior advisor at Rasky Partners focusing on strategic advising, political consulting and impact leadership, health care policy and finance, communications and government relations. He is a member of Governor Charlie Baker’s Latino Advisory Commission and serves on numerous boards of directors, including the National Association of Latino Elected Officials and The Community Builders. He recently completed work on the University of Massachusetts/Boston Chancellor search committee and is an advisory board and fellow selection committee member of the Rappaport Institute at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He currently lives in Jamaica Plain with his wife, Brenda, and two daughters. He enjoys cooking and Classical Salsa (music, not the sauce).
