Prior to joining FGA, Josh served as the director of the Center for Healthcare Solutions and as program manager for the Middle Cities Initiative at Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank. While at Pioneer he co-authored the nationally acclaimed book The Great Experiment: The States, The Feds, and Your Healthcare (2012).

At FGA, Josh has testified before several congressional committees and numerous state legislative committees on health and welfare reform.

Josh was previously selected as a health policy fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., where his research concentrated on the impact of Obamacare on small businesses and the lessons that could be learned from Massachusetts.

In the past, Josh served as a legislative director in the Massachusetts State Senate for Scott Brown and as senior legislative aide for Governor Mitt Romney in his Office of Legislative Affairs.

Josh’s work has earned coverage in numerous local media outlets around the country and at the national level in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, Fox News, NPR, and National Review Online. He is also a regular contributor to the influential Forbes.com blog, The Apothecary.

Josh holds a master’s in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in political studies and economics from Gordon College.

Paducah citizens elected Brandi Harless as mayor in November 2016 with her term beginning January 1, 2017. A ceremonial swearing-in ceremony was held January 3, 2017.

Current Employment and Position
CEO/Co-Founder Personal Medicine Plus
Contracted Network Director, Purchase Area Health Connections

Past Work Experience
Brandi has experience in community development, grant writing, research, and executive level management. Brandi served as the Program Director of Rocketown in Nashville TN, Research Assistant at Harvard University in Sierra Leone West Africa, and Knowledge Manager at Management Sciences for Health in DC. Since moving home in 2009, she has served as Grant Writer/Development Manager for Heartland CARES, Innovation Director at EntrePaducah, and Executive Director at St Nicholas Family Clinic.

Education / Training
B.S Vanderbilt University, Communication of Science and Technology
Master’s in Public Health, Boston University School of Public Health

Community Involvement
Brandi is an avid volunteer and has served several agencies as a member of their board of directors. Locally, these include Child Watch, Paducah Day Nursery, and Project AIDS Orphan. She is also a co-organizer of the group Progress Paducah and was involved in the Impact Poverty Task Force. She was also a nominee for the Regional Women of Achievement Award. Brandi graduated in 2016 from the Delta Regional Authority Executive Leadership Academy and looks forward to bringing the resources of the federal agency to Paducah. Brandi served as the President of Rotaract in 2013.

The health and medicine reporter for The Indianapolis Star, Shari Rudavsky writes about a range of related topics, from childhood obesity to Ebola to breakthroughs in transplant medicine. In recent years, she has written extensively about Indiana’s opioid crisis, including covering the HIV epidemic in Scott County in the southeastern part of Indiana. Shari also covers hospitals in central Indiana and the impact of the changing healthcare environment on Indiana residents.

Before coming to The Star in 2004, Shari worked at the Miami Herald, where she covered education, aging, social services and health. She also written about education and health for The Boston Globe and has had her work published in The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Her first job out of college placed her at the now-defunct but ever-interesting Omni magazine.

Her work has been won awards from the Indiana chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists as well as the Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors Contest. She has also completed three fellowships offered by the Association of Health Care Journalists.

A New York City native, Shari received an undergraduate degree in biological anthropology from Harvard-Radcliffe College. She holds a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Her doctoral dissertation looked at the history of paternity testing in the United States. She lives in Indianapolis.