Leading With Authenticity and Transforming Health Care
Kody Kinsley
The Mary Renault Society is honored to have as the speaker for our April 2026 meeting Secretary Kody Kinsley.
Kody Kinsley has several distinctions. As Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2022 to 2025, he was the first openly LGBT member of a Governor’s Cabinet in North Carolina history. That might be distinction enough, but he is probably better known as the Cabinet member who brought North Carolina into the column of states opting under the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid, making health care accessible to now over 715,000 uninsured North Carolinians. Kinsley worked closely with Republican leadership of the General Assembly to secure Medicaid expansion and also a transformational investment of $835 million for behavioral health. Some came to call him “the Republicans’ favorite Democrat.”
Kinsley’s other distinctive achievements include leading a coalition of state health secretaries across the nation to reform blood donation policies, allowing gay men to donate blood. He also crafted a first-in-the-nation policy and partnership with the state’s health systems to relieve S6.5 billion in medical debt for 2.5 million low-income North Carolinians, at no cost to the state taxpayer.
In his presentation, Kody will talk about working across difference and leading with authenticity. He will also talk about health care in the new political environment both in Raleigh and in Washington.
Kody grew up in Wilmington and was the first in his family to go to college. He earned a B.A. from Brevard College and a Masters of Public Policy from UC-Berkeley. The early part of his government career was in the Obama Administration working at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the White House. He was appointed by President Obama to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and was the only political appointee at Treasury kept on by President Trump. He joined the NC Department of HHS in 2018 as a Deputy Secretary for Behavioral Health and would go to lead operations for the statewide Covid response before taking on the role of Secretary in 2022.
Our April meeting will be on Sunday evening, April 26, 2026. We will gather at 7 p.m., eat a potluck supper at 7:30, and hear Kody Kinsley’s talk at 8 p.m.