Arnold Ventures | January 23, 2019
Regina LaBelle served as the legal counsel for the mayor of Seattle for two terms before being recruited to serve as the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). That role in the ONDCP brought her to rural parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, and other Appalachian states, which at the time were hardest hit by the opioid epidemic. LaBelle was reminded of the rural New England community in which she was raised, which had also not been spared by the opioid epidemic. LaBelle left the Obama administration in January of 2017 but continued to work on policies to address the epidemic. She will continue this work as the head of a new center focused on barriers to treating addiction as a public health issue and funded by Arnold Ventures.