Meszaros, Brooks join Trump HHS shaper team

Donald Trump’s transition team has added Marie Meszaros and John Brooks to the landing team for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The landing teams are helping the president-elect prepare to take charge of the Executive Branch of the federal government in January.

Meszaros is a policy analyst at the Washington-based Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Brooks is the head of the health policy analysis department in the Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, office of Mitre Corp., a nonprofit research center.

Meszaros earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of South Carolina-Columbia and a law degree at the University of Notre Dame.

When Meszaros was still an undergraduate, she served as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act patient privacy compliance officer at a group medical practice in Columbia, South Carolina. She was responsible for applying HIPAA rules when insurers and other providers asked for patients’ medical records, according to her LinkedIn entry.

Meszaros later worked as a pharmacy technician, and translating instructions for Spanish-speaking patients was part of her job.

Meszaros has also been a research director for the Palmetto Family Council, a political organization in South Carolina; a law clerk in two U.S. attorneys’ offices and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims; and a legislative assistant to Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.

Affordable Care Act implementer

Brooks earned a master’s degree in business from Virginia Tech in 2005 and a law degree from the University of Virginia in 2009.

From 2001 through 2009, Brookers worked as a project manager, senior auditor and financial analyst at the Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co., a defense contractor.

Brooks was an associate at Vinson & Elkins LLP.

Brooks has been working at Mitre since early 2011.

Brooks says in his LinkedIn entry that his team has helped federal agencies implement the Affordable Care Act and other federal laws, such as Medicare laws.