Maya Uppaluru Mechenbier is a product counsel and policy expert in health care, digital innovation, and social safety net programs. She is currently an Innovation & Incubation Fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation, where she is leading research on implementing human-centered design to support teen and college-aged mothers in continuing their education and pursuing meaningful career pathways.

Prior to her appointment at Georgetown, Maya was a Project Lead at the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), where she launched the “Birth of a Child” Life Experience portfolio of projects at the White House with the goal of improving the experience of new parents in the United States, focusing on equity and inclusion. The portfolio includes three projects focused on maternal health and early childhood support for low-income mothers and their families. Maya led the USDS team that completed lived experience research that contributed to Pillar 5 of the Maternal Mental Health Task Force’s National Strategy to Improve Maternal Mental Health in May 2024, and contributed to the development of the White House Blueprint for Addressing the Maternal Health Crisis in 2022.

Maya also served at USDS in 2016, providing policy and regulatory support for the Quality Payment Program team at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the White House in 2015, where she helped to launch President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other partner agencies.

Prior to rejoining USDS in 2021, Maya was a Counsel with Crowell & Moring’s Digital Health practice, where she provided legal and regulatory advice to a wide range of health care companies, including health plans, hospitals and health care providers, and medical device and health technology companies. Maya has also served in career civil service roles at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) focused on health technology interoperability and patient access to health data, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) where she worked on expansion of broadband internet for health care providers and school systems.