Staff Changes at NAQC!

Dear Colleagues:
 
I am pleased to announce that NAQC has hired two program managers   Karen Rezai, MPH (krezai@naquitline.org, 800-398-5489 ext. 703) and Tracey Strader, MSW (tstrader@naquitline.org, 800-398-5489 ext. 704).  

Please join me in welcoming our new staff!

Karen Rezai, MPH, has come on board as a Program Manager, and will be supporting a number of new training and technical assistance projects, including quitlines’ adoption of best practices and developing vaping and youth cessation protocols. She also manages a 3-year PCORI-funded collaborative project seeking to connect quitline clients with lung cancer screening services. Ms. Rezai is a seasoned health professional with 20 years of managerial experience in both non-profit and for-profit arenas, including 10 years dedicated to tobacco control, cancer screening, and technical assistance and training in Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities. She has expertise in community leadership as well as matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Prior positions have included Program Director at Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy, and Leadership (APPEAL) and Program Coordinator at the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO). She has also served as a past Chair and Treasurer of the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Ms. Rezai holds a Bachelor of Arts with honors in Psychology from Yale University and a Master of Public Health in Behavioral Health Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.

Tracey Strader, MSW, is serving as a Senior Program Manager with NAQC’s Public-Private Partnerships Initiative. She has previously served as a NAQC advisory council member, board member and officer, and has helped to advance the field of quitlines, health systems change, and public-private partnerships during her career in Oklahoma.

Tracey retired from the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET) in 2017 after serving as the founding executive director for fourteen years. Under her leadership, program investments were strategically focused on tobacco control and prevention, promotion of healthy lifestyles, increasing physician practices in rural Oklahoma, and research to reduce the preventable health behaviors that lead to cancer and cardiovascular disease. She also served as a member of the national Tobacco Control Network Executive Committee representing the Funder’s Alliance and was employed as the first cessation systems coordinator and director of planning and administration for the Oklahoma State Department of Health Tobacco Prevention Service prior to the national Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement.  Throughout her career, Tracey has fostered collaboration, multi-sector partnerships, and systems practice, to leverage resources and achieve outcomes in areas such as public health, tobacco control, maternal and child health, services for senior adults, and mental health and substance abuse services.

NAQC looks forward to having Karen and Tracey join our team!