U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Improving the health, safety, and well-being of America	Frequent Questions Search

Font Size     Print     Download Reader

This is an archive page. The links are no longer being updated.

As an HHS regional director, Rosewater serves as a key representative of Secretary Shalala in working with other federal, state, local and elected officials on a wide range of health and social service issues.

Rosewater, who currently serves as counselor to the secretary, has also served as director of a congressional committee and has been a policy developer and consultant to federal, state and local elected officials, foundations and corporations. She will replace former regional director Patricia Ford-Roegner.

"Ann Rosewater has been a champion of the rights of this country's children and their families," said Secretary Shalala. "She has successfully completed three challenging assignments for HHS after extensive congressional experience and is a trusted advisor. I am pleased that she now has this opportunity to return to Atlanta to lead the important work of the department and this administration in the region."

Since 1997, Rosewater has served as the secretary's advisor on a wide scope of issues, including domestic violence, early childhood development and learning, and improving health, social and economic development at the local level. Her responsibilities included chairing the Departmental Steering Committee on Violence Against Women, and coordinating a number of interdepartmental initiatives, including the Vice President's Family Reunion Conference on Families and Health and the joint HHS-Department of Justice initiative, Safe From the Start: Children Exposed to Violence.

In 1996, Rosewater served as deputy assistant secretary for human services policy in the Office of Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation where she directed policy development on issues such as income assistance, employment, child support, child welfare, early childhood and youth programs. She played a key role in developing the department's human services research and evaluation strategy, launched the National Strategy to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and also served as the secretary's deputy to the President's Domestic Policy Council.

From 1993 to 1996, Rosewater served as deputy assistant secretary for policy and external Affairs in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). In that capacity, she oversaw policy, planning, legislation, budget formulation, research and evaluation, and public and intergovernmental affairs activities for ACF, an agency which administers more than 60 programs and $35 billion.

In addition to her extensive service in the executive branch, in 1983, Rosewater helped establish the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, and then served as the staff director until 1990. Prior to the committee's creation, she served as senior legislative assistant to Congressman George Miller of California. During the 1970s, Rosewater was principal education staff for the original staff of the Children's Defense Fund, assistant to the vice president of the National Urban Coalition, and in the research division of the Metropolitan Applied Research Center in New York City.

Based in Atlanta from 1990-1993, Rosewater served as senior associate at the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, and was principal investigator of a Rockefeller Foundation-supported study of intermediary organizations dealing with urban child poverty. She initiated the collaboration among the grantees of the Ford, Annie E. Casey and Rockefeller foundations addressing change in low-income communities. This collaboration generated the National Community Building Network.

Rosewater has remained in the forefront of developing policies and programs for children and families and has received numerous honors and awards for her service. She was named as one of Who's Who of American Women; she was awarded the Secretary's Award for Distinguished Service three times in 1997 and 1998. She was a member of the 1993 Leadership Atlanta class, served as consultant to the Atlanta Project and also on boards of several national and Georgia-based non-profit organizations focused on children and families. Rosewater was the first non-elected official to receive the Leadership in Human Services Award of the American Public Welfare Association in 1990, and she also received the President's Certificate for Outstanding Service from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

A native of Philadelphia, Rosewater is a graduate of Wellesley College and received a master's degree from Columbia University.

###