Magda Schaler-Haynes

Magda Schaler-Haynes is the Director of Policy and Strategic Planning at the New Jersey Department of Health. As a member of the senior leadership team, she oversees the Department's broad policy portfolio, strategic planning efforts, the Office of Health Information Technology, the Office of Vital Statistics and Records, the Governor's Council for Medical Research and Treatment of Autism, the New Jersey Commission on Brain Injury Research, and the New Jersey Commission on Spinal Cord Research.

Schaler-Haynes holds joint appointments as Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and Adjunct Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. Her recent courses include Reproductive Rights and Practices (with Carol Sanger); Public Health Law; and Money, Politics and Law: Abortion and Public Health.

She recently led the Health Care Transition Team for New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and served as Amicus Manager for the Center for Reproductive Rights in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, the successful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to Texas' abortion clinic shut down law.

Until June of 2015, Ms. Schaler-Haynes served on the staff of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) as Special Advisor for health care and women's issues. Schaler-Haynes served on New York's health reform team as Senior Health Policy Advisor at the New York State Insurance Department until 2011. There she managed state and federal health reform activities related to New York's initial health insurance exchange establishment, expanded state resources for health insurance rate review, and pursued multi-agency policy initiatives to promote access to quality, affordable health care.

She was a Visiting Scholar at the Australian Health Policy Institute at the University of Sydney 2005-2006. Until 2005, Schaler-Haynes was an Associate in the Health Care Group at the Proskauer law firm in New York.

Schaler-Haynes earned her law degree in 2001 from Columbia Law School, where she was a John M. Olin Law and Economics Junior Fellow and a Humane Studies Fellow. She earned an MPH in Health Policy and Management from Columbia in 1998 and graduated with a BA cum laude from Brandeis University in 1996.