Board Member Spotlight: Meet Kaleigh Bulloch Whitehall

The Healthcare Foundation is very pleased to welcome two new members to our Board of Directors in 2024: Kaleigh Bulloch Whitehall and Paul Greenall. 

We look forward to introducing you to Paul in an upcoming newsletter. This month, we offer the following conversation with Kaleigh Bulloch Whitehall. 

Kaleigh has a background in chronic disease epidemiology and currently works in scientific communications for a Bay Area pharmaceutical company. “My job is to translate data into meaningful communications,” she explains, “whether that’s peer-reviewed publications or working with colleagues to create information for patients or marketing purposes.”

Kaleigh was born in Vermont but with strong ties to northern Sonoma County through her grandparents, who divided their time between the East Coast and Healdsburg.

“They were public school teachers, and they spent their summers here,” she says. “They had a cabin on Fitch Mountain and my grandfather taught swimming lessons on Memorial Beach,” adding with a smile, “He taught many Healdsburgians how to swim.”

Kaleigh became a Healdsburgian herself at age seven, the year her parents relocated the family here from the East Coast. “I think after eight winters my mother was like, We’re going where I remember being warm,” she sympathizes. “Her three siblings and her parents have all subsequently moved up to Healdsburg.”

Kaleigh and her husband Orland (O.J.) Whitehall, a Healdsburg native, met in the local high school and, after some time on the East Coast for college and graduate school, decided to move back to raise their own family.

Kaleigh spoke with us recently about her ties to Healdsburg and the mission of the Healthcare Foundation.

What draws you to serve on the Healthcare Foundation Board?

Wherever I have lived I’ve tried to be engaged in the community and do some kind of community service. I have had to be less engaged in the Healdsburg community over the last several years since my children were born, so joining the Healthcare Foundation Board is a wonderful opportunity to get back into it and to be supporting a vital mission. I was first introduced to the Healthcare Foundation a few years ago. I attended several events beginning with the annual community celebration and fundraiser in the summer of 2020, which due to Covid was a virtual event that year; the whole family attended that one with me. It was a great introduction, seeing how the organization stepped up during that crisis on behalf of our region’s most vulnerable residents. Most recently, I attended the event at Young & Yonder [Spirits], where I got an opportunity to learn directly from some of the recipients of Healthcare Foundation grants, as well as from Board members and of course from Kim. 

“I believe there’s room to continue to communicate how health equity is beneficial to all members of the community, not just those members who are currently underserved. This is work that all of us in the community benefit from and should really champion.”

Kaleigh Bulloch Whitehall

The organization’s mission and vision really align with my idea of how this type of work should be done: rooted in the community, not coming from afar but really emanating from the grassroots. Asking, What does the community need? And listening, really leaning into those community voices. So it feels like a natural progression to now be joining the Board and supporting the work from there.

Is there a particular area or issue you are especially focused on as you step onto the Board?

Yes, it’s a perspective that I bring to the Board as someone coming from an evidence-based field, evidence-based medicine: I’m focused on increasing our ability to demonstrate the impact of the work that the Healthcare Foundation is doing. This is important and it’s also something that can be difficult to do in a quantitative way. I’m hoping that one of the things that I can bring, as a Board member, is a knowledge of data collection and analysis, as well as communications, so that we can share further the impact that the Healthcare Foundation is making through its granting and other programs and initiatives. For instance, I think the Healthcare Foundation has made a huge impact on access to mental health care providers in northern Sonoma County. The Mental Health Talent Pipeline is an amazing program that continues to be central to the organization. I hope to help us demonstrate, through more robust data analytics, how that’s making a difference in the community. I also believe there’s room to continue to communicate how health equity is beneficial to all members of the community, not just those members who are currently underserved. This is work that all of us in the community benefit from and should really champion.

What do you most appreciate about living in northern Sonoma County?

When we were still on the East Coast for graduate school and we thought about where we wanted to be after we were married — where we wanted to raise a family — Sonoma County just seemed like the perfect place. It’s a beautiful community. It’s a small community. It’s one of those places where you can’t go anywhere without running into someone you know. And people really care about one another. We love it. It’s changed a lot since I was a kid, and I think a lot of that is for the better. I believe organizations like the Healthcare Foundation are helping to ensure that everybody is coming along with the changes in Sonoma County. We want to make sure people aren’t getting left behind, that we continue to thrive together as a community.