#16 Wendell Potter – Tarbell

ProgHackNight is thrilled that Wendell Potter will be speaking on Tuesday!

Wendell Potter is best known as a healthcare whistleblower and a staunch supporter of the ACA. But it’s how he got to this point that is so fascinating: After a burgeoning career as a business and political reporter, he joined the “dark side,” doing PR for two decades in the health insurance industry. Wendell was serving as head of corporate communications for Cigna when he left after a crisis of conscience in 2008 – seeing first-hand in Southwest Virginia how folks were lining up overnight at a healthcare clinic to receive free vision and oral care since they couldn’t afford insurance - despite the passage of the ACA.

Since then, he’s gone back to his roots and published exposés about the unethical PR practices of the health insurance industry in “Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans”; and looked at how money influences politics in “Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It.”

This week, he’s excited to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Tarbell, a solutions-journalism platform that will launch in early 2018, beginning with a focus on healthcare. Wendell will also be doing a Lightning Talk at this weekend’s upcoming Action Blitz.