David Nitkin and Wen Xu | CAC

The Community Action Council of Howard County (CAC), the county’s designated anti-poverty organization, added David Nitkin and Wen Xu to its board of directors.

The pair will join a distinguished group of board members who lead CAC in achieving the mission of the organization.

Nitkin, a longtime resident of Howard County, served as chief of staff at Howard County General Hospital since 2016, helping direct key quality and safety initiatives that have led to HCGH being recognized as one of only three 5-star hospitals in the state of Maryland. He established the “Downtown Live Where You Work” program at the hospital and helped build partnerships with state and local governments to boost primary care availability and mental health services.

Prior to coming to the hospital, he worked in the Office of the Maryland Attorney General as director of policy and communications, helping execute the nation’s first statewide discriminatory profiling guidance for law enforcement, as well as the first national analysis of origin of same-sex marriage laws in states.

Nitkin also served in the Howard County Office of the County Executive from 2011 to 2014 where he built and launched major campaigns to create awareness of and support for initiatives such as the construction of a regional broadband network, and economic development in Downtown Columbia and along the Route 1 corridor. Earlier, he spent more than two decades as a journalist, including 12 years at The Baltimore Sun.

Xu joined the Howard County community in 2011 after previously residing in California, Kentucky, and Hong Kong for the past 20 years. Wen is currently an actuarial director working for Kaiser Permanente, mid-Atlantic States where her responsibilities include, but are not limited to developing health insurance premium rates for various lines of business for Maryland, Virginia, and D.C.

As an expert in actuarial pricing methodology and related healthcare regulations, Wen is passionate about providing quality and affordable healthcare to all our communities. This led her to becoming actively involved in community services that include organizing and teaching ESL classes to new immigrants and collecting PPE donations from Chinese American communities for Kaiser.

Wen is excited to expand her passion of quality and affordable healthcare to a much larger scale through the initiatives that CAC are engaged in.