Mehreen Butt has joined Northeastern Law’s Center for Health Policy and Law as managing director. A public policy attorney with more than 15 years of experience working in the social justice and public policy fields and on local, state and federal campaigns, Butt brings expertise in healthcare, anti-poverty, sexual and reproductive rights, immigrant rights and voting reform to the Northeastern Law community.

Butt most recently served as associate director of policy and government affairs at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. Previously, she held positions at Rosie’s Place, Tufts Health Plan and Health Care For All and was a researcher for the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture at the Massachusetts State House.

Butt was elected to the Wakefield Board of Selectman (now known as the Wakefield Town Council) in April 2017, becoming the first Muslim American woman elected to a board in Massachusetts. As a member of the council, she has successfully advocated for by-laws banning plastic bags, plastic straws and Styrofoam; cham- pioned funding for a community garden and a rail trail; and secured a full-time social worker position and funding for Narcan and implicit bias training for public safety officers.

In 2021, Butt was honored among the Top Women of Law by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and in 2019, she received the Women’s Bar Association’s Emerging Women Leader Award. She also serves on the board of trustees for MelroseWakefield Health Care, as an advisory member of the South Asian Bar Association of Greater Boston, an elected member of the Democratic State Committee, where she co-chairs the Women’s Outreach Subcommittee, and is an associate member of the Wakefield Alliance Against Violence. Butt is a member of the New England Muslim Bar Association and an alumna of both the Women’s Bar Association Women’s Leadership Program and Emerge Massachusetts.

“It is an honor to advance the amazing work of the center, alongside Faculty Director Wendy Parmet and the many talented people at the law school who are passionate about health policy and law,” said Butt, who received her JD from American University’s Washington College of Law and BS from Tufts University.