Sarah Triano

Sarah Triano is the Senior Director of Complex Care Policy & Innovation for Centene Corporation, the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care company. Triano and her colleagues on the Complex Care team provide support and technical assistance to Centene’s Managed Long Term Services and Supports (MLTSS) and Medicare-Medicaid (MMP) health plans across the country serving over 400,000 members with disabilities of all ages. Under Triano’s leadership, Centene has launched innovative programs, such as the Provider Accessibility Initiative that has distributed over $1.4 million in grants to doctors’ offices to make disability access improvements, and earned Centene the 2019 CMS Health Equity Award and the number seven spot on the 2019 Forbes Fortune 500 Change the World listing.

Prior to joining Centene, Triano served as an appointee in California Governor Brown’s administration where she advised the Secretaries of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency and Health and Human Services Agency on disability policy. She reported to Tom Perez on the 2008 Obama Presidential Transition Team and led a bi-partisan team that provided the President-elect with recommendations on strategic disability-policy, budgetary and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration. Triano is the author of, “Lift Every Voice: Modernizing Disability Policies and Programs to Serve a Diverse Nation,” which was presented to President Clinton and Congress in 1999 by the National Council on Disability.

Triano is a nationally-known disability activist, having served as Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center and the Program Director at Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago, two leading non-profits. She co-founded the nation’s first annual Disability Pride Parade in Chicago, represented the United States at the 2012 Asia Pacific Disability Conference in South Korea, and has spoken before the United Nations Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Triano earned her bachelors degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara and participated in the PhD Program in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives in rural California with her husband, two children, rabbits, goats, a chicken, a dog named Xena Princess Warrior, and a horse named Bonnet.