Berta Rodriguez serves as the Deputy Director, South Texas Region at the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute and works to develop, implement, and scale strategic initiatives across South Texas, specifically leveraging partnerships, community assets, and investments to catalyze change at the systems and provider levels. Berta has over 25 years of experience in strategic marketing and communications, public policy, advocacy, and stakeholder and community engagement.

Most recently, Berta served as the City of San Antonio’s Census Administrator, and successfully led, organized, implemented, and evaluated a community-wide complete count strategy for the 2020 Census, which included over 50 community stakeholders, resulting in San Antonio being nationally recognized as only one of three large metro areas with the highest self-response rate increases during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to her work at the City, Berta served as the inaugural Director of Research, Planning, and Policy at Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.  She was instrumental in developing and implementing the organization’s research and policy efforts to improve the physical, mental, and behavioral healthcare access and delivery in the organization’s 74 -county South Texas service area. In this role, she was also responsible for developing and advocating for the organization’s legislative agenda.

Berta has firsthand knowledge of the federal legislative processes which she gained serving as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Department of Housing and the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee. As a political appointee, she served in the capacity of Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary and General Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing and as a legislative aide in the Senate VA / HUD Subcommittee.