Meet Lee
Lee Graczyk is lead organizer for RxRights. Lee has been a tireless, long-term advocate for drug importation.
Lee was driven at first by the fundamental unfairness of U.S. drug pricing. In more recent years, Lee gained a more personal connection with this issue when his own health issues necessitated exorbitantly priced prescription drugs.
Lee has a background in compliance and state government. For a number of years, he served as public policy director for the Minnesota Senior Federation. There he organized monthly bus trips to Canada to ensure that seniors could obtain prescription drugs at an affordable price.
In 2004, Lee helped to establish a prescription drug importation program for the Minnesota Senior Federation. The program is now maintained by Mature Voices Minnesota, a nonprofit organization led by Lee that works for seniors’ rights. The successful program currently has 2,200 members who can order safe and affordable prescription drugs from Canada at savings of approximately 20 to 80 percent.
Meet Jess
Jess Luce serves as the RxRights Coalition organizer. He is a 2009 Bush Foundation (St. Paul, MN) Leadership Fellow who attended the Maxwell School at Syracuse University where he received a Masters in Public Administration, focusing on Gerontology and Health Services Management and Policy. Jess used his fellowship to convene communities and conduct presentations on changing demographics, Boomer trends, innovations in elder care, and Communities for a Lifetime concepts. Jess has been a Metropolitan Area Agency on Aging board member since January 2008. He is the former Director of Organizing and Civic Engagement for Child Care WORKS, a child care advocacy organization.
Jess has 10 years of experience in issue-organizing, advocacy and policy work. Before joining CCW, he worked as lead organizer/lobbyist for All Parks Alliance for Change, an organization representing the rights of manufactured home park residents. Prior to APAC, he did organizing for the Minnesota Senior Federation, where he organized bus trips to Canada to help Americans buy more affordable prescription drugs and gave educational workshops on why Americans are paying the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world.
Meet Melissa
Melissa Maki serves as communications specialist and webmaster for RxRights.
Melissa is a creative and concise communicator. She gets fired up about social injustices. Like for instance, the fact that big pharmaceutical companies continue to rake in profits while more and more Americans can’t afford necessary medications.
Melissa has expertise and experience in working with nonprofit organizations.
She has worked on a number of significant issues in the past, including domestic violence, women’s health, and sustainability.
Melissa worked for several years as research communications coordinator for the University of Virginia. In this role, she promoted university research, both in online and print publications, and through websites and e-newsletters.
Melissa recently returned from a year abroad in Belgium, where she worked as a freelance journalist for an English language, independent newspaper. She traveled around the Flanders region and wrote on a wide range of topics, including Belgium’s first community-based fabrication lab and the world's largest robot orchestra.