Rhodes Scholar Nancy-Ann Min earned the BA degree (College Scholar, with a major in history) in 1978, with a perfect 4.0 average. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was named a Phi Kappa Phi scholar.
She was elected president of the Student Government Association, the first woman to hold that office, running on the “Ready” ticket and incorporating a platform that, among other things, opposed a rate increase in UT’s Centrex telephone system; called for distributing athletic tickets in a manner that offered the best tickets first-come, first-served; favored eliminating the 50 percent increase added to parking tickets if not paid or appealed within five days; and stressed students’ right to petition for a referendum on EXPO ’82 (1982 World’s Fair). She was the recipient of numerous awards, among which were Chancellor’s Citation for Extraordinary Campus Leadership and Service, Outstanding Greek Woman award, Outstanding Greek Scholar award, Pi Kappa Phi scholarship, and Torchbearer. She was selected by Glamour magazine as one of its Top Ten College Women for 1978 and was chosen the 1977–78 Omicron Delta Kappa national Leader of the Year.
She was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford’s Balliol College, where she studied philosophy, politics, and economics and earned the BA in 1981 and an MA in 1986. She received the JD degree from Harvard in 1983. She served as a law clerk to Judge Gilbert E. Merritt of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth District and then joined the Nashville law firm of Bass, Berry, and Sims. She served as commissioner for human services from 1987 to 1989, and then returned to Bass, Berry, and Sims. She served as treasurer of Governor Ned Ray McWherter’s 1990 reelection campaign.
In 1991 she moved to Washington, DC and joined the law firm of Covington & Burling. Two years later she joined President Bill Clinton’s administration as associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for health and personnel. In 1997 she was appointed deputy director of the health care financing administration by Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. The same year she was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate as administrator of the agency. She left in 2001, taking a temporary post at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She then took a post as senior advisor, JP Morgan Partners, in Washington together with an appointment as adjunct professor of health care management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In March 2009 President Barack Obama appointed her to serve as director of the White House Office for Health Reform.
She received a Distinguished Alumna Award in 2010.