Robin L. Shapiro

Robin L. Shapiro is a successful entrepreneur and nationally recognized pioneer in the health advocacy field who has spent her 30+ year career helping patients find their voice to get better care. Her work in health communications, public affairs, and biotechnology sparked the founding of her first company, Health Advocacy Strategies, in 2002, and she went on to co-found Allied Health Advocates, the first statewide independent health advocate company in Washington state. She also co-founded HealthAdvocateX, helping people transform from patients into active participants and partners in their own health. Robin is the author of The Secret Language of Healthcare: How to Ask for the Care You Deserve, and the creator and host of the Well Said Health podcast, where she continues her mission of teaching people how to speak up and participate in their own health care.

Robin’s connection to Maui is both personal and deeply rooted. She and her family have long split their time to include their home on Maui, where the island’s waters, communities, and traditions have become an inseparable part of their family story.

It was on the water that Robin found her path to Pacific Whale Foundation. Over the course of 2023, she encountered whales in Seattle’s Puget Sound, along the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, in the humpback breeding grounds off Maui, and finally in the icy waters of Antarctica. That remarkable year of encounters awakened her to how crucial whales are to the health of our oceans, our climate, and the human race.

Robin believes advocacy means giving a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves — whether a patient navigating a complex healthcare system or a whale navigating an increasingly threatened planet. She is honored to bring her experience in advocacy, communications, strategic planning and entrepreneurship to the PWF Board of Directors in service of protecting the ocean and the extraordinary creatures that call it home.