Board Spotlight: Dr. Jacqueline Horrall

As a young child growing up in Jamaica, Jackie Horrall was often sick or hospitalized and she recalls the tremendous effort required to maintain the precarious balance that kept the family out of poverty. Her father was a contractor whose work was seasonal and there was always a real possibility of not having adequate resources. While the youngster understood the hardships as part of normal daily life experienced by residents of an island nation, when she migrated to Florida in 1997 for graduate and doctoral studies and later accepted a faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, she was taken aback to learn similar circumstances existed not just in the United States but in her adopted Westmoreland County community.

Over her adult lifetime, Dr. Jacqueline Horrall has endeavored to understand and improve the socio-economic conditions wherever she may be, whether in her natal home as an economist at the Bank of Jamaica, or in Africa and Latin America researching ways to improve infrastructure in the areas of telecommunications, energy and water. More recently, as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Pitt-Greensburg, she helped to facilitate the creation of the Center for Applied Research (CFAR), which has been the major partner to Excela Health in meeting its obligation to the IRS to complete a Community Health Needs Assessment. Likewise, as the chief academic officer, Dr. Horrall has played a key leadership role in developing the University’s undergraduate degree program in Nursing which is likewise critical to Excela.

Following in the footsteps of Dr. Sharon Smith, who served on the Excela Health Board of Trustees during her tenure as UPG president, Dr. Horrall is also a health system trustee, where she has served on the Human Resources committee. As a member of the Westmoreland/Frick Hospital Foundation board, she offers a global mindset from which to address diversity and disparity within academia, healthcare and the community. “Education and health go hand in hand,” she says. “When you improve a person’s health literacy, you improve overall well-being.” Thinking more strategically about how the education and healthcare business sectors intertwine, Dr. Horrall believes that synergy will benefit the community’s economic development.

Dr. Horrall and her spouse Derek Horrall live in Hempfield Township with their three children. When she is not volunteering at the children’s school, she can be found at a local ice rink watching her sons play hockey and her daughter skate.