Student Spotlight

Natasha Perry

Associate General Counsel , Defense Health Agency

Class of 2025

Grit, endurance, and determination describe Natasha Perry’s approach to life—plus a wry sense of humor. Born and raised in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, Perry, associate general counsel of the Defense Health Agency (DHA), grew up watching her American mother, a pediatrician, run a private medical practice and drug dispensary from their home. “I grew up seeing her office speculum boiling on our stove. She cared for patients with gumption and often without pay or on a barter system. I believe this formed the basis of my understanding of service and a love of one’s career.”

Tragically, the day before Perry took the LSAT, her mother died of cancer. During that tough first year of law school, she volunteered with the Public Interest Law Foundation at USC, winning an award for high potential for outstanding service to the legal profession based on the number of pro-bono hours she logged. At the same time, she ran her first of many distance races, an Ironman triathlon. She has also run the venerable, 50-mile Comrades Ultramarathon in South Africa, earned the California Triple Crown for cycling three 200-mile bike rides in a year, and remains the record-holder as the youngest finisher of the White Mountain Double Century cycling competition in California. After law school, Perry joined the Army JAG Corps, where, she says “I found my place to learn the application of law.” Stationed as a hospital attorney at Womack Army Medical Center, Perry discovered her passion for health law. Following her service, she completed an MBA, an LLM in Health Law, and an MPH with a concentration in Health Informatics. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, she became interested in remote patient monitoring and telemedicine.

In pursuit of her goal to ground her understanding of healthcare operations and risk management in strategy, Perry entered the MS in Health Law and Strategy program at NYU, inspired in part by her current role as associate general counsel at the DHA. Her responsibilities at the agency—which oversees 9.5 million beneficiaries and more than 700 hospitals and clinics in the U.S. military health system—including providing legal advice for multiple Military Treatment Facilities on novel legal issues in an evolving regulatory system that varies by state. She is passionate about expanding the provision of telemedicine and remote patient monitoring to eligible patients.

As she rises to the challenges of governmental service, the classroom discussions at NYU have proved to be especially valuable, Perry says. “During my years as a consultant at Deloitte, I learned about how to deliver work product that exceeds client expectations in ambiguous circumstances. My MSHLS classmates’ insights have helped amplify these skills as I negotiate training and rotational agreements with other hospital attorneys and administrative staff. Combining all my experiences has helped me consider individual stakeholder interests, and NYU has taken this perspective to a new level. The program has elevated part of my internal dialogue, which now includes actively seeking to understand stakeholder positions and to anticipate second- and third-order effects of the courses of action proposed to them.”

Possibly as a result of both her upbringing and her ultramarathon training, Perry says she thrives in uncertain situations and reacts to crises with “a contagious sense of calm.” Her career goals include assisting with “the prediction and solution of higher-level medical-ethical-legal issues,” in addition to continuing to serve the country at the DHA. “I aim to leave every group that I work with better off than they were before. My mother was a force—and I hope to build on her legacy of advocacy.”