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Mount Wachusett Community College’s 58th commencement ceremony will be held on May 17, 2023. The graduates will be joined by speaker Matilde “Mattie” Castiel, M.D., Commissioner for Health and Human Services for the City of Worcester.
“We are thrilled to have Mattie join us for commencement,” notes MWCC President James Vander Hooven. “Her leadership in both public health and nonprofit sectors, combined with her passion for working with the underserved and the greater community, make her ideally suited to address our 2023 graduates.”
Mattie was born in Cuba and immigrated to the US in 1962 and grew up in California. After moving to Massachusetts to complete her residency at UMass Memorial, she spent 30 years practicing internal medicine at UMass Memorial Medical Center and Family Health Center of Worcester and taught internal medicine, family medicine, and psychiatry as an associate professor at UMass Medical School.
Mattie founded the Latin American Health Alliance (LAHA), a nonprofit organization in Worcester that works to address homelessness and addiction, and includes the Hector Reyes House treatment facility, two transitional houses, and Café Reyes a job training program for residents of the Hector Reyes and transitional houses.
In 2015 Mattie was appointed as the City of Worcester’s Commissioner for Health and Human Services. In 2019 she was awarded the UMass Medical School Chancellor’s Medal for Distinguished Service, the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Award, and the LIFT Community Hero Award. In 2022, Governor Charlie Baker named her to the Commonwealth’s Health Policy Commission (HPC) Board, which oversees the HPC, an independent state agency that monitors healthcare spending growth and provides data-driven policy recommendations regarding healthcare delivery and payment system reform.