Moving Forward: Harbage Consulting is now Aurrera Health Group

The last few months have been a truly extraordinary time for our country and the world. We are all coming to terms with a new “normal” – one where the everyday rhythm of life is disrupted and so many families are facing loss and grief. And as a nation, we are painfully and necessarily grappling with the profound impact of the racial injustice built into the American system and the work we all need to do to build a fairer country.What I have learned over the past five years, and what we are all now learning together, is that times of change and loss can also be the beginning of new cycles of growth and learning. While we can mourn, we can also rebuild. We honor the past best by putting one foot in front of the other and continuing our journey through life.

In this spirit, I am excited to share with you the news we are changing the name of our organization to Aurrera Health Group. Aurrera is a Basque word meaning “to move forward.” The choice of this word is meaningful on many levels for me, and for our firm.

My mother’s family comes from the beautiful Basque region of France, a land of rugged mountain tops and blue harbors, peopled by fiercely independent adventurers and sheep herders. My great grandmother and her sister emigrated to America in the early 1900s, eventually landing in Southern California, and founded a family full of spirited women.“Aurrera” also reflects our forward-thinking approach to our clients, our team, and our health care safety net. The new name underscores our commitment to relationship-driven, proactive client service; our resilience and vision for the continued success and professional growth of our team; and our perspective on the critical role public programs play in strengthening the nation’s health care system.In the five years since the passing of our founder, Peter Harbage, our firm has evolved significantly. As we rebuilt and established our team, we made a commitment to be a mission-driven health policy consulting firm and we have successfully pursued clients who enable us to stay true to that mission. We expanded our health policy and communications expertise, added new lines of business, and built a national presence with a diverse array of projects and clients. We served more than 80 clients across a dozen states since 2015. In this context, we want to celebrate the many ways our firm has evolved and moved forward by choosing a name that reflects who we are now – woman-led, mission driven, and forward thinking.This is an exciting step, but also a bittersweet moment. It has been an honor to continue Peter’s legacy as President of Harbage Consulting, and that legacy will carry on even under a different name. Our name has changed, but our mission has not. And the work continues.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has walked beside me in this journey – my family, the Aurerra Health team, our amazing clients, and Peter’s many friends and colleagues. Here’s to the next step!

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Author

Hilary Haycock [President]