Andy McGuire

McGuire was born in Waterloo, Iowa. She was the fifth of six children. She graduated with honors from West High in 1975.

In 1978, McGuire graduated with honors from Creighton University with a degree in Chemistry. She continued onto Medical School at Creighton and graduated with a Medical Doctorate from Creighton University School of Medicine. There were 11 women in her class. McGuire remembers this time as one where women were not encouraged to become physicians.

After graduation, McGuire went to St. Louis for her medical internship and residency. She did a rotation at St. Johns in St. Louis for a year and then worked at a walk-in clinic for a year which helped to pay off her student loans. After that, she went into a Nuclear Medicine Residency for the next three years at the Veteran’s Administration and St. Louis University Medical Center.

In 1999, McGuire pursued an MBA from Kennesaw State University near Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated in 2001 with a Master’s in Business Administration Physician Executives at Michael Cole School of Business.

While attending Creighton University, McGuire met fellow student Dan McGuire of Holstein, Iowa and they married.

In 1987, McGuire followed her husband, currently an orthopedic spine surgeon, to his spine fellowship in Springfield, Illinois. There she worked part-time with a radiology group. In the meantime, McGuire also landed another job at Washington University.

After several years working in nuclear medicine and publishing in her field, McGuire and her husband moved back to Iowa to raise their children. In short time, McGuire found work at the Des Moines Veterans Administration before becoming Medical Director at Wellmark Insurance.

McGuire left Wellmark to become Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Medical and Network Management/Risk Selection at American Republic Insurance Company (which later became American Enterprise). McGuire headed up disease management, case management division, managed the network of doctors across the United States, and headed up the pharmacy to make sure insureds could get medications for their illness.

In 2012, McGuire was asked to be the President of Meridian of Iowa, a Medicaid managed care company. Under McGuire’s leadership, Meridian doubled immunizations rates and prenatal care. After three years of leading Meridian, McGuire left the company to become the IDP chair.

Currently, McGuire lives with her husband in Des Moines, Iowa. They have seven children, and one grandchild.

On January 17, 2015, Mcguire was elected by the Iowa Democratic Party's State Central Committee as chair of the party on the third round of balloting. During her term as chair McGuire raised more than $2 million for the IDP, traveled to all of Iowa’s 99 counties, and formed the Caucus Committee to recommend changes and improvements to the Iowa caucuses.

McGuire's tenure as chair was not without controversy. Her 1st Vice Chair, Danny Homan, resigned his seat over her failure to reunite the party's Sanders and Clinton factions after a statistically tied and contended 2016 caucus.

In April 2017 McGuire announced her candidacy for Governor of Iowa. Her announced endorsements include former U.S. Representative Leonard Boswell, former lowa Attorney General Bonnie Campbell, former Senate leader Mike Gronstal and attorney Roxanne Conlin.