John A. Heath has spent a career walking into the rooms where decisions get made — and holding the door open behind him. On November 2, in Washington, D.C., the National Institute for Lobbying & Ethics (NILE) handed him its 2026 Thomas M. Susman Lifetime Achievement Award, the profession’s honor for a body of work, during the institute’s 10th anniversary Top Lobbyist Awards Gala.
NILE’s 100 Top Lobbyists for 2026 were chosen from a record 500-plus nominations through a blind peer-review process, out of more than 50,000 state and federal lobbyists nationwide. The lifetime achievement award sat on top of that list — and it went to a Turo senior manager who arrived in government affairs by way of the pulpit, and who once had no home address to put on a résumé.
The Job: Selling Access to the American Car
Heath is Turo’s Senior Manager of Government Relations and External Affairs. Turo is the peer-to-peer car sharing platform — people renting out their own cars — and because the business model is newer than the laws that govern it, the company lives or dies in state legislatures. Heath’s brief is the human side of that fight: building the network of allies, partners and community organizations that can carry Turo’s case to elected officials.
His partner list is not the usual tech roster. It runs through the NAACP, the Urban League and the National Action Network and their local affiliates — organizations he first knew through the church. The pitch he carries is economic: car sharing as income for the households that rent out vehicles. “Economic inclusivity” is his phrase for it, and it is the through-line of his testimony. As recently as February 2026 he was in Annapolis, introducing himself to the Maryland Senate Finance Committee — “My name is John A. Heath, and I am the Sr. Manager of Government Relations and External Affairs for Turo” — to testify for peer-to-peer car sharing legislation, as he had the year before.
The Door He Built
In 2019, Heath helped establish the National Black Professional Lobbyists Association (NBPLA) alongside Gregory Jones and Yolanda Cash Jackson. It has been described as the first and only national organization focused on diversity and inclusion in the nation’s lobbying corps, and Heath serves as its Secretary/Treasurer.
The problem NBPLA attacks is structural. Lobbying runs on relationships: clients hire people they know, and referrals travel inside existing networks. On SGAC’s The Lobby podcast, Heath and fellow NBPLA leader Marvin Yates described what that means in practice — Black lobbyists every bit as capable, locked out of the books of business that make careers. NBPLA’s answer is pipeline and presence: develop future leaders, put Black professionals in the rooms, and make sure, in NILE’s words, that talented Black lobbying professionals have “a seat at the table.” It is the same opening-doors economics BBR documents in its guide to the best Black-owned businesses — representation that converts into revenue, contracts and ownership.
The Path: Pulpit, Politics, and a Season Without a Home
Heath does not come from the standard government-affairs pipeline. By his own account he has spent 36 years in ministry in the African-American church, 17 of them as a senior pastor, and worked along the way for governors, state senators, mayors and county executives. His pastoral ministry continues today through J.A.H. International Ministries, and he serves as an advisor to Bishop Jerry Macklin, the 1st Assistant Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ. And when God green-lights it, he plans to plant a church in the Houston, Harris County and Galveston County area. The Black church, he notes, has always been a center for social action — and it is where his national network was actually built, one congregation and one community at a time.
And there is the chapter he does not hide. Heath was once homeless, along with his family. In February 2020 he told that story at the California Assembly’s “Rising Tide” economic summit in Sacramento, on a panel about poverty and housing, and aimed it directly at the policymaking class: “What has troubled me for years is that the people who make policy for people in poverty, for the homeless, are people who have never been poor.” It is why his advocacy carries weight in rooms where the subject is other people’s survival — he has been the constituent.
His faith is not decoration on the career; by his telling it is the engine. Maryland’s Center Maryland podcast, walking through his story in 2021, described “his journey from homelessness to national success and leader to new generations of lobbyists across the country,” and credited the inspiration he takes from his faith for his focus on diversity and allyship.
The Voice: Earners Into Owners
Heath’s recent stage time shows where he aims that voice. In ForbesBLK Summit appearances this year, he took on credit itself — the gap between neighborhoods where scores sit near 580 and zip codes above 700 — and argued that raising scores alone will not close a wealth gap built over generations. The goal, in his formulation, is shifting Black communities from creating earners to creating wealth creators. It is a pastor’s frame applied to policy: dignity measured not by a paycheck but by ownership.
That voice now has a book. In October 2026, Heath released his first book, Ecclesiastical Booty Call: How the Church Has Become America’s Political One-Night Stand, with a foreword by Dr. Damian A. Hinton, Sr. Its argument is pure Heath: the Church, the Bride of Christ, has been courted by political power for votes and then set aside — and, in the book’s words, she “cannot afford to forget who put the ring on her finger.” It is his pulpit and his politics on the same page, and it marks his newest role: author.
What’s Next
A lifetime achievement award at this stage is a milestone, not an ending. Heath is still testifying, still traveling the statehouse circuit for Turo, and still holding office at the association he co-founded — which is now charged with turning his generation’s hard-won access into the next generation’s starting point. The work NILE honored is specific: break down barriers, create opportunities, develop future leaders. By every account, he is still doing it.
About John A. Heath
John A. Heath is Senior Manager of Government Relations and External Affairs at Turo, the peer-to-peer car sharing company, and a co-founder of the National Black Professional Lobbyists Association (NBPLA), established in 2019, where he serves as Secretary/Treasure, and the author of Ecclesiastical Booty Call: How the Church Has Become America’s Political One-Night Stand (2026). A minister of 36 years, 17 of them as a senior pastor, he continues his pastoral ministry through J.A.H. International Ministries and serves as an advisor to Bishop Jerry Macklin, 1st Assistant Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ. He previously worked for governors, state senators, mayors and county executives. In October 2026, the National Institute for Lobbying & Ethics named him the recipient of its 2026 Thomas M. Susman Lifetime Achievement Award, celebrated at its Top Lobbyist Awards Gala in Washington, D.C., on November 2, 2026.
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