Xavier Becerra has spent decades in American public life, from his years representing California in Congress to his tenure as the state’s Attorney General and eventually as President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
But behind that political career stands a woman whose own accomplishments and convictions have quietly shaped the conversation around health equity in America.
Dr. Carolina Reyes, Becerra’s wife of nearly 35 years, is a Harvard-trained physician specializing in high-risk pregnancies, and her work has never been far from the frontlines of some of the country’s most pressing medical debates.
Reyes, now 64, grew up in California’s agricultural heartland as one of eight children, an upbringing that gave her an early and intimate understanding of what it means to be underserved.
She went on to become a perinatologist at UC Davis Medical Center, where she focuses on women facing complicated pregnancies. Her career has been equal parts clinical and activist.
She has sat on California’s maternal mortality review panel, which examines cases of pregnancy-related deaths and recommends systemic changes. She also chairs the board of the California Health Care Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding health care access for vulnerable populations.
“We recognized that sometimes there were conditions that were not recognized early enough so that there was a delay in the care,” Reyes said, reflecting on the maternal mortality crisis that continues to claim lives at an alarming rate.
“Sometimes there was a misdiagnosis. Or in some hospital systems, especially rural systems where there aren’t as many resources, sometimes there was the lack of specialists available.”
Her words carry weight. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 40 percent increase in maternal deaths from 2020 to 2021, with Black women dying at a rate 2.6 times higher than white women, regardless of income level.
Reyes has been vocal about the need for hospitals, not just policymakers, to take responsibility for closing that gap.
A Marriage Where Medicine Meets Policy
The pairing of Reyes and Becerra has always been one where personal values and professional purpose overlap.
While Becerra championed the Biden administration’s push to extend Medicaid coverage for mothers to a full year after birth, Reyes was doing the clinical and advisory work that gave such policies their urgency.
She is careful, however, not to overstate her influence on her husband. “He had it in him to begin with,” she has said plainly.
The Numbers Behind the Name
On the financial side, OpenSecrets data shows that Becerra held an estimated net worth of roughly 1.5 million dollars as of 2017, ranking 183rd in the House at the time.
His primary assets included real estate properties in Los Angeles and Monterey Park, California.
The couple’s wealth was concentrated largely in real estate, valued at around 925,000 dollars, with a smaller portion in securities and investments.
Now with Becerra running for California governor in 2026 and polling at 18 percent alongside Republican Steve Hilton, the couple finds themselves once again at the center of California’s political landscape.
Through it all, Dr. Carolina Reyes continues her work in the clinic and the boardroom, driven by the same conviction she has carried since high school: that where you are born should never determine the quality of care you receive.