Speaker's Profile

Martha is an experienced CEO and P&L owner who creates, grows, and scales healthcare businesses both domestically and internationally. She utilizes an innovative strategic approach to setting direction, building high performance teams, mentoring rising leaders, uncovering key value creation levers, and delivering exceptional financial results.   As a successful CEO, she brings authenticity, passion and financial discipline to develop industry leading strategies.  She has built diverse businesses by recruiting top talent and fostering a culture of innovation at all levels.

As a board member and CEO advisor, Martha is using her deep knowledge of the healthcare industry to help develop businesses focusing on disruptive ideas that transform the way care is provided.  She is a founding board member of PsychHub, an educational and training platform start-up founded by Patrick Kennedy and Marjorie Morrison, combining clinical research and the art of storytelling to support mental health, substance use and suicide prevention.  Martha is on the board of Alma, a start up helping behavioral health providers to a platform to provider high quality care in an inclusive environment. Martha is working to connect companies throughout the industry to key stakeholders helping to drive significant growth in early stage companies.  Martha is an advisor to several start-ups in the both the medical and behavioral health spaces, with a focus on quality, early intervention, and evidence based practices.  Martha’s extensive experience with large payers, as well as working closely with start ups and integrating acquisitions gives her a unique perspective in today’s healthcare marketplace.  Martha is an advisor for HPIR - Health Plan Innovation Roundtable, a new collaboration of EHIR, with 11 regional health plans covering over 30 million members and working to streamline innovation efforts in the industry.

Prior to branching out on her own, Martha was CEO of Optum Behavioral Health, where she spent 5 years strategically developing high-impact integrated care for over 35 million members. She more than doubled the revenue to $5B through organic growth, acquisitions, and digital innovation after foundationally rebuilding a more efficient and market leading business.  As an internal Board member and advisor, Martha created a culture of innovation both on her team and within the enterprise. She helped to develop businesses, one focused on transforming an acquired B2C application into a B2B business and provider, and one focused on taking the point solutions across the industry and integrating them to deliver at scale in the behavioral health ecosystem. She helped to develop the strategies and mentored the CEO’s of these early stage businesses.

At Aetna, Martha was New England Market President growing revenue to $2B, by establishing ACOs across multiple states, entering into the first health care exchanges, and reestablished Aetna’s presence in Boston. Prior to this, she successfully built Aetna’s Global Benefits business. She grew the international business from its earliest stage to $1B revenue, through both M&A and organic growth, creating the industry’s largest provider of expat benefits. Martha’s international experience includes deep immersion in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dublin, London, and Dubai.

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