As President and Chief Executive Officer of Anthem Inc., Gail K. Boudreaux is leading both a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest healthcare organizations in the country. Throughout her career, she has been featured several times as one of 100 Most Powerful as well as Most Influential Women in the World. From the start, she has aimed to change the face of healthcare.
She attended Dartmouth College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in psychology. Boudreaux later received a Master’s in Business Administration with distinction from Columbia Business School.
Before coming on board with Anthem, Boudreaux worked her way up in the healthcare insurance industry and served in leadership roles with companies like Aetna, where she started out in its management development program, and UnitedHealthcare Group, where she served as CEO until 2014.
She then decided to create her own consulting firm, GKB Global Health, with the intention of helping clients better understand their healthcare insurance options. She served as CEO from 2015 to 2017.
When she became CEO of Anthem in 2017, she made it the second largest company with a woman as its top executive. “Gender balance is an issue I’ve been passionate about throughout my career. I prioritize it not only as a female leader, but also because it is a key business issue as well as a social one,” she once explained.
She learned the importance of teamwork, trust, and leadership at a young age in her experience as an outstanding basketball athlete, with each team member having a unique role to play and a value to add. She explained, “Leading with inclusion—and opening our hearts and minds to diversity in thought and experiences—is a value I care deeply about.”
With more than three decades of expertise in the healthcare industry, Boudreaux is a recognized leader that’s made great strides in closing the female leadership gap in the sector.