Lynch was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her early childhood was punctuated by the types of tragedies some kids simply never move past. Her father walked out on her mother and four siblings when Lynch was a young girl, and her mother committed suicide when Lynch was still a preteen. She and her siblings finished out their childhood being raised by an aunt, after which Lynch attended Carroll School of Management to pursue a career as a CPA.

After about a decade in the insurance sector, Lynch returned to school and obtained her Master of Business Administration. This helped her realize her talents as a natural leader, and her career quickly took off. In 2004, she became president of Cigna Dental, leaving the company in 2009 to lead Magellan Health Services as its new president. Lynch made history as Aetna’s first female president in 2014, hanging on throughout Aetna’s acquisition by CVS Health.

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Now, Lynch leads CVS Health, a position to which she was promoted in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Soon after, she was ranked #13 on Fortune’s list of Most Powerful Women. She immediately took a community-based approach to her work with CVS, pushing for accessible vaccinations for all who qualified once they started to become available. Over half of CVS’s 4,800 testing facilities were located in communities that are largely underserved or neglected entirely.

One of the hallmarks of her leadership at CVS is using the power behind a national pharmacy to help close the gaps in health disparities that run rampant through the U.S., specifically in communities of color. These minority communities tend to shoulder an unfair portion of the burden of diseases like COVID-19, and Lynch and her team of 90,000 pharmacists have made it their mission to equalize opportunities for all.

This year, her actions also put her in Forbes’ 50 Over 50 list. Outside the world of healthcare, Lynch serves as a trustee of The Bushnell Performing Arts Center as well as a member of the Global 50 and the Boston College Women’s Council.