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Karen S. Lynch
Karen S. Lynch (née Rohan, born December 30, 1963) is an American businesswoman and the former president and chief executive officer (CEO) of CVS Health. Lynch is on the board of directors of AHIP and previously CVS Health and U.S. Bancorp. In 2015, she became the first female president of Aetna. She has held executive positions at Magellan Health Services and Cigna. In 2021, she became the highest-ranking female chief executive on the Fortune 500 list.[2] She is a member of the President's Export Council, The Business Council, and the Business Roundtable.[3][4] Early lifeLynch was born on December 30, 1963, in Ware, Massachusetts.[5] She attended Ware Junior/Senior High School and graduated in 1980.[6] Lynch attended Carroll School of Management at Boston College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and has a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) certification.[7] Upon graduating, she started her financial career in the Boston office of Ernst & Young, where she specialized in assurance.[8][7] CareerLynch credits her chosen career path in health care to her family life experiences.[8] She spent nearly a decade in insurance before returning to graduate school to pursue her MBA, saying, "I wanted to broaden my financial background to have more exposure to the business aspects of running a company".[7] In 2004, Lynch was appointed president of Cigna Dental.[9] The following year, she was named to a newly created position that combines leadership of Cigna Group Insurance and Cigna Dental.[10] She left Cigna in 2009 to become president of Magellan Health Services.[11][12] Lynch stayed with Magellan until 2012, when she joined Aetna as executive vice president and head of specialty products.[13] Three months after joining Aetna, Lynch led the integration of Coventry Health Care, which was the largest health care acquisition at the time.[14] In 2015, Lynch became Aetna's first female president, a role she retained through the $70 billion acquisition of Aetna by CVS Health in 2018.[15][16] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lynch took the helm as president and chief executive officer of CVS Health on February 1, 2021, following the retirement of Larry Merlo. At CVS Health, Lynch was credited with overhauling their drug pricing business model to decrease costs borne by consumers. Under Lynch, CVS announced CVS CostVantage, a straightforward, cost-plus model that based the cost of prescription drugs on the amount paid by CVS plus a small markup.[17] In 2023, CVS made another hugely expensive deal, purchasing Oak Street Health, owner of over 200 centers in 25 states providing care for the elderly, this time laying out $10.5 billion, 30% or $2 billion more than the target’s cap prior to clinching the purchase. CVS made still another big bet by acquiring Signify, a health care analytics provider, for $8 billion. The Oak Street and Signify buys signaled that CVS was making desperate moves, adding big pieces to bolster the complex construct that Lynch conceived, but that wasn’t performing.[18] During her short tenure at CVS, Lynch kept changing her group of lieutenants at an alarming rate. It is not clear if she kept choosing the wrong people for the wrong roles, or was unable to get the talent she recruited to do their best work. From the spring of 2023 through this month, no fewer than eight C-suite stalwarts, all of whom she had hired after officially taking charge in February of 2021, departed. The exodus encompassed the head of Aetna, who left after less than a year; the CFO (whose statement cited health reasons); the chiefs of HR, communications, health care delivery, and the retail stores. Two other long-standing CVS execs exited as well: the general counsel and chief marketing officer.[18] CVS shares were down 10 percent since Lynch became CEO in February 2021 as she struggled to create a one-stop shop for medical services amid a government crackdown on spending, increasing health expenses in the insurance unit, and ratcheted up post-pandemic pressure on retail stores. Pharmacies have been shuttering locations and dealing with labor shortages, driving up patient wait times and frustrating customers.[19] In 2023, Lynch's total compensation from CVS Health was $21.6 million, representing a CEO-to-median worker pay ratio of 392-to-1.[20] In March 2024, Lynch released a memoir, titled "Taking Up Space: Get Heard, Deliver Results, and Make a Difference".[21] In October 2024, the CVS Health board unanimously replaced Lynch as president and CEO, with CVS Caremark executive David Joyner.[22][23] Awards and honorsLynch was selected for the inaugural 2021 Forbes 50 Over 50, a list of female entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists, and creators over the age of 50.[24] She was awarded the 2021 Committee for Economic Development Distinguished Leadership Award.[25][26] She was also ranked number one on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list.[2] Additionally, Lynch is a board member of U.S. Bancorp,[27] AHIP,[28] The Business Council,[29] Boston College Women’s Council,[11] The Business Roundtable,[30] and is an advisory board member of IBM Watson Health.[11] Lynch is also a trustee of the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.[27] She was ranked 1st in the Fortune's list of Most Powerful Women for three consecutive years (2021, 2022 and 2023).[31][32][33] Lynch was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Hartford in 2022, and Becker College in 2015.[34] Lynch was honorary co-chair of the Komen Connecticut Race for the Cure benefiting breast cancer research.[35][14] In 2022, she was listed on the Fortune's “50 Most Powerful Women in Business.[36] Lynch was later named to Time's Time 100 annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world in 2023.[37] Forbes ranked Lynch as the sixth most powerful woman in the world in 2023[38] up from eight position in 2022.[39] In 2024, the business magazine CEO Today named Lynch its "Healthcare CEO of the Year," recognizing her leadership of CVS.[40] She delivered the commencement address at Bryant University in May 2024.[41] Personal lifeLynch was raised by a single mother.[42] Her mother died by suicide when Lynch was 12 years old.[8] Following her mother's death, Lynch and her three siblings were raised by their aunt, who was a single mother with a son of her own.[43][44] In Lynch's early 20s, she lost her aunt to breast cancer, lung cancer, and emphysema.[11] Lynch married Kevin M. Lynch, the founder, president, and CEO of the Quell Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to remove the stigma around mental health and reduce the number of suicides, overdoses, and incarceration involving those with mental illness, in 2015.[11][45] The two first met in the early 1980s while enrolled in college, and later reconnected in the early 2000s.[46] In a 2020 interview, Lynch said, “Outside of work, I make time for physical fitness, and running is one of my favorite pastimes. Running helps me to unwind and clear my mind—many times, my greatest ideas come from an exhilarating run.”[47] References
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