New York, NY, July 8, 2016—Lois Quam, until recently chief operating officer of The Nature Conservancy, has been elected to The Commonwealth Fund’s Board of Directors, effective April 2017. Between 2011 and 2014, Quam served as special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, focusing on global health partnerships, and launched President Barack Obama’s Global Health Initiative at the Department of State, serving as executive director.
Quam held several key executive positions while at UnitedHealth Group from 1989 to 2007. She was the founding CEO of the Ovations division, where she led a workforce of more than 25,000. Ovations was the predecessor to UnitedHealthcare Medicare & Retirement, which currently serves 12 million Medicare beneficiaries. Quam was also president and CEO of the company’s Senior and Public Markets Segment.
“Lois Quam brings to The Commonwealth Fund’s Board a wealth of experience in health care coverage and delivery in both the private and public sectors,” said Board chairman Benjamin K. Chu, M.D., President and CEO of the Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston. “Her insights will be invaluable to informing our deliberations as the Fund continues its work to move the U.S. to a high performance health system.”
As head of President Obama’s Global Health Initiative, Quam worked on solving health challenges facing people across 80 countries.
“We are very fortunate that Lois Quam will bring her broad and deep experience to our Board as The Commonwealth Fund pursues its mission to ensure our health care system can provide high-quality care to everyone,” said Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D.
Quam has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2007. She is a former member of the board of editors of the British Medical Journal and was a trustee of several nonprofit and academic institutions, including Macalaster College, the Committee for Economic Development, the George C. Marshall Foundation, and the National Wildlife Federation.
Quam, who was a Rhodes Scholar, earned a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford College and a B.A. from Macalester College. She has been named one of Fortune’s “50 Most Powerful Women in American Business” three times.
