Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire announced today that its president, Lisa Guertin, will retire in March after 18 years in the leadership role, and a total of 32 years at the company.
“It has been a tremendous honor to serve our members, customers, providers, and community partners in New Hampshire over the last 32 years and work collaboratively to advocate for greater health care affordability and accessibility in the state,” said Guertin. “I am grateful for the many business relationships I have developed over the years, the Anthem associates I get to work with every day who care deeply about the communities where they live and work, and the incredible business community we have here in New Hampshire, which comes together to tackle social issues in a personal and meaningful way.”
Guertin is well-known and highly respected throughout the state's business community. Under her guidance, Anthem has maintained its market leadership position in the face of increased and diversified competition during a time of exponential transformation in the health care industry. Guertin was president during the single largest change in the last 30 years – the Affordable Care Act. She worked to ensure Anthem would participate in the exchange in 2014, becoming the only insurer in the state to do so, and today Anthem is the only insurer that has offered plans on the exchange in every year of its existence.
More recently, Guertin has led Anthem’s efforts to respond to the pandemic, providing relief to members, customers, and providers by waiving certain member cost shares, being flexible with payment grace periods, providing premium credits, and advancing payments to certain independent providers to help them remain solvent.
“Lisa Guertin has had a distinguished career at Anthem. Rising through the ranks to become the leader of one of our commercial health plans, she has served as a mentor to many, and she is also someone who always put our members, our customers, and the communities we serve first,” said Brian Shipp, president and SVP, commercial business. “We’ll miss her, and wish her all the best in retirement. We’re fortunate Lisa will stay with us through March, which will give us ample time to ensure we have a smooth transition to a strong successor.”
Passionate about staff development, Guertin was instrumental in establishing a unique collaboration with Southern NH University’s (SNHU) College for America in 2013 to offer no-cost college degrees to Anthem associates. The pilot program was so successful that Guertin worked with the chief human resources officer of parent company Anthem, Inc. to offer the program to the rest of the company’s 79,000 associates. To date, more than 650 associates have earned their associate’s and/or bachelor’s degrees (and another 450+ are currently enrolled in a degree program), with the vast majority of graduates women in front-line operational positions.
Outside of her work at Anthem, Guertin has been a community leader, appointed by multiple governors and legislative leaders to serve on advisory boards working on issues such as the exchange roll out and Medicaid expansion. She has served on numerous boards over the past three decades and currently serves on the board of trustees for SNHU and the board of directors for the Business & Industry Association of NH. She has also been a strong supporter of many local organizations, including the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester, CASA-NH, the Center for New Americans, the Farnum Center, and Easterseals NH. In addition, Guertin has been a frequent guest lecturer at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, The Dartmouth Institute, Leadership NH, and various civic organizations.
An announcement will be made when Guertin’s successor has been identified.
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