UnitedHealth names first chief administrative officer

Dive Brief:

• UnitedHealth has named a longtime corporate strategy and workforce management executive as its inaugural chief administrative officer as the healthcare behemoth continues to overhaul its leadership amid intense scrutiny of its business practices.
• As CAO, Jodee Kozlak will work to modernize and align UnitedHealth’s operations across different businesses. She’ll oversee a portfolio that initially includes human resources, real estate, procurement and corporate security, according to a Thursday press release.
• Kozlak’s appointment, which is effective Sept. 28, is the latest in a series of executive changes for UnitedHealth, which this week also refreshed its chief commercial officer and the commercial CEO of its UnitedHealthcare insurance arm.

Dive Insight:

Kozlak has spent her career in various executive, human resources and legal leadership roles. She was global senior vice president of Alibaba Group from 2016 to 2017, and helped the multinational e-commerce giant expand outside of China, according to UnitedHealth’s release. Prior to joining Alibaba, Kozlak worked at Target, including as executive vice president and chief human resources officer from 2004 to 2015.

Kozlak currently serves as chair of the board for transportation company C.H. Robinson Worldwide and as lead independent director for homebuilding company KB Home. She’s also worked as a lawyer and an accountant, according to UnitedHealth.

Kozlak’s “exceptional experience across business strategy, organizational development and governance” will help fuel UnitedHealth’s operational improvement, UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said in a statement.

UnitedHealth is trying to move past a series of crises over the last few years, including financially and from a public relations perspective. The Minnesota-based giant is making progress on the first, reporting higher profits this year after getting a firmer handle on medical spending. But UnitedHealth is still wresting with the second, as consumers report plummeting trust in their insurance companies and legislators and regulators investigate how UnitedHealth could be profiteering from its outsized influence in the sector.

Unitedhealth, which brought in $12.1 billion in profit on $448 billion in revenue last year, operates the largest private insurance company in the U.S., a major pharmacy benefits manager, a nationwide network of physicians, a widely used tech and analytics arm and more across thousands of subsidiaries.

Amid flatlining investor confidence and scrutiny of its business practices that intensified following the killing of its top payer executive late 2024, UnitedHealth’s board brought back Stephen Hemsley to serve as CEO last spring.

Hemsley committed to more transparency, initiated an internal review of UnitedHealth’s operations and overhauled the company’s executive branch. Since Hemsley took the reigns, UnitedHealth has named a new CFO and shuffed the leadership of its Optum health services division, technology unit Optum Insight and payer arm UnitedHealthcare.

Most recently, earlier this week UnitedHealth elevated Dan Kueter, the CEO of its UnitedHealthcare commercial insurance division, to chief commercial officer; and replaced him as commercial CEO with Brandon Cuevas, who left UnitedHealthcare for Kaiser Permanente in 2023.

Both executives announced the moves in LinkedIn posts on Tuesday.