Lunch Seminar

Julian Harris, M.D. Senior Vice President, Operations Strategy & Localization, U.S. Commercial Markets, Cigna.

As Cigna's first Senior Vice President of Operations Strategy & Localization, Dr. Julian Harris is responsible for driving a multi-year operating plan that is critical to advancing our growth strategy through segment and local market collaborative planning, prioritization and alignment of operations and investments. He is a member of Cigna's U.S. Operating Committee (USOC) which guides the company’s multi-year U.S. business process. While overseeing Localization, he ensures that Cigna delivers on our goals of affordability and personalization and that the perspective of local markets is reflected throughout the organization.

Harris joined Cigna in September 2015. He has a wealth of diverse experience in the health care industry – from public finance, policy, and management at both the federal and state levels, to health care administration and service delivery.

In addition to his work at Cigna, Harris teaches and mentors graduate students in health policy and business at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he served as Associate Director for Health in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President. As the chief federal health care budget official, he had budget, management, policy, and regulatory oversight responsibility for $1 trillion in spending across 20 federal agencies and operating divisions, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

In addition to his health policy and budget expertise, Harris provided strategic and operational leadership to OMB’s oversight of agencies on initiatives as diverse as implementing the Affordable Care Act, developing and implementing new CMS Innovation Center Models and new CMS payment rules in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Marketplaces, and standing up the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative.

At the state level, Harris served as the Medicaid Director for the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services. During his tenure, the state developed the nation's first integrated model of managed care delivery and financing for dual Medicare-Medicaid members with CMS and developed a primary-care centered accountable care model. He has also supported and led payment and delivery system reform and public health projects in the U.S. and abroad for public and private sector organizations including the World Bank, Harvard School of Public Health, and McKinsey & Company.

Trained in internal medicine and primary care at Harvard’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harris worked as a hospitalist at Cambridge Health Alliance and provided online clinical consults for Best Doctors. He graduated with a B.A. from Duke University in Health Policy and Medical Ethics and a M.Sc. from Oxford University in Economic & Social History. He is also a graduate of the Wharton School of Business and the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lunch will be served.

RSVP required. To RSVP, email [email protected] by April 12th.

This event is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School's Center for Health & Wellbeing.