Healthcare’s leading CX transformation event

Michelle Peluso is Executive Vice President and Chief Customer and Experience Officer for CVS Health®. She leads the Company’s approach in defining unparalleled patient and consumer experiences to improve the health and wellbeing of the over 100M people CVS Health serves. Michelle also focuses on enhancing every consumer interaction within the Company’s service centers, leveraging cutting-edge technology to drive efficiency and deliver exceptional service and satisfaction. Additionally, Michelle leads the company’s brand and marketing efforts, strengthening CVS Health’s connection with consumers across America.

Previously, Michelle served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer, CVS Health, and co-President, Pharmacy and Consumer Wellness. She was responsible for orchestrating the enterprise consumer experience, leading the front store business, bringing innovation into everyday health and wellness, and connecting retail consumers to the broader health assets of CVS Health.

Michelle has spent her career building and transforming world-class companies with digital and the consumer at the center. Before joining CVS Health in 2021, she served
as senior vice president, digital sales, and chief marketing officer for IBM, where she oversaw global marketing, digital sales, and the commercial business. Prior to IBM, Michelle was CEO of Gilt from 2013 until its sale to Hudson’s Bay Company in 2016. In her role at Gilt, she oversaw the expansion of the business and its drive to profitability.

From 2009 to 2013, Michelle served as chief consumer marketing and internet officer for Citigroup, responsible for the bank’s award-winning digital transformation, global consumer marketing and customer experience. She also served from 2002 to 2009 as CEO of Travelocity, pioneering online travel and driving significant scale worldwide. She joined Travelocity following its acquisition of Site59, a travel site she created and launched in 1999.

Michelle earned a BA in economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and an MA in philosophy, politics, and economics from Pembroke College at Oxford University as a Thouron Scholar. She is a member of the Board of Directors at Nike, Inc.

Michelle has been named a Woman of Power and Influence by the National Organization for Women, one of the world’s Most Creative People by Fast Company, one of the World’s Most Influential CMOs by Forbes, and in 2022 was inducted into Forbes’ CMO Hall of Fame.

John W. Boerstler was sworn-in on February 16, 2021, as the Chief Veterans Experience Officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Prior to his current position, he served as the Chief Executive Officer of Combined Arms, a collaborative backbone organization whose purpose was to unite collaborative methodology and technology in order to more effectively connect Veterans to thousands of government and non-profit services. As Chief Veterans Experience Officer, John will provide executive oversight of the many innovative projects and programs housed within the Veterans Experience Office (VEO) and work collaboratively within VA’s leadership to help achieve greater access and outcomes for Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors.

John has a distinguished career as a leader in the Veteran services field as a recipient of both the Eisenhower and Marshall Memorial Fellowships, having travelled to the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Israel, Bosnia, Hungary and Ukraine to write comparative papers on their military transition systems. As the first Marshall Prize recipient, John recently completed a 3-year project in Ukraine to assist in the development of their Ministry of Veterans Affairs – the first of its kind in Europe. John was also honored to be selected in the inaugural cohort of Stand-To Scholars at the George W. Bush Institute’s Veteran Leadership Program in 2018.

John is a native Texan who served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1999-2007 as a non-commissioned officer and infantry unit leader, including one combat tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2004-2005 and Operation Natural Fire in the Republic of Kenya in 2006. John has also served as the Executive Director of NextOp, a program manager with Wounded Warrior Project, the Mayor of Houston’s Office of Veterans Affairs, and as a policy and district staffer for a U.S. Representative. In 2009, John helped found the Lone Star Veterans Association which became the largest network of Post-9/11 Veterans in Texas and successfully merged with Combined Arms in March 2019.

Ms. Mathai has worked in the healthcare sector for almost 30 years in a variety of leadership positions over that time, spanning sales and relationship management, business development, strategy, service delivery and P&L ownership. Since her early roles in healthcare and actuarial consulting, Ms. Mathai has worked closely with Fortune 100 companies, guiding them towards the intersection of population health, workforce productivity and business outcomes. Leveraging this valuable experience, Ms. Mathai then moved into leadership roles at Cigna, UnitedHealthcare and Elevance Health (formerly Anthem), where she built sales and growth organizations, led segment strategy and go-to-market efforts, initiated new product development, and oversaw client operations, service, finance, underwriting, clinical programs and various other client support functions.

Most recently, Ms. Mathai led strategy for Elevance Health’s Commercial Business Unit which provides medical, pharmacy and specialty coverage to individual and group customers comprising over 30 million lives. Previously, Ms. Mathai served as Chief Client Officer for their commercial National Accounts group employer segment, a $4B business with several hundred employers and covering ~8 million individuals. In this role, she was responsible for helping employers deliver the most efficient and effective healthcare benefits for their plan members. The teams she led provided both strategic and tactical guidance and were responsible solving all breakdowns in the system to secure the best health and financial outcomes. The challenges and inability to drive true systemic improvements were the impetus for moving on to create an optimization platform with XO Health.

In her work with America’s largest and most progressive employers, Ms. Mathai has also been at the forefront of digital health transformation, informing capability roadmaps and engaging clients in the early design of future healthcare technology solutions. She launched Anthem’s first Client Innovation Collaborative to help employers embrace and influence the shifts in technology and innovation that will impact health and healthcare over the coming years. Ms. Mathai has been immersed in the digital health landscape and has examined countless startups to understand their technology, business models, scope of impact and most importantly, how the industry would need to adapt to bring this broad array of new solutions and services into the mainstream.

The former Vice President of Innovation & Creativity at The Walt Disney Company, Duncan Wardle spent his 25-year career at Disney developing some of their most innovative ideas and strategies. Ideas that would forever change the way the company expands its impact, trains its employees, and solves problems creatively.

What sort of ideas? Instead of asking “How Might We … make more money?” Duncan asked “What If there are no lines in the Disney Parks? No gates at the entrance? No reception desks? No lines for favorite attractions to pay for F&B.”

Fast forward to Disney’s Magic Band, piloted and rolled out across Walt Disney World, eliminating the need to check in at the hotels, waiting to get into a Disney park, lines to ride, etc. Disney’s Magic band has resulted in record revenues and essentially created an open source monitoring of consumer likes and dislikes, informing all future products and services.

With an infectious energy and playful collaboration, Duncan Wardle pushes executives and their teams to overcome preconceived ideas, act more audaciously, and develop their own innovation “light switch”, which is a method to activate their creative brain and access the ideas that turn ordinary companies into industry leaders.