Sukanya Lahiri Soderland is an impact-focused senior executive with deep knowledge of the healthcare ecosystem and expertise in innovation and digital transformation. She has spent over 20 years serving as an executive and trusted advisor to the boards and C-suites of companies across the healthcare continuum. Sukanya possesses deep insights into product design, partnership development, omni-channel consumer experience and the use of AI and advanced analytics to support business decision-making and operational redesign. She has used her unique combination of skills and experience to drive profitable growth, at scale, and improve health care affordability.
Sukanya’s career foundation was set at Marsh & McLennan (NYSE: MMC, $80B market cap), where she was a senior Partner in the company’s Oliver Wyman (OW) consulting group. She was part of the founding group of OW’s Health and Life Sciences practice, which eventually achieved its position as the firm’s highest growth and highest margin practice. In her 18 years with OW, Sukanya worked with blue-chip health care companies such as Humana, Optum and United to identify and implement strategies to drive enterprise growth, operational improvement and margin expansion. Importantly, Sukanya also served as a leader in the firm’s Digital Technology Operations and Analytics practice, and along with Tom Main, co-founded OW’s Health Innovation Center, a broad network of forward-looking industry leaders that serves as a forum for collaboration of ideas and action between digital health innovators and industry incumbents. As a result, she is extremely well networked in the Healthcare industry.
In her current role as Chief Strategy Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (a leading health insurance plan managing $18B in health care spend for 3 million members), Sukanya reports directly to the CEO, is responsible for directing the Plan’s strategy and business plans, has built and scaled a new Enterprise Data and Advanced Analytics function, and led a reinvigoration of the Innovation function. She plays an integral role in guiding the company’s strategic, financial and operational decisions, including capital allocation, and presents at all Board meetings. One example of Sukanya’s role in Innovation at BCBSMA is the formation of EvioRx, a new company established to arrest spiraling drug costs and radically transform the prescription drug value chain. Sukanya worked with the representatives of five prominent BCBS plans to form this JV (representing 22 million lives), convince the CEOs to launch it as a new company, and raise $25 million in capital. BCBSMA’s return is already greater than 3x its initial investment.
Sukanya has long been committed to talent development and issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. She led the inception of OW’s Inclusion and Diversity plan and served on its global firm-wide council. She was the first non-white woman elected to the firm’s partnership and was later appointed to the committee to evaluate and elect new partners. At BCBSMA, she serves as the Executive Sponsor for the Black Professionals Network and credits her appreciation of how to build influence and empathy across diverse groups and divergent perspectives to her many early years working with organizations such as Seeds of Peace, a conflict resolution training ground for youth from the Middle East and other war-torn regions.
Sukanya graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She serves on the Board of Advisors at Boston’s Museum of Science and on the Board of the Trustees of Reservations, the largest owner of conservation land in Massachusetts. Sukanya has been published in Harvard Business Review and is a frequent speaker at forums such as SXSW and Health Evolution Summit on digital disruption. She lives in Winchester, MA with her husband and their teenage daughter, and enjoys travel, singing, and hikes in the woods and on the beach with their dog.