Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming will welcome its first female CEO as its current chief prepares for retirement, according to the Wyoming Business Report.
Outgoing CEO Rick Schum will hand the reins to BCBS of Wyoming Vice President Diane Gore May 1. Mr. Schum has spent 38 years at the company and became CEO in 2011.
He joined the insurer as a management trainee in 1981 after graduating college. Over the course of his nearly four decades with BCBS of Wyoming, he served as claims department manager, director of operations, senior director of marketing, vice president of external affairs and executive vice president.
"I had done so many different things within the company that, by the time I became CEO, there wasn't a lot of mystery to the job," he told the Wyoming Business Report. "The biggest challenge I faced was the height and passage of the Affordable Care Act around that time. That fundamentally changed the industry."
Like Mr. Schum, Ms. Gore began her career at BCBS of Wyoming shortly after graduating, and has held several roles throughout the decades, including CFO and treasurer, COO, and vice president.
She told the Wyoming Business Report: "Healthcare is complicated; it's about making it easy to understand for customers. What we do makes a difference during a time in people's lives where they're going through serious health issues. When you think about five major events in your life, many are related to health. We need to give them the experience they deserve."
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