Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO George C. Halvorson, a leader in breaking barriers to health care delivery and workforce diversity, will discuss those efforts in a Dean’s Speaker Series lecture at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 12 in the Wells Fargo Room.
The event is free and open to the Haas community. Registration is required at haas.berkeley.edu/haas/about/deansspeakers.html.
Halvorson has been widely recognized for his dedication to diversity initiatives at Kaiser, the nation’s largest health care nonprofit with 8.8 million members and $45 billion in annual revenue. Kaiser has been ranked #1 in commitment to diversity for the past three years by Diversity MBA Magazine, and Halvorson was named as a “CEO Who Leads the Way” by Diversity Executive Magazine in 2008.
Under Halvorson’s leadership, a wide range of inclusion initiatives have flourished at Kaiser. They include strong training in diversity and cultural competency; mentorship and coaching; employee resource groups based on race, ethnicity, and gender; and an extensive menu of work/life benefits. Kaiser’s workforce is 73 percent female and 57 percent people of color, and its board of directors is considered to be one of the most diverse in the country.
Halvorson also has been a strong advocate for closing the gap on access to health care for low-income and minority communities. Kaiser was honored by the Human Rights Campaign for its patients’ bill of rights giving equal access to the families of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender patients.
Halvorson, who joined Kaiser in 2002 after serving as CEO of Minneapolis-based HealthPartners, is also an international leader on health care policy. He has served as an adviser to the governments of Uganda, Great Britain, Jamaica, and Russia, and has written several books on health care reform. He is currently working on a book on inter-ethnic healing and racial prejudice around the world.