Bert recently retired as head of Population Health and Value Based Care at Novant Health. In that role, he was responsible for the development and implementation of system wide risk and population management tools. Previously Bert was CEO and a Member of the Board of Directors of Affinity Health Plan. Affinity is a $2.5 Billion New York based Health Plan serving over 400,000 customers. Prior to this role Bert served as President-US Commercial Markets for CIGNA, a health services company serving over 11 million customers. He had oversight over the company’s $15 billion U.S. Operations profit and loss statement. The role included responsibility for all client-facing segments, marketing, underwriting, product development and management. Until 2010, Bert served as Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer at TIAA-CREF, a Fortune 100 retirement company. During his 10 years with TIAA-CREF, he held several other C Suite leadership positions, including Executive Vice President Strategy, Integration and Planning where he was responsible for leading the development and implementation of the company strategy and all merger and acquisition activities. During that time, he led the first acquisition in the company’s history. He was also Executive Vice President of Product Management, responsible for the company’s $10 billion profit and loss statement. His first role at TIAA-CREF was President and CEO of the TIAA- CREF Life Insurance Company. Bert came to TIAA-CREF from Horizon-Mercy where he was President, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. This public-sector HMO grew from 5,000 members to over 100,000 members with revenue of $800 million to become the largest plan in the state of New Jersey. During his tenure, the health plan had 20 consecutive quarters of exceeding profit expectations. Previously, Bert was with Prudential Insurance Company where he served as Regional Vice President of Managed Care, responsible for health plan operations in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. That role included all aspects of health plan operations, including commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid products and services. Bert also serves on the Board of Directors of Lowes Company (NYSE: LOW), a Fortune 40 Home Improvement Company (Audit (Chair) and Nominating and Governance Committee), Becton Dickinson (NYSE: BDX) a Fortune 250 Medical Technology (Audit (Chair) and Compensation Committees), Equitable Holdings a leading US Insurance Company where he also serves on the (Nominating and Governance and Compensation Committees), Tufts Health Plan located in Boston, Massachusetts (Finance and Nominating Committees) and American Heart Association where he has served as National Board Chair since 2019. He was named in 2002 as one of the top 50 African Americans in business by Fortune magazine and in 2005 and 2010 by Black Enterprise magazine as one of the 75 most powerful African Americans in business. He earned his BA from DePaul University from which he was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program (AMP168).