Andrea Walsh is president and chief executive officer of Minnesota-based HealthPartners, a non-profit, integrated health system providing health plan coverage to 1.7 million members and health care to 1.3 million patients. She leads a team of more than 27,000 colleagues dedicated to a vision of health as it could be, affordability as it must be, through relationships built on trust.
Walsh has served as president and CEO since 2017. During her tenure, HealthPartners has continued to deepen its reputation as a national leader in high-quality, affordable care and coverage. She’s led with a focus on building healthy and high-performing teams and forging partnerships to improve health equity, children’s health, mental health, and other important areas of community health and well-being. Prior to serving as CEO, Walsh was executive vice president and chief marketing officer at HealthPartners for nearly 15 years, and prior to that served as corporate counsel leading legal, compliance and public affairs.
Walsh began her career as a lawyer in private practice. In the early ‘90s, she was appointed assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Health and led health reform efforts to increase access to affordable health care coverage, known today as MinnesotaCare. She graduated cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School and has degrees in business and English from the University of Kansas.
Walsh is active in the community and currently serves on the Y of the North board as the immediate past chair. In 2020, she was named Executive of the Year by the Minnesota Business Journal and for the past four years has been named among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Health Care by Modern Healthcare.
As an integrated system, HealthPartners is a multi-specialty group practice of 1,800 physicians, 1,100 advanced practice clinicians, 60 dentists and a care team supporting care digitally and in-person across more than 75 medical and dental clinics, eight hospitals and six standalone surgery centers. HealthPartners offers a wide variety of award-winning medical and dental health plans including commercial, Medicare and Medicaid coverage. The HealthPartners Institute advances the mission and vision of the organization through health research, professional education and training programs.