Jennifer Vachon is executive vice president of business operations at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), a national federation of independent, community-based and locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) companies. Today, one in three Americans is covered by the Blue System.

Vachon has overall accountability for a wide range of strategic functions, including BCBSA’s work in the areas of market solutions, enterprise data solutions and the Blues’ Federal Employee Program (FEP), which covers more than 5.4 million members across all 50 states and abroad. Her teams develop and maintain key shared infrastructure and capabilities on which individual BCBS member companies rely to compete on a national scale, including healthcare provider network and other national account solutions, market segment performance & intelligence, inter-Plan transactional processes and systems, national organized labor solutions and the world’s largest commercial health data resource. In addition, she oversees the workplace experience team, which is focused on building and implementing a post-pandemic workplace experience for a hybrid workforce.

In her more than two decades with BCBSA, Vachon has held a variety of leadership roles. Her experience spans policy and advocacy, clinical affairs, strategic development, marketing and communications. She also served as the organization’s chief of staff for six years.

Earlier in her career, Vachon was manager of business development at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, where she was responsible for identifying and implementing new opportunities for growth and business expansion.

Vachon’s other leadership roles include vice chair of the BCBS Institute Board of Directors, vice president of the BCBS Foundation on Health Care and board member of Blue Health Intelligence. Her current civic leadership positions include vice chair of the Chicago Children’s Museum Board of Directors and board member of the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

A frequent speaker at internal and external conferences and events, Vachon has been recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business on its list of Notable Women Executives and by Fierce Healthcare as one of Five Insurance Executives to Watch in 2020.

She earned a master’s degree in health policy from the University of Chicago Harris School and a bachelor’s degree in economics cum laude from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.