CEO Of The Year
Kristen Valdes
b.Well Connected Health
Kristen Valdes, founder and CEO of b.well Connected Health, has dedicated her career to empowering consumers with the data and tools to take control of their health care journey. An award-winning leader and acknowledged visionary, Valdes has pioneered inventive solutions that are pushing the industry forward into the consumer-directed future of digital health.
Prior to founding b.well in 2015, Valdes was an executive at UnitedHealthcare running Medicare Advantage plans across 12 states. Before that, she helped to build XLHealth, one of the pioneering Medicare Advantage plans for the chronically ill, which was acquired by UnitedHealthcare for $2.4 billion.
Valdes is a board member of the CARIN Alliance—a non-partisan multi-stakeholder collaborative helping to enable consumers to access their health information with less friction—and serves as a mentor for women entrepreneurs as well as on several company boards as an Advisor.
Watch Kristen's CEO Award Interview
From Kristen
"It has been very valuable for me as a growth company CEO to exchange ideas with other company leaders on common challenges. I have been both an expert and participant in the AFN roundtables, a great way for CEOs from multiple industries to come together to discuss relevant topics in open dialogue with experts - so that we can all rise together."
From AFN Chairman Stephen Kuhn
"Given the caliber of CEOs and our large global community of over 2,600 CEOs from 120 countries, the process for selecting the finalists and ultimately the winners was extremely challenging. I want to congratulate all of our finalists and winners, particularly Kristen Valdes, our first-ever CEO of the Year winner."