LAS VEGAS—Longtime Humana CEO Bruce Broussard departed the company over the summer, and, now, he's made his next move.
Broussard will join Define Ventures as a venture partner, the firm announced Tuesday. The veteran executive will work closely with Define's founders as the VC firm looks to continue scaling its investment businesses.
Lynne Chou O'Keefe, founder and managing partner of Define, told Fierce Healthcare in an interview that the venture fund has been "intentional" in how it builds out the team and has put a focus on incorporating voices representing critical verticals within healthcare from providers to life sciences to technology.
Broussard will bring his experience at the helm of one of the country's largest health insurance companies to bear and will be able to provide critical perspective to the startups under Define about how to build effective partnerships with major payers.
Define Ventures manages about $800 million in assets, and its companies are at seed funding, series A and series B stages. The more than two dozen companies in its portfolio include Hims & Hers, Unite Us and FOLX Health.
Chou O'Keefe said she has had a long history of working with Broussard and noted that Humana was a key partner in incubating Cohere Health, which deploys clinical intelligence around prior authorization. She said Broussard has already been meeting with the portfolio companies, and the entrepreneurs at these startups have had an immediately positive reception to learning from him.
"You need a village to make these companies happen, to change the complexities of healthcare," she said. "And they so appreciate these leaders."
The history that Define shares with Broussard and Humana made clear that the venture fund's values aligned with his own, according to the announcement. Broussard said in a press release that he views Define as "uniquely positioned and capable of driving real transformation in healthcare."
"What excites me the most about this role is the opportunity to work with brilliant, innovative entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of their journey," he said. "Being able to see groundbreaking approaches from the start, and having the chance to shape products and help scale and bring them to market is truly invigorating."
"Together, I believe we can make significant strides in creating a healthcare system that's more efficient, more accessible, and more focused on keeping people healthy," he said.
Broussard is the second industry veteran this year to join the team at Define Ventures. In April, Frank Williams, who co-founded Evolent Health, also came on as a venture partner. He brings deep expertise in the provider space that offers key lessons for the entrepreneurs partnered with Define.
Chou O'Keefe said that building the team around critical verticals of knowledge supports the portfolio startups in having conversations across the industry spectrum. A solution could, for example, first start building relationships with providers, with which Williams would assist.
Then, this company could draw interest from insurers, which aligns with Broussard's experience. Those conversations could then open them up to pharmacy benefit managers, and so on, Chou O'Keefe said.
"It's important to have the strategic vision and understand how these eco-players push and pull against each other," she said.
Experts like Broussard and Williams have also experienced the hard times that can come with leadership or entrepreneurship, she said, which can inspire these startups to get back up if they're knocked down.
"Just to learn from those kinds of leaders is a huge asset to our entrepreneurs," she said.
Broussard stepped down from his role at Humana as of July, and he was succeed by former Envision Healthcare CEO Jim Rechtin.