Mary Stutts Becomes HBA’s First Woman of Color CEO
Incoming HBA CEO Prioritizes Preparing Women for C-Suite and Corporate Board Roles and Advancing Global Health Equity
The Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) has appointed Mary Stutts as Chief Executive Officer where she will lead the global association’s mission to accelerate the advancement and impact of women in the business of healthcare.
Mary brings to the HBA 30 years of experience leading the strategic integration of corporate branding, marketing, health equity, inclusion, and digital innovation for biopharma, healthcare, and media companies. Her expertise and cross functional acumen have provided global leadership to numerous companies including Genentech, Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sumitovant, UnitedHealth Group, Kaiser Permanente, Stanford Health Care, and Comcast NBCUniversal.
“With her extensive background championing innovation and equity in the workplace, and her 15 years supporting the work of the HBA, including serving on the global Board of Directors, Mary truly embodies HBA’s mission as well as our 2023 theme Powering the Possibilities,” said Julie Ross, HBA’s Board Chair. “The HBA is extremely excited to welcome Mary to this role where her talents, skills, and diverse background as an accomplished leader, author, health equity, and inclusion expert and influencer will dramatically enhance HBA’s role as a global change maker.”
As she takes the helm Stutts notes, “Taking this role is a natural transition from serving as a member of HBA’s global Board of Directors and promises to further accelerate my global commitment to Corporate Partners achieving gender parity by helping women advance into leadership roles, engaging male allies, and building upon and formalizing what I already do via coaching and mentoring women into C-suite and corporate board roles.”
Most recently, Stutts served as Chief Global Health Equity and Inclusion Officer for Real Chemistry. In this role, her unique approach integrated stakeholder engagement with customized digital analytics and data intelligence to advance patient-centric equitable care throughout client research, development, commercialization, and external social impact. In 2022, she co-created Real Chemistry’s first Real Health Equity Summit “Changing Out Loud” during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. The event convened providers and leaders from healthcare, biopharma, academia, community serving organizations, venture, digital, and government to collaborate and drive long-term change across the health ecosystem.
Jim Weiss, former HBA Advisory Board member and Real Chemistry Founder and Chairman said, “I have witnessed Mary’s transformative leadership as a pioneer in inclusion and health equity for many years. She was one of the first to focus on clinical trial diversity more than 15 years ago – with a vision that has now come of age. Her entrepreneurial approach will assure the HBA and its Corporate Partners continue to move to the forefront of its social impact goal of preparing women to advance health equity and equitable care at a global level.”
Notable accomplishments in Stutts’ previous roles include her work at Stanford Health Care, where she curated the Inclusive Leadership Workshop which was designed to develop executives capable of leading, growing, and transforming organizations while addressing racial and social injustice and inequity amongst all stakeholders. She also spearheaded Genentech’s $5 million Diversity in Clinical Trials initiative to identify root causes of the lack of representation of people of color and women in clinical trials.
Stutts expertise has been sought by many Fortune 500 organizations including Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) where she implemented a culture of workplace inclusion initiatives during BMS’ business model transformation. Additionally, she oversaw the fulfillment of the FCC’s digital equity conditions in Comcast’s California region required for the acquisition of NBCUniversal.
As a recognized advocate of women in leadership, Mary has been at the forefront of board readiness programs for women and people of color in support of California legislation mandating board diversity for which she received the Fearless Leader Award from How Women Lead. The San Francisco Business Times named her a 2021 Influential Woman in Business for advancing the business imperative to prepare leaders for the workforce of the future.
Mary is an accomplished author whose books include Recurring Themes of Exclusion in the Workplace and The Missing Mentor: Women Advising Women on Power, Progress and Priorities.
She earned a Master of Health Administration degree from the University of Southern California and is a graduate of the Executive Program on Strategy and Organization at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Source: Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association