We’ve come a long way since early 2012, when Josh opened his old health insurer’s “Explanation of Benefits” and had no idea what it meant.
We realized early on that the only way to achieve change is to consistently choose the most challenging path imaginable. We went ahead and built the first new health insurer in states like California and New York in over 15 years. With 125,000 members in four states across the country, Oscar is the first insurer to give members free tele-visits, and the first “viral” health insurer, with a third of new members referred by friends. We hope this is just the beginning.
Despite the awe-inspiring complexity of our healthcare system, we have pioneered and built technology for better, cheaper and happier healthcare. We are proud to have one of the highest satisfaction rates of any health insurer in the country. This is no small accomplishment and requires an extreme obsession to detail, and flawless execution by our team. It requires us to hire the very best, across many different fields. Oscar is not just an insurance company; it is a technology company, a member services firm, an analytics company, a design studio, and a healthcare company. The bar by which we measure ourselves is that even if we just focused on one of these areas, we would need to still be among the best in the world. That is how we hire. And to that end, three remarkable executives have joined our team over the past year.
Kevin Campbell is our chief operating officer. He runs all of the highly complex operational processes at Oscar, from claims adjudication to network management & operations. As the previous head of global delivery at Accenture, the global consulting firm, and co-chief operating officer at Bridgewater Associates, the analytical hedge fund, Kevin is an operations genius at tremendous scale. He told us a story of how he started working on the docks close to where he went to university, and he eventually became fascinated with the systems that powered the ships. This combination of hands-on, roll-your-sleeves-up work and love for the potential of technology is what drives the rest of the team at Oscar as well.
Brian West is our president and chief financial officer. He joined us from Nielsen, the global media data & analytics company, where he was chief operating officer and chief financial officer. At Nielsen, Brian helped transform a multi-billion dollar private equity leveraged buyout through the depths of the financial crisis into a powerful public, S&P500 index company, creating tremendous long-term value for shareholders. Before Nielsen, he spent many years running various business units at General Electric as a financial leader. His analytical brilliance is a given. It is his leadership and hands-on operating skills, required to handle complex financial operations underlying the building of everything from aircraft engines to sophisticated media measurement platforms, that are the kind of skills we value at Oscar. Brian will also have responsibility for key relationships with our healthcare provider network.
Joel Klein is our newest hire and joins as chief policy and strategy officer. Joel has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court, ran the Justice Department’s anti-trust division under Bill Clinton, reformed the New York City public school system and built a groundbreaking education technology company. His brilliance and his tenacity made him one of the most innovative and respected education reformers. In just a few short years, Oscar has pioneered technology and features that greatly improve our members’ experience utilizing healthcare. We are practitioners of healthcare reform. And we have lots of opinions and real-world data on what needs to happen in this incredibly expensive and cumbersome healthcare system of ours. Joel is precisely the kind of leader who can drive this critical mission forward and help shape and articulate the key policies and messages showing how Oscar is changing the healthcare system for the benefit of consumers.
While hiring alone does not define our success, we are proud to have over 400 of the most talented people in technology and healthcare on our team, to continue to achieve change in this space and support our members. Kevin, Brian and Joel have moved our exceptionally high talent bar up even further. We welcome them to the Oscar family.