Kicking Off the 20th Year of the Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference

We couldn’t be more excited that KBHC 2020 is nearly here! As Co-Chairs of the Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference in its 20th year, we want to recognize the enduring legacy of KBHC and celebrate a year of many new endeavors.

The KBHC Legacy:

This conference began to provide a forum for critical dialogue about the business side of the highly technical healthcare industry. Over the years, our Kellogg predecessors tackled a number of pressing themes: personalized medicine, healthcare reform, partnership models, consumerism, the shift to value-based care, and healthcare technology. Their leadership built KBHC into Kellogg’s largest student-run conference, which tomorrow will gather over 400 students, professionals, and academics for a day of networking, discussion, and engagement at the Kellogg Global Hub in Evanston, IL.

KBHC in the New Decade: Unconventional Perspectives

Ten months ago, our KBHC 2020 team gathered to identify our priorities for the coming year. In the spirit of commemoration and inclusivity, we chose to emphasize:

  • Accessibility - ensuring that we address universal healthcare challenges that affect all ecosystem players, and all people - bringing professionals traditionally outside healthcare into the fold.

  • Innovation - highlighting the healthcare entrepreneurial spirit globally across start-ups, investors, corporations, and policymakers.

  • Community - bringing together a diverse set of students and professionals, notably reconnecting with our esteemed alumni who have made this conference into what it has become 20 years since its inception.

To that end, our team has worked hard to deliver what we hope will be our most impactful conference yet. We would like to recognize these notable achievements, including:

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  • Selling the most tickets in our event’s history and bringing professionals from over 150+ companies to campus;

  • Doubling our Northwestern alumni participation to 130+ attendees, with alumni comprising about half of the nearly 30 executive leaders speaking at our event;

  • Initiating the KBHC blog highlighting student, speaker, and sponsor organization viewpoints on cutting-edge topics; and

  • Launching a new KBHC mobile app and live-stream to facilitate deeper connections and visibility.

We believe the leadership talent cultivated in MBA programs like ours at Kellogg will be instrumental in building the new healthcare ecosystem to make a future vision of more equitable access to health possible. No matter your background, we ask that each of you attending the conference tomorrow meet, listen, and learn from both our invited guests and your fellow attendees. We hope that you will be inspired to consider what your role in this new ecosystem will be.

Thank you to all of our keynote speakers, panelists, and moderators for committing time to share your valuable insights; to our start-up fair participants for sharing your innovative work with us; our sponsors for your generosity in making this event possible; and to our Kellogg faculty and administration for your guidance and support in helping us bring our team’s bold ideas to fruition.

Tom Hittinger and Sarika Kasaraneni

2020 Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference Co-Chairs

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

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Tom Hittinger

Tom Hittinger is also a 2nd year full-time MBA student at Kellogg. Before Kellogg, Tom worked in Deloitte’s Life Sciences & Healthcare Strategy & Operations Consulting group, advising cross-sector clients on capability transformations. Recently, Tom has contributed to early- and growth-stage healthcare investing & scaling efforts at OCA Ventures and UnitedHealth Group Ventures. Tom co-leads this year’s Business of Healthcare Conference, and is particularly enthusiastic about bringing new entrepreneurial perspectives to this year’s keynotes & panels.

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Sarika Kasaraneni

Sarika Kasaraneni is a JD-MBA Candidate at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Kellogg School of Management. Before Northwestern, she served as a Policy Advisor in Secretary Sylvia Burwell's office at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. In this role, she led the Secretary’s consumer engagement strategy in the context of Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation. One of her key achievements was launching a national design and innovation challenge on behalf of the Secretary called “A Bill You Can Understand” to engage the private sector in redesigning the medical bill and patient financial experience. Prior to government service, Sarika was a health policy consultant with Avalere Health and a consultant with The Advisory Board Company consulting hospital and health system clients on revenue cycle compliance solutions. Sarika is very excited to be moving to Nashville, TN. later this year to join Cigna in their HealthService Leadership Program after graduation!

 
Brittany Fulton