Vivian Hunt

Dame Vivian Yvonne Hunt (born July 1967) is a business executive and a recognised advocate for equal opportunities across business and society. She is the Chief Innovation Officer of UnitedHealth Group, which is listed 5th in the Fortune 500. With over 400,000 employees and revenues of $370 billion, UHG is committed to improving healthcare for everyone.

She was named one of the ten most influential black women in Britain by the Powerlist Foundation, and one of the 30 most influential people in the City of London by The Financial Times. In 2018, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for "services to the economy and women in business". She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Strategic Management Society in 2022 and the Chartered Management Institute's Gold Medal in 2019.

Previously, she was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, helping global private and public companies improve their strategy, operations and performance. She served as Managing Partner of the UK and Ireland, McKinsey's second largest office from 2013-2020, and led their EMEA Life Sciences practice from 2007-2013.

Hunt has extensive board experience with influential business and charitable groups including BritishAmerican Business, where she was Chair, the Confederation of British Industry, Business in the Community and the Trilateral Commission, amongst others. She is Chair of Teach First, the UK's leading education charity and the Black Equity Organisation, the UK's first national Black civil rights organisation. Hunt is also a Trustee of the British Museum and is on the Southbank Centre Board of Governors.

She is the President-elect of the Harvard Board of Overseers (June 2024-25).

Early life and education
Vivian Hunt was born in Cleveland, Ohio and has two brothers. During her childhood, she and her family lived in the United States of America and in Japan. She attended the Concord Academy in Massachusetts and graduated in 1985.

Hunt has an MBA from Harvard Business School (1995) and an AB from Harvard College (1989). While at college, Hunt worked part-time on campus at several Harvard Student Agencies. She served as HSA President in 1988-89 and was also elected class marshal. After college, she joined the Peace Corps where she worked in Senegal as a regional supervisor in a primary care and midwifery practice (1989-91).

Hunt has received multiple honorary awards for her contributions to business and society. These include an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Warwick, the University of York and the University of Portsmouth and an honorary Fellowship from University College London.

Career
UnitedHealth Group

Hunt joined UnitedHealth Group, Inc., as its Chief Innovation Officer in October 2022. UnitedHealth Group is a health care and well-being company with a mission to help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone through two distinct and complementary businesses. Optum delivers care aided by technology and data, empowering people, partners and providers with the guidance and tools they need to achieve better health. UnitedHealthcare offers a full range of health benefits, enabling affordable coverage, sampling the health care experience and delivering access to high-quality care.

McKinsey & Company

In 1995, Hunt joined consulting firm McKinsey & Company's Boston office before transferring to the United Kingdom and Ireland office. Hunt was appointed Managing Partner of the UK and Ireland offices in 2013 and served in that role for seven years. Previously, she led the company's Life Sciences EMEA division for eight years. Hunt also served on McKinsey's global Board of Directors, Professional Standards, Finance and several personnel committees.

In 2019, Hunt led the relocation of McKinsey's London office to the Post Building, formerly the Royal Mail sorting office, in London's Knowledge Quarter - a cluster of academic, cultural, research, scientific and media organisations. This included QuantumBlack, a leading advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence company acquired by McKinsey in 2015. The LEED-Gold standard building includes a bold design for clients and agile, technology-enabled co-working. The project includes 360 degree views of London, and a neon light installation suspended in mid-air called 'Astral Projection', by Welsh conceptual artist, Cerith Wyn Evans. The project won the prestigious 2020 British Council Office award and was purchased by Pontegadea Inmobiliara SL for approximately $741 million.

Hunt has served on a range of government and cross-industry advisory roles including the Industrial Strategy Council, the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Group and the London Mayor's Business Advisory Board.

She previously served as Chair of BritishAmerican Business and served on the board of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Business in the Community and the Trilateral Commission.

Multistakeholder Capitalism and Business Research

Hunt strongly advocates for stakeholder capitalism. This includes an evidence-based approach to identify and eliminate bias and improve performance in business.

Hunt delivered a TEDTalk on How businesses can serve everyone, not just shareholders, which received over 1.5 million views. She has discussed the importance of a sustainable, inclusive approach to capitalism and made a business case for sustainable fashion in a talk that highlights the scale of the challenge and the importance of action for the Business of Fashion Voices 2021.

Hunt is a founding co-author of McKinsey's four Diversity Matters publications that found diversity and inclusion are correlated with higher financial performance. She also co-authored ESG articles How to make ESG real and Does ESG really matter--and why? She co-authored the first Women in the Workplace report, the largest comprehensive study of the state of women in corporate America, and How advancing women's equality can add $12 trillion to global growth. The insights and methodologies have been applied globally.

In 2018, she was criticised by The Times when Gender Pay Gap reporting revealed that McKinsey & Company paid its women employees salaries that were 24% less than male employees and bonuses that were 76% lower than men despite Hunt having received her DBE for services to women in business. McKinsey clarified that it paid men and women in equivalent roles the same amount, but that it had a disproportionately high number of men in senior roles.

In 2018, Hunt spoke at the inaugural Financial Times's Women at the Top Summit on how inclusive leadership leads to inclusive growth amongst many other speaking engagements and interviews. She also contributed to the 2022 Wall Street Journal bestseller, To The Top: How women in corporate leadership are rewriting the rules for success, authored by Jenna Fischer.

Board, Government and Third Sector Experience

Hunt has served on the boards of multiple educational, arts and cultural organisations.

In April 2024, Hunt and Tyler Jacks were elected senior officers of the Harvard Board of Overseers for academic year 2024-25. As a Harvard Overseer, Hunt co-chairs the governing boards’ joint committee on alumni affairs and development and serves on a diverse array of board and academic visiting committees, including those for Harvard’s Business School, the Graduate School of Education, and the Art and Peabody Museums.

Since 2019, she has been the Chair of Teach First, whose Patron is His Majesty The King. Founded in 2002, Teach First fights to make the education system work for every child, through great teachers, brilliant school leaders and thriving schools.

Hunt is a co-founder and Chair of the Black Equity Organisation, an independent Black civil rights organisation created to dismantle systemic racism in Britain. In this role, Hunt is leading the fight for key issues that affect the Black community and ensuring Black voices are heard through programmes such as Shaping the Future of Black Britain. She participated in a conversation with 5 News on the presence of racism in a wide range of areas, including health care, education and the criminal justice system.

She is a founding member and Chair of Generation UK, a non-profit that trains people with few academic qualifications, social or economic disadvantages and provides intensive technology and analytics training. This is a skills-based collaboration with companies and governments to place qualified people into jobs.

Hunt also served on the US-UK Fulbright Commission and the University of Oxford Said Business School Business Leadership Council amongst other UK governmental bodies.

Personal life
She is married to Nicholas Basden, and they have two sons. She is a British and American citizen.

Honours
Hunt was made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in Queen Elizabeth's 2018 New Year Honours for "services to the economy and to women in business". In 2019, she received the Chartered Management Institute's Gold Medal Award and Business in the Community's National Gender Champion Award. In 2022, she received the Strategic Management Society's Lifetime Achievement Award.