Can Karen Lynch vaccinate America?

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March 15, 2021

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! It’s been one year since Breonna Taylor’s death, women mourn Sarah Everard, and Karen Lynch is the highest-ranking female CEO ever to appear in the Fortune 500—just in time for CVS Health’s most important mission yet. Have a meaningful Monday.
– The story at CVS. Journalists are always looking to capture companies and leaders at moments of transition. And it’s hard to imagine a bigger—or more important—transition than the one happening right now at CVS Health.
The $269-billion retail pharmacy chain on a mission to transform itself into a health care company just got a new CEO—Karen Lynch—and she’s the highest-rankedfemale Fortune 500 chief in the list’s history. (CVS, after its 2018 Aetna acquisition, is No. 5 on the list; the largest company to be run by a woman prior to Lynch’s promotion was Mary Barra’s General Motors.)
But it’s not just Lynch’s big new job that puts CVS in the spotlight. The pharmacy is now at the center of the United States’ COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Lynch, who took over Feb. 1, has all eyes on her not just as the most-watched woman in corporate America, but as an executive overseeing a task critical to the nation’s public health. (It’s worth pointing out that Lynch’s partner and competitor in this mission will be Roz Brewer, who was recently named the CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance—also key to the U.S. vaccine rollout.)
Photograph by Jeffery Salter I spent the past few months talking to CVS executives, public health officials, and vaccine rollout experts to learn more about Lynch and the pivotal moment she’s walking into. The take-away? It’s hard to picture anyone with more operational expertise to execute a challenge like this; Lynch, 58, rose through the ranks of Cigna, Magellan, and Aetna before arriving at CVS and oversaw two of the health care industry’s largest integrations, between Aetna and Coventry in 2013 and then Aetna and CVS.
But it’s her personal side that stuck with me—and gives her a different kind of insight into the critical importance of getting vaccination right. At age 12, Lynch lost her mother to suicide; she was raised by her Aunt Millie, who died when Lynch was in her late 20s. As a young adult, Lynch became her aunt’s caretaker. Sitting by Millie’s hospital bed, failing to find the answers she sought about Millie’s breast and lung cancer, and trying to interpret incomprehensible medical bills helped inspire Lynch to enter the health care industry—with the ambitious goal of reforming it.
For the CEO of America’s fifth-largest public company, Lynch is remarkably candid, willing to discuss everything from the emotional toll of her mother’s illness and death to her decision not to have children. Today, she’s a clear-eyed executive with her focus on vaccination numbers and CVS’s share price, but her goal is to never lose sight of that personal side—not just her own story, but the stories of the millions of people affected by every decision her mammoth company makes.
To learn more about Lynch, read my full profile here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.

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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

- Record breaking. The Grammys last night belonged to female artists, who captured all four top prizes. Taylor Swift became the first female performer to win Album of the Year for a third time. H.E.R. won Song of the Year. Billie Eilish nabbed her second consecutive Record of the Year, and Megan Thee Stallion earned Best New Artist. Beyonce also made history, becoming the most decorated woman—and most decorated singer, male or female—in Grammy history with her 28th win. AP
- Say her name. It's been one year since Breonna Taylor was killed by police in her own home. Taylor's mother and sister, Tamika and Ju’Niyah Palmer, want to make sure we keep saying her name. The Cut
- #SheWasWalkingHome. People around the world are mourning Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive who this month disappeared while walking home from a friend's house in London and was later found dead. A police officer was arrested on suspicion of murder. Women are imploring leaders to take violence against women seriously, sharing their own stories and fears with the hashtag #shewaswalkinghome. NPR
- Alone in Albany. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has continued to lose the confidence of the state's leaders, with most, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, now calling for his resignation following allegations of sexual harassment. This piece connects those allegations to his office's reported atmosphere of bullying and the scandal over misreporting nursing home COVID deaths. "The same attitude that emboldens you to target a 25-year-old," one former staffer said, "also emboldens you to scrub a nursing-home report." The Cut
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Dreambox Learning CEO Jessie Woolley-Wilson joins the board of Quizlet. Snap Inc. chief business officer Jeremi Gorman joins the board of Samba TV. The DCCC hired former Slack and Google engineer Erica Joy Baker as its first chief technology officer.

CONTENT FROM PWC

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

- Due date. Elizabeth Holmes's Theranos fraud trial is likely to be delayed six more weeks—because Holmes is pregnant, due in July. The shuttered blood-testing startup founder's trial was already delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic. Guardian
- Ancient history, new discovery. A tomb unearthed in Spain is changing archaeologists' and prehistorians' view of Early Bronze Age European societies. A wealthy man and woman were found buried together—with the most ornate silver pieces buried with them belonging to the woman. Experts say the findings suggest that Spain's El Argar culture of 2200 to 1500 B.C., long thought to be patriarchal, could have included women who held their own power. New York Times
- Research funding. Why is women's health under-researched? Modern Fertility CEO Afton Vechery argues that it will take time, in the notoriously slow field of academia, to undo decades of ignoring women's health needs. But change will happen faster if society recognizes this as everyone's problem, not just women's. Fortune

ON MY RADAR

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PARTING WORDS

"When I told my mother that I’d be playing Lilly Ledbetter, she had to put the phone down to catch her breath."
-Actor Patricia Clarkson on playing the namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in a new movie. Clarkson's mother is a New Orleans politician, and Ledbetter fought for equal pay at an Alabama factory.