She Advised The U.S. Secretary Of Health. Then Became CPO Of A Multi Billion Dollar Health Plan.

She Advised The U.S. Secretary Of Health. Then Became CPO Of A Multi Billion Dollar Health Plan.

From Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw by Laurie McGraw

March 24, 2026 · 30 min

About this episode

Simmi Singh shares her unconventional career journey from the Himalayas to becoming a Chief People Officer at a major health plan.

Raised in the high Himalayas, educated across 22 homes in multiple countries, and fluent in five languages , Simmi Singh was never going to follow a conventional path. She started out wanting to be a UN translator. A mentor stopped her and said: you have a voice of your own. That single conversation redirected her toward management consulting at Booz Allen and Ernst and Young, then entrepreneurship, then scaling the health vertical at Cognizant from a $10M fledgling unit into one of the company's most significant growth stories, then 15 years as a partner and global practice leader at Egon Zehnder placing boards and entire management teams for some of the most transformational companies in the world, then a secondment as Senior Advisor on Health Innovation to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and most recently joining Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts as Chief People Officer and Executive Vice President. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Simmi Singh to trace the through line of a brilliantly discontinuous career and pull out the lessons that only come from decades of doing it at the highest levels. They discuss: Growing up…

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