Leadership Development at Elevance Health: An Inside Look with Jennifer Butler

Talent Development Hot Seat podcast

Host Andy Storch sits down with Jennifer Butler, the director of leadership development at Elevance Health, to delve into the intricacies of creating comprehensive leadership programs. With over 25 years of experience in the field, Jennifer shares her insights on implementing effective leadership development initiatives, including live events, virtual sessions, and small group coaching.

Together, they discuss:

• The structure of various developmental programs at Elevance Health, from manager-focused projects aimed at understanding the company's value chain to executive programs featuring one-on-one coaching and action learning projects.
• How these initiatives align with the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion mission, ensuring equal opportunities for leaders from diverse backgrounds.
• The importance of assessing program impact, leveraging assessment tools, and co-creating with partners to tailor leadership programs to business needs.
• Jennifer’s unique career journey and valuable advice for those looking to thrive in talent development.

Jennifer is passionate about helping others be their best. For almost 25 years leaders at all levels have appreciated her candor & humor coupled with practical strategies for the care & feeding of other humans (you know, leadership). Jennifer pulls from a range of leadership concepts to create experiences to help teams deliver on their goals. It’s been said Jennifer is allergic to inauthenticity. Jennifer earned a BS in Apparel Merchandising from Indiana University. That’s right, the very common leadership development educational background of apparel and retail planning.

Jennifer started her career with Target Corporation after attending in-person interviews. In January. In Minneapolis. During her tenure with Target she was asked to join the training team in support of the business analyst training program. It was in that role that she realized she is at her best when she is “business adjacent”- meaning enabling the people and teams delivering the profit. In 2012 she returned to Indiana and joined Roche Diagnostics.

Over the next 8 years in leadership development and organizational development roles, Jennifer created a new leader program called Jumpstart, built a college grad new hire rotational program from scratch, and dove head first into the roll out of the Leadership Circle Profile 360 from The Full Circle Group. In mid-2020 Jennifer joined the leadership development team at Elevance Health (formerly known as Anthem) to help shape a reimagined leadership development portfolio. Over the last 18 months Jennifer has focused almost solely on the creation of two new high potential development programs, one for manager level leaders and one for those on an executive track.

She is also a big believer in the concepts around Strengths Finder from Gallup (Communication, Individualization, Woo, Activator, Significance) and Multipliers from The Wiseman Group (Idea Guy!).

She also was named Most Improved Handwriting in 1988 from Klondike Elementary School. Coming to work is a welcome respite for Jennifer who spends her personal time meeting the demands of an opinionated almost 7 year old daughter, Davis, & super needy dog, Holly. Occasionally Jennifer manages to convince herself to jump on her Peloton bike, but usually rewatching The West Wing wins out.

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