About Ellen Offner
Ellen Offner is a senior executive with a successful record in strategic planning, program and business development, and design and management of large, complex programs. She also has extensive experience as a member of boards of trustees of major nonprofit organizations, including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Lasell College, and Lasell Village, an innovative continuing care retirement community on the Lasell College Campus that has won accolades for its intergenerational educational program. Ellen is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Lasell Village. She has just been elected to the Board of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, and chairs the Hospital/Health System Task Force (www.thesah.org). Ellen currently is working with the Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group on implementing a business plan for expanding their innovative, highly respected Dance for Parkinsons DiseaseSM Program in the U.S. and around the world. (This undertaking is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Johnson & Johnson.)
She recently completed a project sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) under the auspices of Abt Associates Health Systems 20/20, with the JFK Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, to work with the Board of Directors, the senior executive leadership, the Ministry of Health, and USAID to develop a strategic plan for this venerable institution. During 2008 she undertook work with the Boston-based Collaborative Quality Improvement Consortium, convened by the Tufts Health Care Institute and comprised of a cross-section of leading health care organizations to seek ways to improve medical care coordination for patients.
During 2007 she consulted to Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in São Paulo, Brazil, on long-range strategic planning, resulting in a comprehensive, innovative plan for the institution. She also continued her work with Network Health, the health plan affiliated with Cambridge Health Alliance, on their strategic planning. In 2006-2007 she consulted to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute on strategic planning and market analysis related to a major new outpatient facility scheduled to open in 2011.
During 2004-2007 Ellen consulted to the University of Michigan. She worked with the Executive Vice Presidents' Working Group on Health and a Task Force of senior faculty and administrators to translate the vision of President Mary Sue Coleman for the University community: to create a model program to promote healthy lifestyles, contain health care expenditures, and define optimal insurance coverage for individuals and families. Subsequently she worked with the University's Senior Director of University Health & Well-Being Initiatives on a benchmarking study to learn about best practices among large, progressive employers that have won wide recognition for their excellent employee health and well-being programs.
For nearly twenty years, Ellen worked at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC), a leading health plan headquartered in Boston. As Vice President for Medicare Programs, she created and ran a Medicare plan, First Seniority®, which Consumer Reports rated first in the nation. Earlier she was Vice President for Product Development and Management and Director of Strategic Planning at HPHC. She also served as Director of Health Plans, Finance, Marketing and Planning for the Medical Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ellen has an A.B. from Barnard College and an M.B.A. from Boston University with specialization in the public and nonprofit sector.