Amy Yao

Amy Yao is senior vice president and chief actuary at Blue Shield of California, a nonprofit health plan with $22.9 billion in annual revenue serving 4.7 million members in the state's commercial, individual, and government markets. Applying more than 20 years of leadership experience, Yao oversees the actuarial department and provides analytical support across the enterprise. Her demonstrated record of meeting goals in mission-critical areas, including business development, risk management, turnaround leadership, and profitability, serve Blue Shield well

She leads pricing and risk-adjustment processes for all lines of business (individual, small and large employer groups, Medicare, dental/vision/life, and stop-loss), reserves and trend developments, financial forecasting, rating model development, provider network trends, and analytics, and provider payment innovations. Using actuarial analytics, her team provides actionable insights to inform and influence financial planning, healthcare system transformation and innovation, risk management business strategy, healthcare affordability, and predictability of business performance.

Prior to joining Blue Shield in 2006, Yao served United HealthCare for 12 years (culminating in the role of director/vice president of United Healthcare’s, Ovations, and led Medicare-based strategies and directed a series of enterprise initiatives as pricing director. Other formative experiences included Milliman & Robertson, Pacific Life and Aetna.

Yao actively serves the advisory boards of Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) Financial Solvency Standards Board and the University of Santa Barbara Actuarial Program. She previously served on the board for the Asian Pacific Fund and Chaired the Western Operations Conference – Actuarial and Underwriting Caucus. Yao was also co-founder and mentor of Blue Shield’s Asian Pacific Alliance employee resource group.

Her business acumen throughout her career has earned her the ‘Bay Area’s Most Influential Women’ award from the San Francisco Business Times in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Yao holds a Master of Science degree in applied mathematics from the University of Connecticut and a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Tsinghua University in Beijing. She is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.