Founding Partner

IBM

Partner

Komodo health
salesforce

Academic Partner

Stanford
  Click here to see video of all sessions.

FORTUNE Brainstorm Health: Building Resilience

As we resurface from a year like no other, our by-invitation-only conference is continuing to build a powerful community of leaders at the crossroads of business, health care, technology, and innovation.

The sixth annual Brainstorm Health conference will focus on “Building Resilience.” As much suffering as COVID-19 has caused, it has also provided some hard-earned lessons. We’ll explore these insights and the key innovations, technologies, and inspirational collaborations that emerged in the past year. How can we build resilience into a health care system strained to the breaking point? How is the private sector driving change and even revolutionizing our approach to public health? And how can we make ourselves more resilient?

Fortune Brainstorm Health, in association with IBM Watson Healthwill gather a hand-selected group of experts and problem solvers for two days and address these questions head on—as well as revisit the challenges of mental well-being, behavior change, and the social factors that determine the health of our communities. As always, we’ll have a few surprises in store and plenty of opportunities to engage with other leaders. We promise that this Brainstorm Health will be our most enlightening and exciting yet. 

Speakers

Alex Gorsky

Chairman and CEO

Johnson & Johnson

Gail Boudreaux

President and CEO

Anthem, Inc.

Karen S. Lynch

President and CEO

CVS Health

Wynton Marsalis

Trumpeter, Band Leader and Composer; Managing and Artistic Director

Jazz at Lincoln Center

Brainstorm Health Co-chairs

Dr. David B. Agus

Co-chair, Fortune Brainstorm Health; Prof. of Medicine and Engineering; Founding Dir. and CEO, Lawrence J. Ellison Institute, Transformative Medicine

University of Southern California

Arianna Huffington

Co-chair, Fortune Brainstorm Health; Founder and CEO

Thrive Global

Clifton Leaf

Editor-in-Chief, FORTUNE and Co-chair

Brainstorm Health

Agenda

* All items are in US/Eastern time. Click on the agenda items to find out more.
11 - 11:45 AM
BREAKOUT SESSION: THE 100 TOP HOSPITALS: THE CORE OF COMMUNITY HEALTH
Dr. Irene Dankwa-Mullan,Jayne Pope,Dr. Joshua Sharfstein,Dr. Rachel Thornton

At the intersection of healthcare, economics, and equity, we find the key to keeping our communities healthy: a great hospital. The Fortune/IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals List ranks institutions based on outcome, patient experience, and more. And, for the first time this year, we’ve added an incredibly important factor that has long been overlooked: how hospitals serve the broader community around them. Join us for a candid exploration into how we can revolutionize community health in the 21st century.

12 - 12:03 PM
WELCOME
12:03 - 12:10 PM
BUILDING RESILIENCE
Dr. David B. Agus,Arianna Huffington,Clifton Leaf
12:10 - 12:30 PM
PIVOTING IN A PANDEMIC: HOW TO ADAPT A BUSINESS IN THE MIDST OF A STORM
Robert Ford,Mike Kaufmann

The health care landscape was changing rapidly before COVID-19. The pandemic sped up that transformation to warp level. From fast-evolving supply chains to virtual office visits to an unprecedented acceleration in the process for drug development, the lessons of 2020 are reshaping 2021 and beyond. We sit down with top leaders to address how they are pivoting their businesses to become more resilient in a time of sea change.

12:30 - 12:45 PM
HOW TO SUPPORT A MORE RESILIENT WORKFORCE
Deborah DiSanzo,Deborah Majoras

For millions of us, remote working has gone from novel idea to everyday reality, private domains become crowded workspaces, and close collaborations happen through small windows on our computer screens and phones. For all of the virtual face time, we’ve lost critical face-to-face time. And that has presented all of us with a profound set of challenges as “work” returns to its new normal. The good news: it’s also a chance for leaders across the business realm to define a healthier normal.

12:45 - 1:00 PM
INVESTING IN RESILIENCE
Vinod Khosla

Fortifying a community requires investment—of money, human capital, and time. So where are the smart investments headed after a year of pandemic? While health care stocks underperformed the broader market in 2020 and sectors like elective surgery and medical devices took a hit, there was also the promise of vaccine development and the skyrocketing usage of telemedicine. What’s on the horizon for 2021 and beyond—and where we have not just the opportunity, but the responsibility to invest going forward.

1:03 - 1:05 PM
MENTAL HEALTH BREAK: INTENTION SETTING MEDITATION
1:05 - 1:20 PM
COULD mRNA BE THE SECRET WEAPON AGAINST BOTH COVID AND CANCER?
Stéphane Bancel

The rapid innovation and collaboration that has defined the effort to create COVID-19 vaccines has opened an important door: offering a new approach to treating cancer. Both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech say their coronavirus vaccines have shown how mRNA-based medicines can not only target viruses, but also malignant tumors with remarkable safety and specificity. We sit down with Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to find out what’s on the horizon and how RNA-based drugs offer a genetic blueprint for beating cancer.

1:20 - 1:40 PM
RESILIENCY FOR THE SOUL: THE POWER OF MUSIC TO HEAL AND SUSTAIN
Wynton Marsalis

Musicians know it instinctively: Improvisation is itself the art of resiliency. But can we apply the same art for coping with crisis? Can music help us turn life’s harshest tones into melodies? As both Artistic Director of Jazz At Lincoln Center and an internationally-acclaimed musician, composer, educator, and author, Wynton Marsalis has been dealing with the pandemic from all sides. A conversation about how the art of improvisation can help us keep moving forward.

1:40 - 2:00 PM
NETWORKING BREAK
2 - 2:15 PM
REVOLUTIONIZING THE FUTURE OF FOOD: HOW BIG DATA CAN TRANSFORM OUR HEALTH AND OUR CLIMATE
Sara Menker,Sonia Lo

When it comes to feeding the world, the challenges are broad and this past year has shown just how fragile our food systems are. We sit down with two leaders who are attacking the big problems with big data: one who’s using A.I. to forecast demand for commodities around the world, another who’s building a more stable food supply for the generations to come. How data can feed the world.

2:15 - 2:30 PM
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON SCREEN
Eric Yuan

Zoom has more than 300 million daily participants. And one of those is Eric Yuan, the company’s CEO who no surprise does all of his meetings on, you guessed it, Zoom.  What’s the cure for Zoom fatigue? How do we regain human contact in a sea of tiny virtual windows? And is anybody still wearing pants to work?

2:30 - 2:45 PM
RESILIENCE DEFINED
Dr. Frances Arnold,Sue Siegel

Dr. Frances Arnold turned bioengineering upside down and became the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry. The Nobel Laureate and now co-chair of President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology shares about her groundbreaking work, how her life has changed since being recognized, and how science can shape policy to face the challenges of the future.

2:45 - 3:00 PM
GOING GLOBAL: THE RACE TO VACCINATE
Alex Gorsky

COVID-19 has brought the world together in a way history has rarely seen. As we navigate the virus globally, the race for immunization has created a web among countries. Johnson & Johnson first made headlines for pledging to distribute hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to the African Union, opening a conversation about vaccine accessibility on both a community and global level. What will the recent pause on distribution mean for the global effort and how can regulators balance questions over rare side effects with the societal risks of vaccine hesitancy? 

3 - 3:08 PM
BUILDING RESILIENCE IN OURSELVES
Bruce Feiler

If the past year taught us nothing else, it might be that change is the only constant in life. So then, how can we learn to reinvent ourselves in times of transition? A master class on what it takes to be resilient and how to thrive when faced with change

3:10 - 3:25 PM
HEALTH DATA DELUGE: THE PROMISES AND POTENTIAL PITFALLS
Dr. Gretchen Jackson,Anne Wojcicki

Consumer health data has never been more accessible—or plentiful, with a reported increase of nearly 900% since just 2016. But buried in this deluge are big questions: how do you make sense of all these bits and bytes and who owns the data? As consumer health data becomes more accessible—from health and fitness apps, genetic health reports and EHRs—how do we address potential issues of privacy, consent, and legal protection?

3:28 - 3:45 PM
FAMILY TIES: BROTHERS IN SOCIAL CHANGE DRIVING INCLUSIVITY IN MEDICINE
Dr. André Churchwell,Dr. Keith Churchwell,Dr. Kevin Churchwell

Meet three brothers—Dr. Kevin Churchwell, Dr. Keith Churchwell, and Dr. André Churchwell—who have tripled-down on saving lives and driving social change. A conversation about inclusiveness (and our failure to achieve it) that will open your eyes as never before.

3:45 - 4:05 PM
THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE: COLLABORATION AT SCALE
Gail Boudreaux,Julie Sweet

One thing this extraordinary year has taught us: We have the data. We have the science. We have the passion. And we have the brilliance needed to solve a whole host of problems. So where are the gaps blocking us from solving so many of these challenges? The answer: leadership. While strong leaders made so much possible this past year—from rapid vaccine discovery and rollout to enabling millions to work effectively from home—there is still a world of problems that needs fixing.

Membership Benefits

We invite you to be part of Fortune’s Virtual Brainstorm Health Community and join an exclusive network of executives at the intersection of business and health care.

Your registration fee includes:

• A series of virtual conversations, the highlight of which will be the Fortune Virtual Brainstorm Health Conference, held on April 27-28. The sessions, will feature keynote speakers, expert panels, and interactive sessions offering timely information on the most pressing topics of the day, as well as additional small-group breakout sessions.

• A recording of the Virtual Conference will be available on demand after the event.

• Complimentary three-month access to Fortune Premium, where you will gain access to the best of business all in one place: subscriber-only online stories and archives, weekly proprietary survey data, quarterly investment guides, exclusive list analysis, an on-demand video library, and much more.

Contact Us

For Speaker Inquiries:

Email: FortuneSpeakerNominations@fortune.com

For Participation Inquiries:
Diana Connors

Tel: 1-866-661-3840
Email: brainstormhealth@fortune.com

For Sponsorship Inquiries:
Elizabeth Parks and Monica Sembler

E-mail: fortunesponsorships@fortune.com

For Press Inquiries:
Alison Klooster

Senior Manager of Brand Communications, FORTUNE
Tel: 646-437-6613
E-mail: alison.klooster@fortune.com