Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw Laurie McGraw

In this 2024 WBL (Women Business Leaders) Series, Karen begins our conversation talking about her path to sorting out retirement. What I learned from Karen is that she is exceptional at just about everything she has ever set her mind to with the minor exception of retirement.



Welcome to Karen Walker Johnson’s world of “reWIREment”. I am here for all of it.



Karen is a nurse… and she is a lawyer… and then decided she wanted to run a health plan. So she did that. She wasn’t lucky. She was clear and determined. She had a mentor who believed in her. He gave her opportunities. She took every one of them.



In this Inspiring Women conversation you are going to hear about an exceptional woman who has a strong interest in making a difference. In doing great work that serves vulnerable underserved populations. Someone who is grounded in family (Karen points to her 88 yo father as her greatest cheerleader and champion) and is committed to bringing the next generation along with her.



In talking about the trends to pay attention to, Karen points out that value based care is here and ensuring there is demonstrable focus on health equity is coming along with it.



Aiming to find a way to deal with the aftermath of George Floyd, Karen put her energy towards action and leadership. Karen turned her attention to Board Service where she is a Director at a number of organizations which she does today. We also spent time laughing about Karen’s desire to retire…which led her to her current role as CEO of another health plan 😀. For Karen, retirement really just means reWIREment.



As we are speaking at the WBL Summit, Karen also talked about the importance of finding an active network of senior executive women committed to supporting each other just as she did at WBL.

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Carla Harris.  THE Carla Harris…the renowned international public speaker, top 40 female speakers in the world who is sharing her “Carla’s Pearls” on career success.   This is the first of the 2024 WBL (Women Business Leaders) Series where Laurie and Carla are speaking to a live audience of senior […]

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Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Cheryl Capps, a trail blazing leader and maverick in the world of supply chain. Supply chain came to be in the late ‘90s, early 2000 time period.  Cheryl viewed the discipline of attacking problems from many different angles as simply, interesting.  She did not view it as a disadvantage to […]

Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Stephanie Mercado of the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ).   Stephanie was recently named as a Top Most Influential person in healthcare which is representative of her work and the work of NAHQ.  NAHQ, aims to provide solutions for the most pressing issues in healthcare which today vast.   […]