Curtis Barnett
Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield
Curtis Barnett serves as president and chief executive officer for Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which serves more than 2 million members nationwide. Barnett leads Arkansas Blue Cross’ efforts to help transform health care, striving to make it more affordable and a more compassionate system. He has spearheaded new work on behavioral health and health equity and spoken nationally on such subjects as the importance of private and public collaboration for changing how health care services are reimbursed and the role of health plans in addressing the social determinants of health, especially food insecurity.
Prior to his election as president and CEO in 2017, Barnett served as senior vice president of internal operations for Arkansas Blue Cross and as president and CEO of its wholly owned subsidiary company, USAble Corporation. On the national front, Barnett serves on the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association Board of Directors. He chairs the boards of the National Institute for Healthcare Management (NIHCM) and Blue Health Intelligence, a health-care data analytics and solutions company.
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The C-Suite: That place where most of us strive to be when we launch a career. Referring to the cluster of top-level executive positions within most companies — chief executive officer (CEO), chief operating officer (COO), chief financial officer (CFO) and chief information officer (CIO) — the C-Suite entails hard work, high stress and long hours. But the rewards can be substantial.
AMP asked readers to tell us who their favorite C-Suite executives were. Their titles may not precisely reflect “CEO” or any of the others, but their roles do. This isn’t a “best of” or a “top executives” list; but it’s a way to recognize many of those business executives in Arkansas whose hard work makes The Natural State a great place to live and work.
Click here to see the full 2022 AMP C-Suite!