Kristy LoRusso is the Chief Marketing Officer for Kaiser Permanente. She provides strategic direction and drives growth opportunities by overseeing all marketing activities, including brand strategy, brand advertising, performance and digital marketing, marketing communications, sports marketing, market research and insights, marketing technology, and operations. Kristy and her teams of marketing professionals ensure Kaiser Permanente’s marketing efforts support the mission, protect the brand, and result in sustainable growth in all markets.
Kristy began her career at Kaiser Permanente in 2007 (the same year that Apple launched the iPhone!) Her first challenge was to build the direct-to-consumer capability for KP, ushering in a new generation of marketing strategies to enhance the effective use of data, analytics, and consumer insights. Her direct and digital marketing experience in the private and not-for-profit sectors enabled her to champion the extension of Kaiser Permanente’s consumer transactional capabilities.
Some historic recent events in healthcare have shaped Kristy’s considerable successes in her role. During the expansion of Medicaid and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, her consumer expertise supported Kaiser Permanente’s historic growth across new consumer segments. Most recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kristy expanded the Kaiser Permanente brand in the areas of public service advertising and community health education, resulting in all-time-high brand linkage and consideration metrics.
Kristy earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut (go Huskies!) and an Advanced Leadership Certificate through the Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School. Her career spans healthcare, publishing, and technology, having held management and senior executive positions at Yahoo!, Primedia Publishing, The Walt Disney Company, and Time Warner.
Kristy has been honored with industry awards including Campaign US Female Frontier Award, in the category of Breaking Brand Barriers, and the Excellence in Marketing Integration award from Marketers That Matter™ and served as a member of the 2022 Effie Awards Final Round Jury. In April 2023, she was named Top 10 Marketer Award winner at the 2023 OnConferences Icon Awards, which is a peer-reviewed award for pushing boundaries and leading through change.
Kristy’s favorite way to unwind is getting outdoors and moving, usually with her husband Todd, her teenage son Bryce, and their two rescued dogs, Sadie and Spot. If she could take up an internship with any company today, it would be with Patagonia because it is “in business to save our home planet” and a brand with a clear purpose that resonates with her core values. And with 20/20 hindsight, if she could go back and do it all over again, there’s not much she would change – except find a way to take a gap year and travel the world.