The name Willingbridge reflects both origin and philosophy.
It is rooted in place—a reminder that where we come from shapes how we see the world. But it is also an approach: meaningful progress happens when leaders are willing to build bridges across perspectives that do not naturally align.
In health care, the most complex challenges sit at the intersection of government policy, business strategy, clinical practice, and community impact. Each operates with different incentives, timelines, and definitions of success. The most durable solutions emerge not from choosing one perspective, but from understanding all of them.
Willingbridge Strategies exists to connect those perspectives. We help leaders see around corners, anticipate how stakeholders will respond, and design strategies that work in practice—not just on paper.
Organizations working in health care often face decisions where technical expertise alone is not enough.
Health care decisions rarely fail because of a lack of information. They fail because the people making them don’t fully understand the terrain—how a regulation will be interpreted three steps down the line, how a coalition will hold when pressure mounts, how a plan that works in theory will land in the real world.
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure has spent her career inside that terrain. As Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, she led an agency responsible for more than $1.4 trillion in annual spending—a quarter of the entire federal budget—and the coverage of 160 million Americans. She oversaw the first-ever Medicare drug price negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act, a process CMS had never attempted, delivering billions in savings for people and the government. She worked directly with governors to carry out Medicaid policy across states with vastly different politics and priorities. She testified before Congress on coverage expansions affecting millions. She made regulatory calls that shaped markets worth hundreds of billions.
Before CMS, she helped draft and pass the Affordable Care Act. She has worked in Congress, in the Executive Branch under four presidents—Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden—and in the private sector, advising companies, state leaders, and advocacy organizations navigating the financial and political implications of a shifting health care landscape.
That breadth is not incidental. It is the point. The people who seek Chiquita’s counsel are not looking for someone to confirm what they already believe. They are looking for someone who has sat at the table where the decisions actually get made—and who can help them see what others will miss.
This experience translates into three signature strengths:
Seeing Around Corners
Understanding how policy decisions will ripple through complex systems—from federal agencies to state governments to corporate boardrooms to patients’ lives. Anticipating the second- and third-order effects that determine whether a strategy succeeds or stalls.
Building High-Functioning Teams
Bringing together the right expertise, aligning competing priorities, and creating conditions where diverse stakeholders can do their best work under pressure. Knowing when to lead, when to facilitate, and when to step back.
Building Durable Coalitions
Identifying where different groups’ interests genuinely overlap, designing solutions that create shared value, and maintaining trust across groups that don’t naturally agree. Understanding what makes partnerships last beyond the announcement.
Willingbridge works with corporate leaders, nonprofit executives, and government officials who face consequential decisions in environments defined by complexity, scrutiny, and change.
The work takes different forms: shaping strategy before it goes public, stress-testing a plan before launch, preparing leaders for high-stakes conversations, or serving as a trusted advisor who understands how every part of the system will react. What it has in common is this—clients who need more than expertise. They need judgment from someone who has been there.
Our role is not to replace your expertise. It is to bring a complete view of the system to the decisions that matter most.
Clients rely on us to:
- Make sense of shifting federal and state policy landscapes
- Understand how proposals will be received across government, industry, and advocacy communities
- Design programs that work across multiple organizations with different goals
- Build partnerships that bridge public and private sectors
- Prepare leaders for consequential decisions and conversations
- Anticipate regulatory, legislative, and market responses to strategic moves
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure
Founder
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure is the founder of Willingbridge Strategies and one of the nation’s most experienced health policy leaders, with more than 25 years navigating government, consulting, and the nonprofit sector.
She most recently served as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where she oversaw programs providing coverage to more than 160 million Americans and supervised $1.4 trillion in annual health care spending—representing 25% of the entire federal budget. As the federal government’s chief health care executive, she led an agency of 6,700 employees responsible for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Health Insurance Marketplaces.
Under her leadership, CMS doubled enrollment in Affordable Care Act coverage from 12 to 24 million people, expanded and strengthened Medicaid, raised national maternal health standards, and led historic negotiations with pharmaceutical manufacturers that resulted in lower prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. Her work required regular engagement with Fortune 100 CEOs, state governors, Congressional leadership, patient advocacy organizations, and health care providers—each with different priorities and perspectives on how the system should work.
Earlier in her career, she advised health plans, hospital systems, states, and advocacy organizations at leading consulting firms, and played a central role in both the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act while serving in Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services.
She is known for her ability to understand complex problems from multiple vantage points, build coalitions across sectors that rarely agree, and design solutions that are both ambitious and achievable. Leaders turn to her when they need someone who has sat on every side of the table and knows how the system actually works.
Willingbridge Strategies 