Staff Bio
Sean Slovenski is principal deputy director and chief operating officer (COO) for CDC.
Role at CDC
As principal deputy director and COO, Slovenski is responsible for executing the Director’s vision. In this capacity, he oversees the Office of the Director as well as the day-to-day operations, strategic planning, and workflows of CDC’s Centers and Institutes. Slovenski also provides executive oversight of CDC's financial management and budget execution; facilities, safety and security; acquisitions and grants; and information technology and cybersecurity.
Previous experience
Slovenski is recognized as a healthcare industry innovator and thought leader with more than 30 years of experience spanning healthcare technology, wellness, behavioral health, retail healthcare, diagnostics, and patient education and engagement. Throughout his career, he has led organizations across nearly every sector of healthcare, including health systems, Fortune 500 companies, startups, and joint ventures.
Early in his career, Slovenski helped build and lead one of the nation's first large-scale wellness and telephonic health coaching programs serving Fortune 500 clients. Recognizing the transformative potential of the internet in healthcare, he pioneered the development of online wellness coaching through the creation of MyHealthCoach.com, one of the first online personal coaching platforms. This work led to his role as co-founder and chief executive officer of Hummingbird Coaching Services, a positive psychology-based coaching company that was later acquired by Humana, Inc. in 2010.
Slovenski later served in executive leadership roles at Humana, including as chief executive officer of the international joint venture between Humana and Discovery Health of South Africa, where he helped create one of the industry's leading wellness incentive companies. He also contributed to the development and operations of two of the nation's largest health system-based integrative medicine and wellness centers, The Mercy Centers for Health & Wellness in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He subsequently served as chief executive officer of Care Innovations, the Intel-GE joint venture focused on telehealth and remote patient monitoring technologies. Slovenski later became president of population health at Healthways, where he led efforts to transform the organization's population health strategy prior to its sale to Sharecare in 2016.
Slovenski also served as senior vice president of Walmart Health & Wellness, overseeing the company's healthcare strategy across pharmacy, optical, and clinical services. Under his leadership, Walmart Health & Wellness served millions of Americans annually through thousands of pharmacies, optical centers, and multidisciplinary healthcare clinics nationwide.
Most recently, Slovenski served as chief executive officer of BioIQ, a leading at-home diagnostics company, and president and later chief executive officer of PatientPoint, one of the nation's largest point-of-care patient engagement companies.
Slovenski was recognized as Healthcare Leader of the Year by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2015 and was ranked seventh among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare magazine in 2019.