DIANE HOLDER
Diane Holder is a nationally recognized health care executive with more than 40 years of experience leading integrated health care delivery, insurance, and public health initiatives. She serves as a consultant and advisor to health care, education, and policy organizations. As immediate past President and CEO of the UPMC Health Plan, President of UPMC Insurance Services and Executive Vice President of UPMC, she built one of the nation’s largest provider-sponsored health insurance organizations recognized nationally for exceptional quality and service outcomes.
She began her career at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic and the Department of Psychiatry serving in several leadership positions including a decade as President. Deeply committed to services for people with mental health needs, she subsequently led the development of UPMC’s Community Care Behavioral Health, which grew to one of the nation’s largest Not-For-Profit Managed Behavioral Health Organizations serving over 1.5 million Medicaid members in Pennsylvania.
Guided by a strong public health perspective she established the UPMC Center for High Value Health Care to advance the translation of research into clinical practice through partnerships between the UPMC Insurance Division, the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences and community organizations.
Facilitating UPMC’s entrepreneurial activities, she led the commercialization effort for UPMC in partnership with the Advisory Board Company to create Evolent. As a founding and long-serving board member she assisted with the company’s public offering on the New York Stock Exchange at a valuation exceeding $1 billion.
Focusing on health care policy, she served in a leadership capacity for numerous committees including as the co-chair of the National Academy of Medicine’s Value Incentives and Systems Collaboration on health care payment reform, and as a member of the Board of Fellows of the University of Pittsburgh Institute of Politics.
She has been recognized for her work by organizations including by Modern Health Care as one of the nation’s “100 Most Influential People in Health Care”; Governor Wolf as a “Daughter of Pennsylvania”; “Woman who Makes a Difference” by the International Women’s Forum; a History Maker in Leadership by the Heinz History Center and as an “Athena” awardee for her support and mentorship of women leaders and for commitment to community organizations with an emphasis on high need children and families.
Her service to national and regional boards is long standing and has included: the Alliance of Community Health Plans; American Health Insurance Plans; Evolent; the Heinz History Center, chair; the Allegheny Conference; the United Way of Western Pennsylvania; Chatham University; the Pittsburgh Symphony; the Carnegie Library; the University of Pittsburgh Board of Trustees. Additionally, she has served as Chair of the Visiting Board of the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and as a faculty member of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and adjunct faculty, University of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her graduate degree from Columbia University. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Population Health by the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health in 2026.
