Benefits newsmakers: Anthem, Nat'l. Black Child Development Institute, EP Wealth Advisors, HUB, Dept. of Labor, UnitedHealth

Business is brisk in the employee benefits and retirement business, and much is happening on the industry news side, as well as in organizations that intersect with employee benefits. Here’s an eclectic mix of promotions, hires, awards, settlements, partnerships and more:

UnitedHealth Group announced that Andrew Witty has been appointed CEO. Witty, who has led its Optum division will succeed Dave Wichmann. Dirk McMahon, who most recently led the insurance division, will become president and chief operating officer.

WellSpark Health and Healthy Trucking of America (HTA) have partnered to deliver a diabetes prevention program tailored to professional truck drivers. HTA will begin offering WellSpark’s program to over 700 fleets representing 200,000 member affiliates. 

Voya Financial will collaborate with the nonprofit Commonwealth to provide tools and opportunities for individuals to save and build greater financial stability as part of BlackRock’s Emergency Savings Initiative. The Initiative has made a $50 million commitment to help people living on low and moderate incomes increase savings.

The Stanford Center on Longevity announced eight finalist teams for the 2021 Longevity Design Challenge. Teams will be awarded $1,000 to develop their designs further and will compete for a $10,000 first prize. The 2021 challenge was to design for “After the Pandemic.” The teams and projects are as follows:

• Acties (University of Maribor, Slovenia) – An app designed to motivate children to do daily exercise at home using an “advent-calendar”-like reward system.
• Foris Labs (Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Nigeria) – An online platform that simulates a science lab for high school students, in which they can perform individual or group experiments.
• Intelligent Health Promotion Service System (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan) – A service which enables patients to complete physiological rehabilitation from home with remote help from medical professionals.
• Jolly Jolie (King’s College London, UK) – Soap-coated stickers which reveal themselves as a child washes their hands to encourage thorough handwashing.
• Me Time (NMIMS School of Design, India) – A multi-device home system aimed at helping mothers working from home have more control over their work and family time.
• Near (Northwestern University, USA) – A service which helps families find personalized monitoring solutions for older adults aging at home when their loved ones live far away.
• Universally Accessible Personal Computing (Metropolitan State University of Denver, USA) – A 3D-printed electronic device that transforms a smartphone into a laptop computing experience.
• Wulu (Harvard Kennedy School, USA) – A chatbot which provides a safe space for adolescents to seek mental health and gender-related help and resources.

Lafayette Square announced that Don Baylor Jr. has been appointed Managing Director of Services. He will lead efforts to develop services that accompany the firm’s investments and support economic opportunity in the areas of housing, jobs, and financial inclusion. Previously, he served as a Senior Program Officer at The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The Department of Labor announced it has reached a settlement with Google to resolve allegations of systemic compensation and hiring discrimination at the company’s California and Washington State facilities. A routine compliance evaluation found pay disparities affecting female employees in software engineering positions and hiring rate differences that disadvantaged female and Asian applicants for software engineering positions. Google will pay over $3.8 million to more than 5,500 current employees and job applicants.

KnowBe4 announced that its SVP of People Operations Erika Lance has been recognized as the winner of the 2021 OnCon Icon Award for Human Resources Professional of the Year. The OnCon Icon Awards recognize the top HR professionals and HR vendors in the entire world. Finalists were voted on by peers to determine the winners. 

Job.com announced the acquisition of talent management technology startup Talenting. With the acquisition, Job.com aims to be an immutable storage solution for a global cache of workers’ career data that candidates can access, control, distribute, and secure.

Hub International Limited (HUB) announced that Joe DeNoyior has been named National President of HUB Retirement and Private Wealth responsible for managing the practice’s more than $93 billion in assets, effective immediately. The selection of DeNoyior ends an extensive search following the death of David Reich in July 2020.

The Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation and Tufts Health Plan Foundation are giving $1 million to 42 organizations to expand vaccine education, awareness and outreach in communities of color in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has launched an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Practice. It is comprised of a multi-disciplinary international team of lawyers from across the firm practicing in the areas of litigation, corporate governance, compensation, and more.

EP Wealth Advisors has acquired the business of Abbas A. Heydari, CFP. Heydari joins EP Wealth as a consultant. Since taking a minority investment from Wealth Partners Capital Group in July 2017, EP Wealth has completed acquisitions in California, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Illinois, Texas and Utah. 

Health creative agency The Bloc has teamed up with the nonprofit National Black Child Development Institute to create The ABC’s of Survival, a dual purpose book to support mental health and change laws. It was created with the help of Black parents and BIPOC experts from different fields. It launched on February 1, sharing a letter per day on Instagram at @abcsofsurvival. The full book will debut at the end of February. All proceeds from the book will go to the NBCDI.

Anthem agreed to acquire InnovaCare Health’s Puerto Rico-based subsidiaries, including MMM Holdings and its Medicare Advantage plan, MMM Healthcare. MMM is Puerto Rico’s largest MA plan.