As head of consumer experience for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC), Charlene Foley brings to her role a passion for helping ordinary people navigate today’s increasingly complex health care system. In addition to ensuring that the ‘consumer is always in the room’ when BCBSNC makes business decisions, Charlene is responsible for helping drive the company’s overall enterprise strategy and ensuring that it forges and follows a sustainable long-term path. Her primary emphasis for the past two years has been putting into place a methodical consumer experience (CX) practice which today benefits BCBSNC’s 3.9 million members. As most CX pros know, gaining a foothold in their profession can be challenging at a big company. Charlene has overcome that barrier in large part due to her breadth and depth of business knowledge gained from 20 years at BCBSNC. Since joining the company in 1997, she has held a wide variety of leadership roles including director of community relations where she headed BCBSNC’s statewide corporate citizenship initiatives and director of marketing, where among other things, she was responsible for ensuring flawless execution of large scale business events. Outside of work, Charlene serves on the board of directors for the foundation at Appalachian State University – her undergraduate alma mater – and on the executive board for Leadership North Carolina. She also holds a master’s degree in health care administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A career working mother of two children, Charlene and her husband reside in their hometown of Durham, NC.