Wendell Ferguson
Healthcare Quality & Affordability IT Portfolio Management for Blue Shield of California
Wendell Ferguson is an innovative and action-oriented leader. For more than 25 years, he has used his experience and quick-thinking aptitude to find solutions to strategic business problems spanning across a wide range of industries, such as health care, manufacturing, consumer software and finance. His strategic oversight in design and development of technology, as well as his leadership of cross-functional teams has earned him a reputation for being agile, relationship building, inclusive and solutions-driven.
As IT Director at Blue Shield of California, Wendell and his team are transforming the Enterprise Data and Analytics operating model to become a Center of Excellence that can scale and support business growth.
In his prior role as Director of Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan’s (formerly Care1st) Business Systems and Operational Solutions, he led a diverse team of senior-level managers. His team was responsible for fully integrating Care1st Health Plan with Blue Shield of California, a 4- million-member full-service nonprofit health care company. Wendell also led his team to implement and refine several processes that span across people and technology. His scope of responsibility included managing a $60M budget. His leadership and decision-making abilities have strengthened the company financially, as well as cultivated the talent under his direction.
As a Senior Leader of IT Medical Care Solutions and Pharmacy, he led a team that supported strategic business outsourcing agreements with an outside vendor. Through this work, he successfully identified areas of opportunity to improve process and redesign project execution that reduced delivery time to the market. Because of this, he achieved an annualized administrative cost savings of $3.5M. This solution not only saved the company money, but also increased the organization’s flexibility and scalability to meet the ever-changing business and market conditions. This cost savings allowed him and his team to deliver initiatives 35% under budget. Under his leadership, he was also able to strengthen the relationship between functional areas. He worked to rebuild relationships that were once in disrepair. As a result, he gained the trust and admiration of peers and leadership across the company. Wendell earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from California State University Hayward and holds a Masters of Divinity from American Baptist Seminary of the West, Berkeley, CA. He is also Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certified. He is the “Mission Values in Action Award” recipient, Blue Shield’s highest award, two years running, the “DiversityFIRST Champion” award winner, as well as an occasional writer for several publications.
With all his professional success, Wendell’s true passions are for his family, his church and giving back as a mentor to under-represented populations and as a board member for several nonprofit organizations.