MONICA SCHMUDE

A key performance indicator is a metric used to gauge a company’s performance, and, for Monica Schmude, the KPIs that matter most are the mental and physical well-being of her employees. “A company’s greatest asset is the health of its workforce,” she says, a particularly apt belief for the Virginia head of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, who is responsible for 9,000 employees serving about 3 million Virginians.

Schmude started out wanting to be a dentist, but a college course in industrial psychology “just cooked for me,” she says, leading to a 30-plus-year career in health insurance, rising through a series of increasingly impactful leadership roles before becoming Anthem’s Virginia president in 2023. She has garnered many honors, including being named one of the most powerful women in the Washington, D.C., region three times by Washingtonian magazine and being named to Virginia Business’ Virginia 500 list of the state’s most powerful executives last year.

Schmude often found herself to be “a party of one” in the executive ranks of the health care industry, which are overwhelmingly male, and she credits a series of mentors for helping her break through the glass ceiling. “Find that mentor who speaks for your strengths when you aren’t in the room and always be that person for someone else,” she says.

Throughout her career, as a sponsor of executive women’s forums, she has been that someone many times. “There couldn’t be anything more important,” she says, “than the support of other women.”

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