Anna Newsom was placed as executive vice president and chief legal officer at Providence. Headquartered in Renton, Washington, Providence is one of the nation’s largest healthcare providers, reporting over $23 billion in revenue and serving over 13 million patients through 51 hospitals, 829 clinics, and 16 supportive housing facilities; 119,000 caregivers, 25,000 physicians, and 38,000 nurses; two health plans with 2.1 million covered lives; and 90 non-acute services – all spread across seven states in a diverse family of Catholic, other faith-based, and secular organizations. In her role, Anna will have overall responsibility for providing, managing, and coordinating the legal activities and affairs of Providence and its ministries, and will serve as the corporate secretary for Providence and its affiliated entities. As an officer of Providence and a member of the Executive Council, she will be accountable for helping to develop and lead enterprise strategy to fulfill Providence’s mission and goals, and accountable for obtaining optimal legal advantage for the organization.
Anna comes to Providence from Travelers, where she most recently served as group general counsel. During her tenure in this role, the company acquired Dominion of Canada and Simply Business in the UK, embarked on a joint venture in Brazil, and created a Lloyd’s syndicate to participate in the Lloyd’s market; for each of these projects, Anna helped ensure synergy. Anna also accelerated talent recruitment, development, and retention strategies to achieve over 100 hires for staff counsel; developed innovative approaches to trial strategies and a dynamic framework to accelerate idea incubation and execution; initiated analytics-based reporting to support quality management and workloads; created flexible law office models to improve client service; and revised the financial model to enhance her team’s value proposition and support employee engagement. In addition, Anna served as one of Travelers’ legal representatives with all diversity bar associations and affiliations, and aligned herself with the Connecticut Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
Anna began her career with Travelers in 2013 as senior counsel to manage the largest coverage litigation in the company’s history. She was subsequently promoted to lead enterprise-wide major cases in the claims division, and then to the role of vice president for the strategic resolution group within the claims division, before assuming the group general counsel role. Previously in her career, Anna served as a non-equity partner in the Mendes and Mount firm in New York, and as assistant district attorney in the Bronx. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a Juris Doctor from Fordham College in New York.
Born in the Philippines, spending her teenage years in Bahrain, and completing high school in New York, Anna considers herself a global citizen. She and her husband, who is also an attorney, are the parents of two teenaged children. Anna’s primary passion outside of work and her family is coaching high school mock trial teams.
QLK’s Steve Derks and Joe Johnston led the search to recruit Anna to Providence.
