Lauren A. Smith, MD, MPH

Lauren was elected to the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Board in 2019. As a director, Lauren helps set the company’s strategy and overall direction. Within a highly competitive and highly regulated business environment, the board oversees and governs BCBSMA’s operations, which includes the provision of health care coverage to individuals and public and private employers. Lauren serves as chair of the board’s health care quality and affordability committee and as a member of the corporate contributions committee and the human resources committee. 

Lauren is vice president of strategic portfolios for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where she oversees strategy development, implementation, and management of the foundation's key focus areas which include healthy children and families, healthy communities, leadership for better health, and transforming health and healthcare systems.

Previously she served as chief health equity and strategy officer for the Centers for Disease Control Foundation. Before that she was co-CEO of FSG, one of the world’s leading social impact consulting firms, served as the medical director and then interim commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and senior strategic advisor for a 50-state, federally funded innovation and improvement network focused on reducing infant mortality.

Earlier in her career Lauren was the national medical director of the Medical Legal Partnership for Children; the medical director of the pediatric inpatient service at Boston Medical Center; and a faculty member in the department of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine. Lauren also served as a policy analyst in the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and as a W.T. Grant Health Policy Fellow in the office of the Massachusetts Speaker of the House.

Lauren currently serves on the board of The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the board of Health Law Advocates. She previously served on the boards of Economic Mobility Pathways, BELL, Children’s Trust Fund, Massachusetts Food Access Task Force, and the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum. She also served as co-chair of the Massachusetts Task Force on Home Visiting.

Lauren holds a Bachelor of Arts in biology from Harvard College, an MD from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. She completed her pediatrics residency and chief residency at Children’s Hospital in Boston and completed her general pediatrics fellowship in the Department of Pediatrics, Boston University, Boston Medical Center.