Stephen J. Hemsley

Hemsley was born in 1952. He graduated from Fordham University, a private Jesuit institution, in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in accounting.

Hemsley began his career at Arthur Andersen, LLP, where he served as managing partner in strategy and planning and chief financial officer (CFO). In 1997, he joined UnitedHealth Group, initially serving in senior financial roles. In 1999, he became president and chief operating officer (COO), and in 2006, he was appointed as a chief executive officer (CEO), succeeding William W. McGuire. Under his leadership, UnitedHealth Group created Optum, a subsidiary company, which is now the largest employer of physicians in the U.S.

In 2015, Hemsley was elected to the Cargill's board of directors. Cargill is a multinational food corporation, which has been America's largest private company for 38 of the last 39 years, with approximately $154 billion annual revenue as of late 2025.

In 2017, Hemsley stepped down as CEO and transitioned to the role of executive chairman of UnitedHealth Group.

In 2019, while he was UnitedHealth Group chairman, Hemsley founded a private investment firm, Cloverfields Capital Group LP.

A lawsuit was filed against Hemsley, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and two other senior executives in May 2024 for alleged fraud and insider trading due to failing to disclose an antitrust investigation into the company by the United States Department of Justice and selling stock options before the probe was made public. According to the claim, “In the four months between learning about the DOJ investigation and the investigation becoming public, UnitedHealth’s Chairman Stephen Hemsley sold over $102 million of his personally held UnitedHealth shares and Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, sold over $15 million of his personally held UnitedHealth shares.”