Sarah London, the youngest woman to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company, is steering Centene through billions in losses.
London, who embarked on her new journey as CEO of Centene on March 3, 2022, according to the company, helped spearhead the offering of government-sponsored healthcare plans to consumers across the U.S.
While she began leading the company at only 41 years old, she’s been able to persevere through the challenges of having to sustain affordable healthcare plans as government spending for Medicare has been cut largely due to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Though revenue grew almost 20% in 2025, Centene posted a net loss of approximately $6.7 billion, while the company’s share price fell over 30%, according to Yahoo Finance. London remains optimistic that the insurance provider will bounce back from the limited funding.
“You could take a step back and come away with the conclusion that these [programs] are under attack,” London said in an interview with Fortune. But she suggests that there was “quite a bit of bipartisan support” in regards to the bill that was developed by the Trump Administration.
As AFROTECH™ previously reported, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) into law on July 4, 2025, which is predicted to cut federal spending on Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years and cause 11.8 million Americans to potentially lose their health insurance, according to UC Berkeley. This has directly affected Centene’s business, but London has a strategy that may help offset the losses associated with a loss in funding and Medicaid clients.
London and the company announced in a press release that they have plans to develop new affordable housing communities across eight states. Affordable housing can be a significant contributor towards improving health equity and positive health outcomes, per the release, and London is finding ways to try to improve outcomes, even if Medicaid rates are declining.
“The country is getting poorer and sicker,” she told Fortune. “The dollars are not infinite. At the finite boundaries, you have to make decisions about what you are going to fund and what you are not.”
