It is an unusual detail to find buried near the bottom of an executive biography: that before she ever touched a strategic plan, Anita Iyenger was an occupational therapist. It shapes, by her own account, everything that came after. Today, Anita serves as Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, and Interim Chief Information Officer at Legacy Health, a role in which she helps shape the future of what she describes as a multi-billion-dollar integrated health system serving communities across Oregon and Southwest Washington. Legacy Health generated approximately $3 billion in annual revenue for the 12 months ending March 31, 2025.
She calls her belief plainly: strategy and transformation succeed when they work for the people delivering care. It is not a slogan borrowed from a leadership seminar. It is, she says, a conviction that traces directly back to her earliest days treating patients, and one that still shapes how she leads today, in partnership with physicians, front-line staff, executive teams, and boards.
Thirteen Years Inside Legacy Health
Anita’s tenure at Legacy Health now spans approximately 13 years and 7 months. She stepped into her newest title, Senior Vice President and Interim Chief Information Officer, in November 2025, a role she has held for nearly 10 months, added on top of her existing responsibilities as Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, a post she has held since June 2020, more than six years and still counting.
Before that, she spent two years and one month as Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development, from June 2018 to June 2020, and two years and three months as Director of Strategic Planning, from April 2016 to June 2018. Her earliest years at Legacy were spent as a Strategic Planning and Business Development Consultant, from February 2013 to April 2016, three years and three months based in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area.
Add it up, and the arithmetic tells its own story: a progression through multiple roles over more than thirteen years, each one widening her reach from planning consultant to the officer now shaping strategy, and lately technology, for an entire health system.
A Decade of Consulting Before Legacy
Before Legacy Health, Anita spent nearly a decade inside management consulting. From July 2004 to February 2013, eight years and eight months, she was a Senior Consultant at Noblis, formerly known as Jennings Ryan & Kolb, in the health innovation space. Earlier still, she spent one year and two months as a Business Analyst Intern at Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, from May 2003 to June 2004.
Her academic roots go back further, to a two-and-a-half-year stint, from December 1999 to May 2002, as a Research Assistant and Manager at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a part-time position held during her earliest training, long before Chief Strategy Officer was ever a title attached to her name.
Boards, Recognition, and a Voice in the Field
Beyond Legacy Health, Anita currently serves on two boards. Since June 2024, more than two years ago, she has been a Board Member at PacificSource Health Plans, and in that same month she also joined the board of Girls Inc. PNW, both of which remain current appointments.
Her professional recognition has grown alongside more than 20 years of experience in healthcare leadership. She has been named an outstanding health system chief strategy officer by Becker’s in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and in 2026, the Portland Business Journal named her a “Woman of Influence.” She also writes and speaks publicly on healthcare strategy, AI governance, and transformation inside financially constrained health systems, three subjects that sit exactly at the intersection of her strategy and technology responsibilities today.
The Throughline
What ties Anita’s career together, from a research assistant post at a Chicago university in 1999, through a decade in consulting, to her current dual mandate over strategy and information technology at a multi-billion-dollar health system, is a conviction she has apparently never let go of: that the people actually delivering care are the real test of whether a strategy works at all. Twenty years later, sitting at the executive table, she says she still leads by it.
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