Cybele Bjorklund is senior vice president of policy and government strategy at Virta, where she is working to improve access to Virta’s treatment, increase diabetes reversal awareness among key policy makers and health care thought leaders, and advance conversations about new models of care and payment.
Cybele previously served as vice president of federal strategy at Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. In this role, she sat on the president’s cabinet and was an executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Cybele and her team developed and deployed a comprehensive advocacy and engagement agenda across the enterprise. Until 2018, she was vice president and head of global policy at Sanofi, where she crafted and advanced a landmark initiative to reform drug pricing practices. Prior to these positions, Cybele spent 20 years in senior professional policy roles for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, including 14 years as the staff director for the Ways & Means Health Subcommittee, four years working for Senator Ted Kennedy as the HELP Committee’s deputy staff director for health and two years as a legislative assistant to then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. During this time, Cybele helped write and advance the Affordable Care Act, numerous Medicare changes and many other laws affecting private health insurance, health tax law, health information technology and key federal health programs. Before moving to Congress, she was a research analyst at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Cybele serves on the board of directors for the Medicare Rights Center and the David A. Winston Health Policy Fellowship. She is also a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. She has been a distinguished visitor at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University’s Law Center and a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. During 2016-2017, she served on the Steering Committee for Value-Based Health Care at the World Economic Forum. Cybele holds an associate faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, from which she also graduated with a master’s degree in health policy and a concentration in law, ethics, and policy. She received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. Cybele is a Fellow of the second class of the Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
