Rick is a highly strategic senior executive with over 25 years of experience delivering growth & scale, developing & executing strategy, driving large-scale transformations, re-engineering business processes, and implementing customer-focused solutions. As the Principal at Xcelerate Consulting, a healthcare consultancy, he helps clients define & build new capabilities to service market whitespace, quickly develop & implement high impact strategies to achieve commercial goals and assess areas of weakness in organizational capabilities to optimize them for performance and scale. He uses his vast experience in payer organizations and pairs it with industry trends and expert analysis to differentiate client strategies to deliver outsized commercial success.

Prior to starting Xcelerate Consulting, Rick was the SVP - Chief Operating Officer for Lucet Health. Lucet is a technology-enable behavioral health services company. In this role he was responsible for driving transformation in core operations including network, member services and clinical operations while also executing a scaling strategy that supported the strategic shift from an MBHO to a technology services company. Preceding Lucet, he was the AVP – Behavioral Health Operations and Technology at Aetna. In this role he was charged with driving a significant growth agenda through new product development, developing a multiyear technology roadmap which transformed their go-to market strategy and leading a vast organization of clinical and non-clinical resources that organically grew 40% to 1,150 employees while also managing through high COVID era turnover.

Rick held other senior leadership roles at Aetna including Head of Business Excellence, Chief of Staff, Head of Strategy and Planning, and Head of Transformation. He spent seven years at Stanley Black & Decker in a variety of operational roles as well. Rick received his B.S. from Bentley University and his M.B.A. from the University of Connecticut.