George Halvorson is Chair and CEO of the Institute for InterGroup Understanding. He has served for more than 30 years as CEO of six different health care delivery and financing organizations in the U.S., and he helped start similar health care organizations in several other countries. Most recently Halvorson served as Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO from 2002 – 2014, before retiring as CEO in July 2013, and Chairman in January 2014.

Halvorson is currently Chair of the First 5 Commission for Children and Families for the State of California. In 2013 Governor Jerry Brown appointed Halvorson to a four-year term as Chair, and then re-appointed him to another four years in 2017. The Commission uses roughly $500 million each year — raised from tobacco taxes — to provide support and education to children in California from birth to 5 years old.

Halvorson is a member of the Right Start Commission for Children in the State of California, and an advisory council member for the Too Small To Fail Commission. Halvorson is an advocate for a single buyer model for Medicare. He currently serves as a member of the CEO Advisory Council for the Ready Nation coalition.

The Institute for InterGroup Understanding works on issues of racism, prejudice, discrimination, misogyny, and InterGroup stress and conflict. Halvorson has written four books on those topics, which are all available as teaching materials from the Institute.

Electronic versions of the InterGroup books can be downloaded or read directly from the Institute for InterGroup Understanding website at no charge. (Hard copies of the books are available at Amazon.com.)