When David Brown received a call from a headhunter several years ago pitching an opportunity to interview with Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Iowa wasn’t anywhere on his list of places he thought he’d like to live. 

Being from New York and with a spouse from Florida, Brown was eyeing opportunities along the East Coast, not the Midwest. But the opportunity fascinated him. 

“The more I learned about it, the more I found it was exactly what I wanted in my career,” said Brown, who left Capital One Financial Corp. in Richmond, Va., to join Wellmark as CFO in May 2011. “I was just very taken by the strategy the company has. I really love that we are a mutual company and that we’re owned by our members.”

Being named the 2016 Deloitte CFO of the Year gives Brown another reason to be proud of his position with Wellmark.

Over the past four years as executive vice president, CFO and treasurer, Brown has played a key role in helping the health insurer navigate the turbulent waters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In spite of those uncertainties and a tumultuous economy, Brown also led cost-savings efforts that have successfully trimmed tens of millions of dollars in administrative expenses from Wellmark’s overhead in the past couple of years. 

“I love being able to really engage in and look across the whole business,” Brown said. “As CFO, every area of the business matters to me, and learning about every aspect of the business is interesting. I really enjoy that.” 

Brown credited his financial team for much of his success. 

“As CFO, I’m the one who can win an award and I sign my name at the bottom of a bunch of papers, but our team is committed to great results and doing the right thing, and it makes my job that much easier,” he said. 

Not long after Brown became CFO, Wellmark established a lofty goal to trim its administrative costs by 20 percent. Brown has been instrumental in reaching $60 million of that $100 million target within the first two years of a four-year initiative. 

“When we set a goal that ambitious, we said, we really need to transform what we’re doing,” Brown said. “We looked at our processes to say, how could we do things differently and more efficiently? We spend a lot of time looking at how we interact with vendors and have been able to get substantial savings from negotiating with them.” 

Among other accomplishments, Brown held an integral seat at the table in a historic land swap that allowed the Riverfront YMCA to relocate to its newly remodeled Wellmark YMCA facility in downtown Des Moines. 

Through a series of trades, Polk County was able to take ownership of the old J.C. Penney building that Wellmark had long held without the county having to sell bonds to finance the acquisition. Wellmark subsequently donated the strip of land adjacent to the former Polk County Convention Complex for the pool site for the Y.

“Had we held on to the Penney’s building, we probably could have sold it and gotten more money for it,” Brown said. “And we probably could have sold the land next to the Plex for more. But those wouldn’t have created the opportunities that did happen.” 

Marci Chickering, executive vice president for people and process at Wellmark, said Brown is a “wise counselor.”

“He is a standard-bearer of integrity and civility, and is one of our most respected leaders,” Chickering wrote in a nomination letter. “He is steadfast in doing the right thing for our employees, members and the community.” 

In the community, Brown serves on the Des Moines Redevelopment Co. board, as well as the board of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. The latter has been “a great way for me to learn about the state of Iowa,” he said. Brown also serves as a board member of his synagogue. 

One of his family’s favorite traditions has been to attend the Iowa State Fair annually, and Brown admits to eating his fair share of bacon. 

Although he hasn’t invested in farmland and he’s never detasseled corn, “I really feel we’ve made Iowa our home, and my wife and I feel a lot of affinity for the city,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun seeing it grow and develop. While it’s frustrating getting through downtown because of the construction, you think about what that means for the future.”