Kelsey Hayes

Kelsey is an MBA-MPA dual degree candidate at Wharton and the Harvard Kennedy School.

Outside of class, Kelsey served as a 2022 Zetema Project Fellow and leads organizations at Wharton and HKS to promote authentic connections via storytelling. Prior to graduate school, Kelsey worked for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in its Health Care (Payer/Provider) and Public Sector practice areas. Her time at BCG included over a year dedicated to COVID-19 response; highlights include devising a federal government’s vaccine procurement and allocation strategy and operationalizing public-private partnerships to distribute rapid tests. Pre-pandemic, Kelsey took a sabbatical from BCG to work on a product team at Clarify Health Solutions, a then-Series B health-tech startup. At Clarify, Kelsey designed and delivered predictive analytics solutions to improve quality and efficiency of care delivery. This past summer, Kelsey interned on the strategy team at MassHealth, the state Medicaid program of Massachusetts, to transform its procurement strategy and incentive structure for a contract that serves ~2M beneficiaries.

Kelsey earned her BBA from the University of Michigan, where she spent Saturdays cheering on Michigan football and most of her remaining time co-founding and scaling a women’s empowerment organization. Moving forward, she hopes to leverage her experiences across technology, business, and policy to combat health disparities, improve access, and transform value-based payments in Medicaid, particularly in maternal and behavioral health.