Senior Director of Policy Affairs, Willis Towers Watson

John Barkett is Willis Towers Watson’s health care policy guru. As the senior director of policy affairs in Washington D.C., he keeps track of the regulatory and policy changes impacting retiree benefits strategies and helps plan sponsors adapt to these changes. John has a dozen years of experience operating Medicare plans and private Medicare marketplaces. He helped write the Affordable Care Act as a staffer on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, and also worked in the Obama Administration implementing the ACA. In his current role, he meets with officials—from the White House to the Departments of Treasury, Labor and Health and Human Services—to gather information and provide technical assistance as the administration rolls out rules impacting plan sponsors.

Marianne Steger is on a mission to save retiree health care! She’s so devoted to the mission that she came out of retirement to become the director of public sector strategy for Willis Towers Watson. Previously, Marianne was the director of health care for the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS), where she ran the health care program for nearly a quarter of a million retirees and helped them transition from the OPERS group plan to the individual Medicare marketplace. With more than 35 years of experience in health plan strategy and design, employee benefits, labor relations, and public policy, Marianne works with public sector plan sponsors every day to help them preserve retiree health care benefits.