Kathy Higgins

President and CEO
Email Kathy
Office: (919) 803-5326
Mobile: (919) 815-7449

Kathy Higgins, president and CEO of Leadership North Carolina, is a national expert on health care and philanthropy. Prior to taking on the role of LNC’s president and CEO in August 2026, Higgins served as CEO of Alliance for Healthier Generation for 7 and a half years and spent more than 30 years at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, where her roles spanned leading public health engagement, corporate communications, community relations, and corporate affairs.

In 2000, Higgins led the launch of the Blue Cross NC Foundation. As president and CEO of the Blue Cross NC Foundation, Higgins led unprecedented growth, including the strategic investment of more than $150 million into North Carolina communities through more than 1,000 grants to improve the health of vulnerable populations, support physical activity and nutrition programs, and help nonprofit groups improve their organizational capacity. Higgins was also a significant advocate in Blue Cross NC’s early adoption of Healthier Generation’s decade-long innovative insurance benefit program, designed to encourage clinicians to extend weight management and obesity prevention services to kids and families.

In addition to her extensive business background, Higgins has engaged in significant community leadership throughout her career and has served on numerous state and national boards, including co-leading the NC Institute of Medicine Taskforce on Childhood Obesity Prevention; being appointed by North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper to serve on the Governor’s Council for Early Childhood Development; and earning recognition from Diversity Journal as a “Women Worth Watching” award winner. She also serves on the boards of the Carolina Hurricanes Foundation (chair), the Triangle Area YMCA and the Underwood Foundation.

Among her many honors and distinctions, she has been named both an Eisenhower Fellow and Fulbright Senior Scholar, for which she was selected to study health care and philanthropy in New Zealand and Australia.

Higgins holds a bachelor’s degree in education from West Virginia Wesleyan College and completed her master’s work in community health education from Virginia Tech. She currently resides in Raleigh, North Carolina and is the mother to twin boys. Kathy can be found on X at @KathyHigginsHG.