Who is Brian Thompson? United Healthcare CEO fatally shot in NYC

Thompson, who worked for UnitedHealth for nearly two decades before being promoted to CEO of insurance unit UnitedHealthcare in 2021, was shot shortly before 7 a.m. outside New York’s Hilton Midtown, where the meeting was to take place.

UnitedHealth Group said Wednesday it was “deeply saddened and shocked” by Thompson’s death and remembered him as a “highly valued colleague and friend to all who worked with him.”

His wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that her husband had received threats related to a “lack of reporting” and that bullet casings found at the scene had the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on them.

Thompson joined UnitedHealth Group in 2004 and served as CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s government programs – including Medicare – before becoming CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest health insurer.

Thompson graduated from the University of Iowa in 1997 with a degree in business administration, is a certified public accountant and worked at accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for six years before joining United as director of corporate development, according to LinkedIn.

According to The Minnesota Star Tribune, Thompson has two sons, one who attends a public high school in Plymouth, Minnesota, and another who recently graduated from the same school.

One of the older son’s former coaches, Brandon Carlson, told the Tribune that his parents “were present at all team events” and Thompson’s sister, Elena Reveiz, told the New York Times that he was a “good person.”

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, where UnitedHealth Group is based and Thompson lived and worked, called the killing “terrible news and a terrible loss for the economy and health care in Minnesota,” and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said , the shooting was a “terrible and shocking act of violence.”

John Penshorn, a former UnitedHealth Group executive who worked with Thompson for more than a decade, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that Thompson was “humble, a servant leader and a family man” and Steve Parente, a health economist at the University of Minnesota, who worked with Thompson, called him an “incredible guy.”