Paula Ness Speers

Paula co-founded Health Advances – a strategy consulting firm dedicated to helping healthcare organizations identify critical unmet needs and bring valuable healthcare solutions to patients and providers in a cost- and time-effective manner. Over her nearly 30 years of leadership, she helped pioneer its novel approach as an industry-specific strategy firm providing deep expertise and data-driven insights across the various healthcare sectors which the firm advises. After navigating the organization through its acquisition by one of the largest global clinical trial management firms, as well leading the firm through the early stages of the global pandemic, Paula now serves as a Senior Advisor to the firm.

Currently, Paula Chairs the Board of Trustees for the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network (a member entity of Mass General Brigham) and serves on the Mass General Brigham (MGB) Corporate Board of Directors, as well as being a member on various MGB Board Committees (Audit and Compliance, Finance and Compensation Committees). Paula is also a member of the MGB Innovation Growth Board and is a Venture Affiliate with Boston Millennia Partners. She is also active in other community- and faith-based organizations.

Paula began her strategy consulting career at Bain & Company in Boston, where she led engagements across a range of industries, including healthcare, with a particular focus on technology-driven businesses and international joint ventures.

Between college and graduate school, Paula served as a tuberculosis (TB) control worker with the U.S. Peace Corps on an island in South Korea. After completing her Peace Corps service, she chose to remain on the same island and work at Samsung Shipbuilding and then with Atlantic Richfield’s Northern Light Project at Daewoo Shipbuilding Company, so that she could continue informal relationships with the health center and her TB patients, while also exploring the world of international business.

Paula graduated from Dartmouth College with honors in International Government, where she also co-captained the first Women’s Varsity Soccer team at Dartmouth. She received her MBA with Beta Gamma Sigma honors from Columbia University and was an International Fellow at Columbia’s School of International & Public Affairs.

Paula spent most of her working career in the Boston area, where she made time to coach her sons’ youth soccer teams and help coordinate several years of fund-raising for Grassroots Soccer via the “24 Hours of Barefoot Soccer” annual event in Wellesley, MA from its initial inception. She now resides in Hanover, NH with her husband Mark.