Elevance Health CEO Gail Boudreaux did not begin her career in a boardroom. She started on a basketball court.

“My first full-time professional job was as a professional basketball player in Versailles, France,” Boudreaux told Fortune in 2019. “Without speaking the language, I got on a plane, moved there for a year, and joined a team that all spoke only French.”

At the time, Boudreaux had recently graduated from Dartmouth College after spending four years balancing a psychology degree with basketball, track, and field competitions. After earning her degree in 1982, she played professional basketball in France for one year before joining health insurance company Aetna in her first corporate role.

“What I learned from that is you can do anything if you’re willing to be open-minded and take on a challenge,” Boudreaux said of her basketball career.

That mindset has carried her through nearly a decade leading one of the largest health insurers in the U.S. and one of the largest companies in the world by revenue. As of Tuesday, Elevance Health ranked No. 31 on the 2026 Fortune Global 500, with $199.1 billion in revenue. Boudreaux is now the highest-ranking female CEO on the list, underscoring how rare that position remains even as more women reach senior leadership.

Boudreaux has always had game

Long before her career in the C-suite, Boudreaux was a standout athlete.

She began playing basketball in seventh grade, often competing with her brothers at a local Catholic youth group in her hometown of Chicopee, Massachusetts. At Dartmouth, she became the centerpiece of the women’s basketball team as a 6-foot-2 center. She scored 1,933 points and collected 1,635 rebounds, and she often led her team with an average of 21.7 points per game.

Boudreaux remains the only woman to win the Ivy League Player of the Year award three times. Her impact on the program was recognized in 2023, when Dartmouth formally retired her jersey, No. 20, and installed a permanent banner at the Leede Arena basketball court in her honor.

“Having participated in sports plays a lot into how I do leadership,” Boudreaux told CEO NA Magazine in 2022. “Business is very much a team market.”

She has also said her athletic background shapes how she hires. “I’ve hired a lot of athletes, and what I love about them is that they are willing to take risks, take on challenges, and the good ones understand their role,” Boudreaux told the NCAA in 2016. “The best skill they bring right out of school is the ability to follow, to take guidance, to learn new things and to be part of a bigger project or team.”

Boudreaux has said her leadership style reflects lessons from basketball about roles, accountability, and teamwork. “I coach every day at work, and my skills are best suited where I am,” she told Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.

From the basketball court to the boardroom

After her brief basketball career in France, Boudreaux joined Aetna, where she spent two decades before moving on to lead Blue Cross of Illinois. She later became CEO of UnitedHealthcare in 2011, becoming the first woman to hold that job.

In 2017, she took over Anthem, which was later rebranded as Elevance Health as part of the company’s effort to signal an expansion into comprehensive health services rather than insurance alone.

Since then, Boudreaux has overseen Elevance’s acquisition of CareBridge, an at-home health care company, as part of a broader shift toward chronic condition management and mental health services. The company’s business has continued to grow. In 2025, Elevance reported $177 billion in revenue, nearly $15 billion more than the next-largest U.S. health care company, Centene.

That scale helps explain why Elevance’s leadership decisions draw attention beyond the health insurance industry. As one of the largest publicly traded health companies, its move toward more integrated care services reflects a wider push across health care to manage costs and patient needs beyond traditional coverage.

The collegiate sports-to-leadership pipeline

The connection between sports and leadership is more than anecdotal.

A 2025 report from the Women Business Collaborative found that 12.7% of women who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies played collegiate sports. Two-thirds of that group had backgrounds in health care and consumer goods.

A 2023 Deloitte survey found that 69% of women earning more than $100,000 a year and holding leadership roles had played competitive sports.

Boudreaux’s influence now extends beyond Elevance. Her rise also reflects a broader shift in the corporate landscape: more women are reaching the top ranks of business, but they remain a small minority. Just 38 of this year’s Global 500 companies are led by women, while a record 55 women lead Fortune 500 companies.

“I feel really strongly that you have to be yourself no matter what your challenges are,” Boudreaux previously told Fortune. “It’s really important never to lose sight of what got you to the position.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com