Lois Quam is no stranger to harsh environments. Quam's final year at UnitedHealth Group, where she oversaw the health insurer's Medicare and Medicaid businesses, was marred by a stock-options scandal from which the Minnetonka-based company is still struggling to recover.
But frolicking with polar bears in the tundra? That's where Quam found herself recently: in Manitoba seeing how climate change is threatening the bears' health and habitat.
Today she flies to Norway where she will join famed Minnesota explorer Will Steger to study the country's oil industry and its carbon offset program. China is next.
Quam, 46, talked recently about her new job spearheading environmental and health care investments at Piper Jaffray while evading questions on her political ambitions.
Q You left UnitedHealth in August during a time of tumult. How much was push and how much pull?
A I began at United 18 years ago. I started as director of research and they put me in the office next to the CEO because it was open. It was very casual. What I really enjoyed was finding ways to take good ideas and services and bring them to scale. I especially liked the opportunity to work with AARP and the government. Part of my family lives way above the Arctic circle in Tromsø, Norway. I've always been interested in northern places. Last winter, I read a story in the Star Tribune about Will Steger [and his campaign to stop climate change] and called him. He came over and sat down with me and my sons and talked. I went from thinking about helping out to thinking I could play a role.
Q How did that happen?
A [Steger] seemed so hopeful. He said he believed that financial markets and governments would begin to take action. As I read more, I saw that what has to happen is [to take] a lot of small, good ideas -- biofuels to wind energy to sequestering carbon -- and to evaluate them and take them to scale. That's what I do. I thought: Maybe I have an obligation to do this.
