Trevor Fetter is a Senior Lecturer in the General Management unit. An experienced corporate executive, director, and entrepreneur, he teaches Leadership and Corporate Accountability, a required course in the first-year MBA program. Trevor is a founding member of the school’s Healthcare Initiative Advisory Board and former member of the Board of Dean’s Advisors. He received an MBA degree from HBS in 1986.
After graduating from HBS Trevor joined the investment banking division of Merrill Lynch in Los Angeles, where he worked with clients in the healthcare, entertainment, and oil services sectors. In 1988 he joined client MGM/UA Communications, a producer and distributor of motion pictures and television programs under the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists brands, as senior vice president, becoming executive vice president in 1990 and Chief Financial Officer in 1993.
In 1995 he left the entertainment industry for healthcare, joining another former client Tenet Healthcare Corporation as SVP. In 1996 Trevor became Tenet’s Chief Financial Officer and served in that role through the end of 1999. Seeking to create a new venture from within Tenet, in late 1999 Trevor and colleagues from Tenet launched Broadlane, a company designed to improve the performance of healthcare providers in the supply chain using emerging e-commerce technology.
At the beginning of 2000, Trevor left Tenet to become Broadlane’s Chairman and CEO. The company grew rapidly during the next several years and became a leader in its field.
In late 2002, Trevor was asked to return to Tenet as President. The company was faced with several severe challenges including extensive litigation and investigations. He was named Chief Executive Officer and a director in 2003. Under his leadership, the company grew to $20 billion in revenues (Fortune 500 #134) and increased EBITDA each year during his tenure, expanding margins all but one year in which the company made a significant acquisition. The company employed 130,000 people, making it one of the top sixty employers in the U.S., and had operations in more than 40 states and the United Kingdom. As CEO, Trevor launched initiatives to re-shape the company’s hospital portfolio and to create growth engines in new business lines of outpatient services and business-to-business services in the revenue cycle and value-based care. Tenet’s hospitals that held a #1 or #2 market position went from 60% of the portfolio to more than 75%. The newly-formed businesses each became multi-billion dollar businesses and one of them, Conifer Health Solutions, is the subject of an HBS case study on innovation within large enterprises. Trevor was known for establishing a culture of growth and patient centricity while at Tenet. He launched several initiatives dedicated to providing exemplary healthcare to all, including a “Commitment to Quality,” which transformed the company into a clinical quality leader, and the “Compact with Uninsured Patients,” which was widely adopted industry-wide and praised by patients’ rights advocates. In 2017, under pressure from an activist shareholder to break-up the company, Trevor left his position as Chairman and CEO of Tenet.
Trevor is an experienced public company director. In addition to serving on the board of Tenet from 2003-2017, including as its chairman, he has served on the board of The Hartford Financial Services Group, a diversified financial services company principally in the insurance business, since 2007. At The Hartford, he serves as Lead Independent Director and has served on all of the board committees and has chaired the Nominating and Corporate Governance and Compensation committees. He serves on the board of two private companies, Trimedx Inc. and the Santa Catalina Island Company. Trimedx is a company formed by Ascension, the nation’s largest non-profit health system and the world’s largest Catholic health system, and Towerbrook Capital Partners, a leading private equity firm, where Trevor serves on the firm’s Senior Advisory Board. The Santa Catalina Island Company is the historic owner of Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California. Trevor also serves on the board of the Catalina Island Conservancy, a land trust dedicated to preserving the ecology of the island. He also serves on the Board of Fellows of Stanford Medicine, the Smithsonian National Board, and the Founders Council of the United States of Care.
Trevor received the Ellerin Award for Distinguished HBS Alumni in Healthcare and appeared on Modern Healthcare’s list of “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” every year from the list’s inception in 2001 until 2017. He has served on numerous industry, non-profit, and community boards, including the Federation of American Hospitals, the Dallas Citizens Council, Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, Dallas Zoological Society, Santa Barbara Zoological Foundation, and Neighborhood Youth Association.
A native of Southern California, Trevor received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University in 1982. For over thirty-five years he has been married to his Stanford classmate, Melissa, a community volunteer and board leader. Together they were honored with the 2017 Henry Cohn Humanitarian Award, presented by the Anti-Defamation League.
