UnitedHealth taps Lockheed Martin exec for HR post

Patricia Lewis, the top human resources officer at defense contractor Lockheed Martin, has been named executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group.

Lewis is moving to UnitedHealth Group after more than eight years at Lockheed Martin and more than a decade at IBM, according to her LinkedIn page.

Lewis replaces Ellen Wilson, who will retire in the coming months, according to a company spokesman.

Wilson has held the top HR job at UnitedHealth Group since 2013.

Like Wilson, Lewis will serve among the company's top executives in UnitedHealth Group's office of the chief executive.

UnitedHealth Group is Minnesota's largest company by revenue. It employs about 18,000 people in the state and has a global workforce of more than 320,000 people.

In a Q&A article with a trade publication this year, Lewis offered thoughts on how to deliver tough messages by saying: "Providing straightforward and transparent responses with the rationale for decisions is key."

The nation's top counterintelligence officer said at a Minneapolis Cyber Security conference in Minneapolis last week that he's most concerned about external cyber threats against critical U.S. infrastructure.

William R. Evanina is a veteran CIA and FBI operative and director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), and chief security adviser to his third Director of National Intelligence since 2014.

Evanina, in a brief interview during the annual Cyber Security Summit for business and government attendees, listed Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the leading threats in the business of computer weaponization against U.S. targets.

"I'm concerned about [our] ability to protect critical infrastructure … utilities, transportation, the financial system and telecommunications from state-sponsored intelligence services and various nonstate actors," he said. "The lights are blinking red.

"We are in dire need to ensure the most effective public-private partnerships to understand the threat surface and position ourselves. Most of the threat surface the government doesn't own."

Under Evanina, NCSC produces the National Counterintelligence Strategy of the United States of America, which has attempted to raise the "foreign intelligence threat awareness," and close "critical CI and security gaps in the executive branch and agencies."

Before being named director of the NCSC, Evanina was chief of the CIA's counterespionage group, where he led intelligence community agencies in identifying, preventing and neutralizing espionage-related activities by foreign intelligence services.

Neal St. Anthony

Minneapolis may soon get a new skyway to extend its growing network of above-the-ground, glass tunnels.

A skyway is proposed between Ameriprise's Client Service Center near the intersection of 3rd Avenue S. and S. 9th Street and the Clearway Energy Parking Ramp across S. 9th Street, effectively connecting the Client Service Center building to the rest of the skyway system.

The plans were already approved by the downtown skyway advisory committee, though they would still need city approval.

"We are proposing to connect the Ameriprise Client Service Center to the skyway system," Paul Johnson, a spokesman for Ameriprise Financial, said in a statement.

"The addition of a skyway connection would make it easier and more convenient for our employees and visitors to move between our two main downtown locations and access the skyway system."

There are about 2,400 employees in the Ameriprise center. Ameriprise headquarters is two blocks away at the Ameriprise Financial Center.

This segment of skyway may look a little different from what pedestrians usually see around the city.