Roberta Lipson is the founder of United Family Healthcare (UFH) and the V. Chair of New Frontier Health, Chair Emeritus of Amcham-China and Director of the U.S.-China Business Council. She has over 40 years of experience as a pioneer in the healthcare industry in China. She originally co-founded United Family Healthcare’s predecessor company Chindex in 1981, expanding the business from China’s top medical equipment distribution company into China’s first and largest foreign-invested healthcare system. After over two decades, UFH’s healthcare platform inludes 11 hospitals and almost 20 clinics in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Qingdao, and Shenzhen, as well as an internet hospital serving patients nationally. The company has become the provider of choice for those seeking premium, personalized healthcare. United Family Healthcare was rated in 2016 as “The Most Trusted Healthcare Brand of China” by the Chinese Business Journal, and has appeared at the top of private hospital listings every year since .
As founder and CEO Ms. Lipson took her company public on NASDQ in 1994, and then again merged with a NYSE:NFH in 2019, and in 2021 was again part of the buying consortium to re-privatize the company .
Ms. Lipson is an active leader in the business community in Beijing, currently serving for the eleventh year as a director and audit committee chair of the U.S. China Business Council, and is Chair Emeritus of the Board of Governors of AmCham-China, having served previously for four consecutive years, with two as V. Chair and concluding as interium Chair, before her one year mandatory hiatus. She has previously been Co-Chair of the AmCham Healthcare Forum and founding Chair of the Healthcare China Program (HCP) . She also chairs the Board of the United Foundation for China’s Health (UFCH), and is a co- founder of Beijing’s Jewish Community – Kehillat Beijing.
Because of her outstanding contribution in China, Roberta Lipson received “The Great Wall Friendship Award”, the highest honor that Beijing government gives to foreign experts in Beijing. In 2014 Roberta was honored by AmCham as the inaugural recipient of the China Pioneer Award. She was named as a “Top 10 Business Leader of China” by Sina.com in 2015, given the Brandeis University Asper Award for Entrepeneurship and earlier she led the company to win the U.S. State Department ACE Award for Corporate Excellence. This year she has been named as the Global Woman Asia Health Innovation Groundbreaker honoree.
She has lived and worked in Beijing for over 40 years, and in 2017 Ms. Lipson received Foreign Permanent Resident Card. Ms. Lipson holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MBA from Columbia University.