West Health COO Shelley Lyford to Succeed Nick Valeriani as CEO

West Health Institute in San Diego

West Health CEO Nick Valeriani plans to retire in September, after three years overseeing the San Diego-based nonprofit medical research organization founded by the Nebraska telemarketing billionaire couple Gary and Mary West.

Valeriani, who was previously a Johnson & Johnson vice president, will remain on the Gary and Mary West Health Institute’s board of directors, and will join the Gary and Mary West Health Policy Center’s board. Shelley Lyford, COO of the West Health Institute, will take over as CEO of West Health, according to a statement today. Lyford also heads the Gary and Mary West Foundation, which is focused on lowering healthcare costs, supporting senior wellness, and other initiatives.

Before helping establish the Gary and Mary West Foundation in 2007, Lyford was a director at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Joan Kroc Institute at the University of San Diego. She has been with West Health since its formation as the West Wireless Health Institute in 2009. She also sits on the executive committee of Grantmakers in Aging and is chairperson of the newly formed Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center.

Shelley Lyford
Shelley Lyford

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.