Clare Hawthorne is the Head of Engineering and Product Operations at Oscar Health and a speaker at several Tech and Operations conferences.
Clare joined Oscar in March of 2021 to establish the Product Operations team, unlocking Oscar’s ability to ship more product, better and faster. In support of this mission, her Product Ops team takes on several responsibilities at Oscar: day-to-day roadmap execution within engineering pods, continuous improvement of recurring processes that have not been fully operationalized and implementation of product management best practices and tools. Since then, she’s expanded her scope to include Engineering Operations and is now responsible for Tech Governance (IT General Controls design & adherence), Tech’s Program Management Office and oversight of Oscar’s $200M+ Tech Budget.
Prior to Oscar, Clare served as Vice President at StellarEmploy, an intelligent ATS specifically designed for high-volume recruitment of hourly workers. Clare was the first executive hire (employee #8) and pivoted into several departments due to the company’s evolving needs during the COVID pandemic. StellarEmploy was backed by GoldenSeeds, won the ASU GSV Venture Award (2017) and was selected for ERA (2018). StellarEmploy was ultimately was acquired by Learning Collider in 2021.
Before StellarEmploy, Clare was Product Director at Namely, a cloud-based HR Information System with ~200k users across 1,400 SMB clients (as of January 2020). In her role, Clare applied her subject matter expertise as an HR practitioner to develop Human Capital Management software features and enhancements. Clare also used her industry expertise and visibility into the product roadmap to de-escalate challenging client relationships. In addition to managing the HRIS roadmap, Clare built a Product Operations team that was responsible for product release coordination and communication across all 14 development teams. The Product Ops team also was responsible for internal and external training and documentation for new product features.
Earlier in her career, Clare had focused on HR and People Strategy roles — she spent 2 years at Bloomberg L.P., leading the Americas team of Global People Services, which supported all employee life-cycle transactions for ~10,000 employees. Prior to Bloomberg, Clare spent 4 years at Citi in a variety of HR roles. A highlight of her that experience was managing Citi Women, a company-wide effort designed to attract, develop, advance and retain female talent. Clare began her career at Ernst & Young as a Senior Auditor in their Real Estate group and continues to maintain her CPA in Massachusetts.
Clare is also an Advisor to Mathison.io, a talent marketplace that connects diverse talent to their dream jobs. Clare loves working with their CEO and team as they continue to further their mission during their seed-stage.
Clare holds a Bachelors of Science in Engineering from Duke University, a Masters of Accounting from the University of Southern California and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. Clare serves as an alumni volunteer for both The Winsor School and Harvard Business School.
Clare serves on the Junior Board of Harlem Academy, an independent day school that prepares bright, motivated students from underserved communities for success at top secondary schools and lifelong learning. She enjoys volunteering with the students and working with the development office to increase engagement with the school. Clare lives in New York with her husband and son. Most weekends she can be found riding her horse in New Jersey.
Clare Baldwin Hawthorne 