In Conversation: Sarah Chavarria
CEO, Delta Dental - on priorities from Delta Dental's first female CEO
In a sector where hype routinely outruns delivery, it is worth listening closely to Sarah Chavarria, CEO, Delta Dental. In a wide-ranging conversation conducted by HealthLeaders, Sarah laid out a view of the industry that is both candid and immediately useful to the executives, clinicians, and builders who read HealthTech Cube.
The conversation
Priorities from Delta Dental's first female CEO - provider partnerships, employee engagement, and the overlooked links between oral health and whole-body health.
“The ability to listen, to discern, and then to lay out a vision.”
- Sarah Chavarria, in conversation with HealthLeaders
Conversation highlights
Priorities from Delta Dental's first female CEO
And the overlooked links between oral health and whole-body health
The bigger picture
The capital context matters here. US digital health raised $7.4 billion in H1 2026 with 45% of it concentrated in $100M+ megadeals, and 115 acquisitions made it the busiest M&A run since 2021 (our analysis). In a market this concentrated, the strategies described in this conversation - defensible data, measurable outcomes, disciplined growth - are precisely what separates the funded from the folded.
What makes the discussion valuable is its refusal to stay abstract: every point lands on a real workflow, budget, or patient. At Delta Dental, that thinking translates into daily decisions about where technology genuinely earns its place in care delivery, and where discipline matters more than novelty.
The HTC take
The through-line matches what our reporting keeps finding across the industry: adoption succeeds where governance, workflow, and evidence move together.