Michael Hansen is the Chief Executive Officer of Elsevier Health Sciences, a $1.6 billion division of Elsevier, the world’s largest provider of medical content and solutions. In this position Michael leads the division in its mission to advance medicine through delivering superior education, reference information and decision support tools to doctors, nurses, health care practitioners and students. Elsevier Health Sciences conducts business in more than 20 languages across the globe and is part of Reed Elsevier, the world-leading business-to-business information provider.

A thought leader in the media, academic and health care sectors, Michael is an innovative executive with experience in evolving business models. Prior to joining Elsevier, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of Harcourt Assessment, the then-global education brand of Reed Elsevier. At Harcourt, Michael led a turnaround of the business, combining new investments and intelligent cost cutting while modernizing operations. He transformed the nature of the company’s relationship with its customers, converting them from adversarial suppliers to aligned partners. Employee morale improved through open, candid communications and he provided ample opportunities for employee engagement at all levels of the organization.

Before joining Reed Elsevier, Hansen was Executive Vice President at Bertelsmann AG, a $20 billion global media company. While at Bertelsmann, Michael led a company-wide restructuring effort focused on improving under-performing business units.The Bertelsmann Excellence Initiative (BEX) was a program that balanced the urgent need to improve performance in all aspects of the business at a 170- year-old global company that prized its decentralized culture. BEX led to greater management and organizational alignment as well as a nearly doubling operating EBITA.

Michael started his career at The Boston Consulting Group in New York, where he became a Partner and Chairman of the global Media Convergence practice and was a senior member of the firm’s healthcare practice. Michael holds a law degree from the University of Bonn, Germany and an MBA from Columbia University in New York.

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