By: Sean Duffy, CEO, Omada Health
Founding a company teaches you to hold on to the mission, to the standards, and sometimes simply to the belief that what you are building deserves to exist in the world.
Building an enduring company requires something more: knowing when and how to evolve your own role so the company can become larger than any one person, including its founder.
Today, I am proud to share that Wei-Li Shao will become CEO of Omada Health on January 1, 2027. After 15 years of leading Omada as CEO, I will become Founder and Executive Chair.
This is the right decision at the right time for Omada, and one the Board and I have approached with great care. Over these 15 years, I have tried to ask myself one question above all others: What does Omada need from me now?
Omada has been the defining work of my adult life. Fifteen years ago, the company began with a belief: people living with chronic conditions deserve care that does not disappear when they walk out of a doctor’s office. Since then, thousands of talented Omadans have helped turn that belief into a public company that has served over two million members.
At different moments, building Omada called on me to be a product designer, fundraiser, recruiter, storyteller, operator, and public-company CEO. Each role pointed toward the same goal: to build a company that is still important 50 years from now. This transition is the next step toward that goal. As Founder and Executive Chair, I will focus on partnerships, innovation, and long-term opportunities that create enduring value for our members, customers, and shareholders.
Wei-Li joined Omada seven years ago after 18 years at Eli Lilly. In that time, he has steadily taken on broader responsibility and earned the trust of our employees, customers, partners, Board, and industry peers. Every time his responsibilities expanded, Omada became stronger. That is one of the clearest signs a leader is ready for more.
Over that period, Wei-Li has broadened his scope from commercial to R&D, grown to lead Omada’s long-range planning, and helped Omada achieve the scale, growth, and operational leverage we’re blessed with today. This has prepared him to not only become CEO, but also to lead Omada in its next stage.
I’ve always considered Wei-Li my co-founder for Omada’s next chapter.
His experience is particularly relevant to where healthcare is going. When Wei-Li joined Omada, the combination of pharmaceutical and digital health leadership was unusual. Today, as GLP-1s reshape cardiometabolic care and medicine increasingly converges with technology, data, and behavior change, that combination is essential.
Wei-Li understands that a prescription alone cannot coordinate care, sustain behavior change, or support someone through the countless hours between clinical visits. He is grounded in the belief that as medicines become more effective, the surrounding system of care becomes more important, not less.
That conviction is central to Omada’s future.
Wei-Li brings the analytical rigor, commercial judgment, high standards, principled leadership, and ambition that our next chapter demands. He knows Omada inside and out. He is ready to be CEO, and he will have my full support.
Omada is making this transition from a position of strength. We have built an enduring business on an exceptional foundation. We have relationships with dozens of health plans and thousands of customers. We have partnered with the nation’s three largest PBMs, and we have produced more than 30 peer-reviewed studies. Just as importantly, we have built a leadership team capable of carrying this work forward for years to come.