Her Story
About Eleanor
Eleanor Huntington is a consultant based in Santa Monica, California, who specializes in Medi-Cal revenue generation and operations for community-based organizations and federally qualified health centers. She has been engaged in consulting full-time since early 2025 and part-time since 2020. Eleanor earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame, where she pursued research and international work focused on refugee and displacement issues in Uganda, Rwanda, and Ghana. She later completed a fully employed MBA at UCLA Anderson while transitioning into healthcare operations. Her professional experience includes volunteering and later joining the staff at Venice Family Clinic, where she served as the main project manager for a multi-year, over $9 million renovation project at one of the clinic's oldest sites. Prior to her consulting career, Eleanor taught English and volunteered with refugees in Thailand, worked manual labor in Australia's Outback and taught early childhood education in Sydney, taught middle school in Boston, and briefly worked in the entertainment industry after film school. She attributes her success to her parents, particularly her mother, who emphasized hard work and dedication from an early age. Eleanor values focusing on people and common humanity in all interactions and advises learning from every colleague and opportunity.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Eleanor
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would attribute my success in many ways to my parents, and particularly my mother, who was always really dedicated and taught my siblings at a very early age the importance of working hard and treating everything kind of seriously.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I received was to know that you're going to work with a ton of people that you might not agree with. Ideally, you're not working with a ton of people you don't respect, but no matter what, you can learn something from anyone you work with, even if it's something about how you don't want to run a meeting, or you don't want to send an email. Everything is an opportunity to learn.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would tell them to really be open to and take advantage of meeting and talking to a lot of different people. And really using your work life as an opportunity to practice being present and in conversation with folks.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Some of the biggest challenges in healthcare consulting is the uncertain rural and state landscape and the changes that are... we do a lot of preparation, we build a lot of tools. Could be made irrelevant based on changes at a broader system level. Opportunities are really finding different revenue opportunities and helping clients think through the full cost of their services, understand return on investment and how to balance that with the necessary focus on patient work.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The most important ones to me are focus on people and the common humanity, making sure that we don't lose sight of the people that we are working with and working for, so really centering that at the basis of any interaction.
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