GoHealth's WARN Names the CEO: 103 Chicago Names on a Nov 5 Clock

GoHealth's Sept. 3 WARN notice to the Illinois DCEO does something WARN notices almost never do: it puts the sitting CEO and CFO on the same layoff list as the customer support reps. 103 of 111 Chicago HQ employees are out between Nov. 5 and Dec. 31, 2026, following a June 7 Chapter 11 prepack. If you staff Medicare Advantage, insurtech, or health-adjacent product roles in Chicago, this is the cleanest sourcing event of the AEP cycle.

Why an executive-inclusive WARN is a different animal

An executive-inclusive WARN is a rare, high-signal sourcing event because the "why did you leave?" question answers itself: the estate is winding down, not firing individuals. When Vijay Kotte (CEO) and Jason Schulz (CFO) appear on the same 103-name list as line staff, there is no discretion in the cut and no stigma attached to any single name.

That matters because the cold-outreach friction on a sitting CEO is normally enormous. You do not know if they were pushed, if they are under NDA, if the board is knifing them in the press next week. On a full-shutdown WARN, all of that is off the table. The Sept. 3 filing states plainly that GoHealth is "fully shutting down the majority of its current operations," and lists roles ranging from C-suite down to customer support. Every name is available for the same reason: there is no company left to work at.

The mechanism to remember: Kotte and Schulz stay on as directors of Reorganized GoHealth per the July 21 confirmation order, alongside Scott Avila, Neal Goldman, and Conor Colpoys. They are transitioning, not disgraced. That is the buy signal.

The 103 names, in numbers

Here is the shape of the event, pulled from the WARN filing, the Chapter 11 docket, and Refolk's index of professional profiles.

92.8%

The 63-day gap between the Sept. 3 notice and the Nov. 5 layoff date is not a coincidence. It is the WARN Act's 60-day floor with three days of legal padding. That is the arbitrage: state DCEO and DOL feeds publish these names before the affected employees have updated LinkedIn. If you are refreshing your saved LinkedIn searches on Nov. 6, you are already late.

The AEP calendar inverts the usual layoff dynamic

Medicare Advantage's Annual Enrollment Period runs Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, and GoHealth's Nov. 5 layoff drops 103 people into the market at the exact peak of competitor staffing. Every other layoff you have sourced this year hit a market with slack; this one hits a market with none.

eHealth, SelectQuote, HealthMarkets, and the carrier direct channels (UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Aetna, Elevance) are maximally staffed for AEP and paying peak rates for licensed agents and carrier-relations ops. Rivalry between eHealth and SelectQuote alone drives cost per acquisition up every October. Layoffs that would normally trickle into a soft market instead land during the one eight-week stretch of the year when Medicare talent is scarce, not surplus.

Practically, that means the standard "wait for them to post the open-to-work banner" playbook loses you the good ones. The licensed agents on this list will have three offers by Thanksgiving. The product managers and data engineers will take longer. The CEO and CFO will take a quarter. Sequence your outreach accordingly.

What the 21 alumni in Refolk's index tell you about landing spots

The prior migration pattern is the best predictor of where this cohort goes next. In Refolk's index, 21 current profiles carry "GoHealth Medicare" as a prior employer tag, distributed as Phoenix (4), Charlotte (2), Greater Chicago (2), and Orem, UT (2), with the balance scattered.

That distribution is a hiring map:

• Phoenix is the historical Medicare call-center corridor. GoHealth alumni cluster there because Humana and UnitedHealthcare operate large agent floors in the metro.
• Charlotte picks up carrier-relations and sales-ops talent moving to Elevance.
• Chicago retention is smaller than you would expect for an HQ, which is exactly why Nov. 5 matters: most Chicago-based Medicare talent has already left GoHealth, so this cohort is disproportionately the harder-to-replace corporate and product roles.
• Orem, UT is the SelectQuote and HealthPlanOne footprint.

The sampled pool of 45+ currently active Medicare Advantage licensed agents in the same slice sits at Humana, SelectQuote, HealthPlanOne, and USA Benefits Group. Those are your buyer set and your poach set at the same time. If you place three GoHealth agents at Humana in November, you can turn around and pitch two Humana agents to a startup carrier in January. The list works both directions.

Hiring right now against the same talent pool

The Chicago insurtech market is thin at the top and deep at the agent level, and the roles competing for this WARN cohort are already on the board. Founders staffing a Medicare-adjacent product or ops team should look at what is open before writing job descriptions from scratch.

The five roles on the list that anchor the poach

Five roles on the WARN carry disproportionate poach value, and they cluster at the top and in the specialized middle. Sourcing this cohort by title, not by tenure, gets you the fastest signal.

1. Vijay Kotte, CEO. Appointed June 6, 2022. Now on the WARN and simultaneously named to the Reorganized GoHealth board. The reference case for "healthtech CEO available." Fit set: PE-backed insurtech, Medicare-focused digital health, carrier innovation groups.
2. Jason Schulz, CFO. Joined with Kotte in June 2022. CFO of a public company that ran a Chapter 11 prepack is a specific credential; PE portfolio CFO roles will move on him fast.
3. Sales-ops and carrier-relations leads. These are the roles Humana, Elevance, and UnitedHealthcare hire directly. They also carry the highest DOJ-witness risk (see below).
4. Product managers and data engineers. Alignment Healthcare is an obvious destination: it ships weekly model updates and A/B tests, which is the environment GoHealth product staff will slot into cleanly.
5. Licensed Medicare Advantage agents. The volume role. eHealth, SelectQuote, HealthPlanOne, and USA Benefits Group are staffing peak for AEP right now.

The CEO being on the WARN is not the red flag. It is the reason the whole list is reachable.

The DOJ overhang you have to price in

There is one thing on this list you do not ignore: the DOJ kickback suit. A judge ruled that GoHealth, SelectQuote, and eHealth will continue to face litigation building on a 2021 whistleblower complaint, and a separate DOJ complaint alleges Anthem paid GoHealth "more than $230 million in kickbacks" from 2017 to at least 2021.

That has three practical effects on how you source this cohort:

• Sales-ops and carrier-relations staff from the 2017 to 2021 window may be witnesses or subjects. Flag those résumés to legal before you extend. Not disqualifying, but not clearable in 24 hours either.
• Insurer clients (Humana, Aetna, Elevance, UnitedHealthcare) will have specific carve-outs. Ask before you submit; some carriers have blanket rules on ex-broker sales-ops hires during active DOJ litigation.
• Product, data, engineering, and finance roles are largely clean. The DOJ complaint centers on broker-carrier commercial arrangements, not on the tech stack.

If you cannot tell from a résumé alone whether someone sat in a witness-adjacent role, the fastest disambiguator is prior team and reporting line. This is exactly the gap Refolk closes: you describe the role you want to avoid ("sales-ops or carrier-relations reporting into commercial leadership between 2017 and 2021") in plain English and get a filtered shortlist back, so legal review starts with the right subset.

The two-sided opportunity: place them out, place them back

Post-restructuring, New GoHealth retains only 8 HQ employees and will need to rebuild for the 2027 AEP, which means the same recruiters placing this cohort in Q4 will be filling New GoHealth reqs in Q1. Lender-owned reorganizations do not stay at 8 employees; they scale back to operating size once the credit facility stabilizes.

Two sequencing rules for this specific event:

• Q4 2026: place out. Focus on Humana, eHealth, SelectQuote, HealthMarkets, and Alignment Healthcare. AEP is running, budgets are open, and licensed agents can start commissioning on Day 1.
• Q1 2027: place back. New GoHealth's lender-owners (advised by Kirkland & Ellis and Alvarez & Marsal through the restructuring) will need a leaner corporate team by February. Kotte and Schulz on the board are your inbound path.

The two-sided opportunity is why the 21 alumni already in the index matter as much as the 103 new names. Pull the WARN cohort and the historical alumni pool in one query, dedupe against current employer, and you have a single ranked list of every reachable Medicare-Advantage-Chicago candidate across two vintages, on a fixed calendar.

FAQ

Where is GoHealth's WARN notice publicly available?

The Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity publishes WARN notices on a rolling basis; the GoHealth Sept. 3 filing was reported by Becker's Hospital Review on Sept. 15, 2026 and cross-referenced against the Chapter 11 docket (Delaware 26-10914). The DCEO feed is the primary source; third-party trackers like warntracker.com aggregate historical filings, which is how the prior August 2022 GoHealth WARN for 94 employees is still discoverable.

Which competitors are the most likely acquirers of GoHealth talent?

For licensed Medicare Advantage agents: Humana, SelectQuote, HealthPlanOne, and USA Benefits Group show up as top current employers of Medicare-tagged talent in Refolk's index. For carrier-side sales-ops and carrier-relations: UnitedHealthcare, Aetna (CVS Health), and Elevance. For product managers and data engineers: Alignment Healthcare is the clearest fit. eHealth is the natural destination for anyone on the broker side, though the shared DOJ overhang complicates cross-hires between GoHealth, eHealth, and SelectQuote.

Is the GoHealth CEO actually available to hire?

Yes and no. Vijay Kotte is on the WARN list ending Dec. 31, 2026, so his operating role at old GoHealth ends. He was simultaneously appointed to the board of Reorganized GoHealth on July 21, 2026, so he is likely to have some ongoing time commitment there. For a full-time operating CEO or president role at another insurtech or Medicare-focused digital health company, he is a live, reachable candidate on this timeline. For a competing broker role, the DOJ situation is worth a direct conversation.

How do I actually pull this list without waiting for LinkedIn to catch up?

Combine three inputs: the state WARN filing (names and titles), the SEC 8-K from July 21 (board appointments and confirmed officers), and a professional-profile index that lets you match names to current employer, city, and licensing state. The 60-day WARN window is the ceiling on how long that arbitrage lasts, so the sourcing has to happen before Nov. 5, not after.