Health system leader Dan McCormack to deliver UNE's 2026 Commencement address

The University of New England has announced that Daniel P. McCormack, chief executive officer of Spectrum Healthcare Partners and a longtime member of the UNE Board of Trustees, will deliver the 2026 Commencement address at its 191st Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 16.

McCormack has spent his career at the intersection of the business and practice of health care. Raised in Aroostook County, Maine, McCormack’s work has been shaped by a deep understanding of the health care challenges facing underserved communities in Maine’s vast, rural north. He began his career as a U.S. Air Force Medical Service Corps officer, serving at the David Grant USAF Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base in California and the Bolling Air Force Base Medical Group in Washington, D.C., before spending more than two decades leading large physician medical groups, building strong organizational cultures, and advancing health care access across the region.

Over the course of his career, McCormack has developed expertise in value-based health plan contracting, strategic planning, and long-range financial management. He has managed large-scale IT systems implementations, built health informatics teams, and overseen major construction projects, the operational backbone of health care delivery that rarely makes headlines but shapes patient access in lasting ways.

Since 2013, McCormack has been a UNE Trustee, serving as Treasurer from 2015 to 2019 and as Chairman of the Board from 2019 to 2023, during which he helped develop UNE’s financial strategic plan and guided the University through its initial bond rating. During his tenure, he played an influential role as UNE expanded its interprofessional health education offerings. He also helped guide the historic relocation of the University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine from Biddeford to Portland, a move that brought together all UNE’s diverse health professions programs onto a single, integrated campus — the Portland Campus for the Health Sciences — a model that, until now, was unprecedented in all of New England.

McCormack served on the search committee that brought UNE President James Herbert to UNE and, as Chairman, steered the Board through the COVID-19 pandemic. He has been a steady and thoughtful partner to the University for more than a decade, said Herbert, calling McCormack exactly the kind of leader UNE aims to produce as Maine’s leading educator of health care professionals.

“Dan knows firsthand what it means to grow up in a part of Maine where access to quality health care isn’t a given, and he has built his career around changing that reality,” said Herbert. “He understands both the human stakes of this work and the institutional discipline it takes to sustain it. That is the kind of leadership our students will be called to practice.”

As CEO of Spectrum Healthcare Partners, McCormack leads New England’s largest independent physician-owned health care organization, a role he assumed in February 2026. Prior to joining Spectrum, McCormack served as chief operating officer at Martin’s Point Health Care and spent 14 years as CEO of InterMed. Earlier in his career, he led provider network management for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maine.

McCormack received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard College and his MBA from the University of Southern Maine. He currently serves on the board of directors of Maine Community Bank.

UNE’s 191st Commencement will take place at 10 a.m. at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland. For more information, visit the UNE Commencement website.