Karen Breaux

KAREN KAREN BREAUX BREAUX

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR, POSTLETHWAITE & NETTERVILLE

BIO

Hometown: Baton Rouge Age: 61 Family: Daughter Whitney Breaux, son Don Breaux II, and grandchildren Jason DeCuir Jr. and Don Breaux III Years with company: 11 years MILESTONES

1982: Earns a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 1996: Becomes a member of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Greater Baton Rouge Society for Human Resource Management (GBR SHRM) 2011-2014: Serves on the GBR SHRM board of directors. 2015-2016: Serves as president of the Greater Baton Rouge Society for Human Resource Management. 2018-2020: Appointed as a council member for the Louisiana Society for Human Resource Management. 2018: Serves as a board director for the Cristo Rey Baton Rouge Franciscan High School. 2021: Becomes state director-elect for the Louisiana Society for Human Resource Management.

Q&A

Needed workplace changes for women

It is critical we remember that the glass ceiling does not exist in the abstract. For Baton Rouge in particular, I want to see more allies for women in the workplace. Women need to receive recognition for their achievements—as wonderful as it is that women are rising to leadership positions, those achievements should be celebrated, not kept under wraps. Only when progress is made transparent to the public can other young women look in and think, “Hey, that could be me!”

Best advice

Ships don’t sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them. Don’t let what’s happening around you get inside you and weigh you down.

Hardest lesson learned

Diversity in thought is key. By consistently bringing in diverse perspectives to learn from, I have been able to accomplish many of the things I have sought to achieve and more. All of us want to write our own story, but what we sometimes forget is that storytelling is a collaborative process, and no story can be complete without the voices of others.

“Question the norm, don’t be afraid to surpass the status quo! Above all, invest in yourself, because you are strong, you are capable, you are powerful. You can and you will rise.”

For Karen Breaux, life is a series of moments, which, if you play them right, can teach you everything you need to know to move forward, even if the lesson isn’t immediately obvious. As the human resources director at Postlethwaite & Netterville, where she has worked for the past 11 years, Breaux is often in a unique position to help staffers navigate those moments.

“When I mentor or coach people, sometimes I refer to (these) different points because there’s something typically of value that has happened that helps explain something, gives some motivation, some inspiration that helps them take another step,” she says, “because that’s how I took my steps.”

One of Breaux’s first such steps was at the very beginning of her career when, after graduating from what was then the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), she was offered an administrative human resources role in Baton Rouge.

“I came in and I worked really hard, and the people I worked with and worked for saw that, and I very quickly began my journey in HR,” Breaux says. That work ethic was something instilled in her early by her grandmother Fannie Jack, who Breaux calls a “praying woman of God.”

“She instilled Christian values in all of us at a young age,” Breaux says.

Another moment came some years later when she was laid off.

“I’m typically the catalyst that guides those things, but it happened to me,” she says. “I couldn’t have said ‘I understand what you’re going through,’ to someone until it truly happened to me.”

The impact of that moment was at once sobering and enlightening, and it has informed Breaux’s perspective ever since when she’s in the difficult position of informing an employee that their position has been eliminated.

Most recently, the moment that stands out for Breaux is one that happened not to her but to someone she dearly loves: Her daughter, Whitney, a global marketing executive for Eli Lilly and Co., was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in February 2020. The timing of the diagnosis—just before the world shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic—meant Whitney was left to handle chemotherapy and radiation appointments on her own while hospitals prevented extra visitors.

Today, Whitney is doing well, but the experience, Breaux says, gave everyone in the family a new perspective, and it’s something that has forever changed the way she thinks about work.

“You do what you need to do to get the job done—being a good steward for your employer, right? And sometimes those are the important things, and they are,” Breaux says. “But there are also other important things, like taking care of self, because when you take care of self, you can be even better at what you do every day.”

All of these moments have impacted Breaux in both obvious and sometimes not-so-obvious ways, and, ultimately, have driven her success at work and at home.

“Life is short. When you lay down at night, there are no guarantees you’ll get up the next morning,” Breaux says. “Not knowing that, what are you doing to get the best out of each and every day?”

—Chelsea Brasted