was the first Hispanic woman to serve on the board of a top-five Fortune 100 company, establishing a legacy of diversity that goes beyond tokenism
Guest Editor Victor Arias
Luis Aguilar
p.62 VICTOR ARIAS GUEST EDITOR
p.66 Kim Casiano
p.74 Maria Otero
p.76 Luis Aguilar
p.79 Tere Alvarez Canida
p.82 Michael Alicea
p.85 Augusto Lima
p.88 Luis Ubinas
PEOPLE + COMPANIES
A B C
Aguilar, Luis 76
Alicea, Michael 82
Almodovar, Jennifer 8
Arias, Victor 62
Aspen Dental Management Inc. 8
Atrium Health 33
Baylor Scott & White Health 14
Benavides, Vanessa 36
BMO Harris Bank 40
Canida, Tere Alvarez 79
Casiano, Kimberly 66
Contreras, Cristina 14
D E F
Endress + Hauser 94
Espinosa, Sid 22
Falcon Cyber Investments 76
Ford Motor Company 66
Freyre, Michelle 100
Fugro Consultants 52
G H I
Greenspoon Marder 28
Herbalife 74
Infinity Property & Casualty 79
J K L
Johnson & Johnson 100
Kaiser Permanente 36
Lima, Augusto 85
M N O
Martinez Reyes, Michelle 28
Mazariegos, Herb 40
Microsoft Corporation 22
Muñiz, Peter 104
Nielsen 82
Novartis AG 85
NYC Health + Hospitals 14
Otero, Maria 74
P Q R
Pacific Gas and Electric Company 44
Pan American Development Foundation 88
Perez, David 18
Perez, Antony 33
RSR Partners 62
Ruiz, Ariel 110
S T U
Sanchez, Marisol 94
Soto Jr., Jesus 44
Tamez, Carlos 52
The Home Depot 104
Uber 110
Ubiñas, Luis 88
V W X Y Z
Walz, George 40
UP NEXT
JULY / AUGUST 2018
Alex Rodriguez revamps Spirit Airlines' digital strategies, A.B. Cruz III returns to the work he loves with USAA, and Genaro Lopez is revolutionizing the way people think about record-keeping from his seat at Nike.
On the Pulse
52
104
The Home Depot's Peter Muñiz is setting up the legal department's success with a servant-leadership style
Fugro's Carlos Tamez passes his advice along to upand-coming leaders from nontraditional backgrounds
8 Jennifer Almodovar is creating an environment where people can grow at Aspen Dental
28 Michelle Martinez Reyes puts Greenspoon Marder on the national stage with her marketing skills
letter from the guest editor
In today’s political and social environment, there are many visceral reactions to political correctness and deciding on the right things to do. We, however, must attempt to think about smart solutions rather than the right ones.
Corporate America and its boardrooms have recently become forums for discussing the real benefits of diversifying boards. My colleagues at RSR Partners and I have heard of these discussions from two separate acquaintances who sit on multiple corporate boards. They related dissatisfaction voiced by fellow board members on electing future board members strictly with the goal of achieving both gender and ethnic diversity. Those comments also questioned if achieving diversity actually led to better performance and outcomes for the board. This is emblematic of the polarization that our society deals with every day in the current climate.
So, how do we address this situation?
The smart approach to various economic issues and corporate boardroom effectiveness is to determine the appropriate business imperatives and needs for the overall makeup of the board. The mapping exercises that governance and nomination committees perform not only look at the current makeup of the board and the skill sets that they represent, but they also address the future strategic needs of the company and the skill sets and attributes that future board members will need.
One of the most imperative strategic factors is future revenue and potential growth. What are current consumers buying? What are the changes in consumption trends? Where is the future growth of those consumer? In answering these questions, it is undeniable that Latinos are the growth engine of the US population and
The Right Thing to Do or the Smart Thing to Do?
the resulting consumption. Latinos will also drive the growth of the workforce. They already overindex in firsttime home ownership and small business formation, which is traditionally considered America’s growth engine for creating jobs.
Those facts make an incontrovertible case for adopting a more strategic approach to including Latinos in the board room. With only 1.6 percent of the Fortune 1000 board seats occupied by Latinos, there is currently a considerable gap, but there's also an opportunity to address this future American growth market—what I call the new American mainstream.
The board members profiles highlighted in Hispanic Executive ’s Best of the Boardroom section (p.60) are clear examples of why companies should include more Latinos on their boards. These business leaders are key experts at their respective companies, and they are helping drive results in achieving greater share of the Latino market. Their companies elected them because it was the smart thing to do. We are proud to share these profiles with you.
Victor Arias Managing Director RSR Partners
POn the Pulse
Tackling today's issues facing the Hispanic community
by Cristina Merrill
Charting New Courses
Jennifer Almodovar shares how she’s cementing Aspen Dental as a top-notch employer through a new culture blueprint
In the summer of 2016, Jennifer Almodovar was faced with a big decision. The human resources executive had three job offers on the table. Each one was for a vice president-level role, and each company was at different points in its growth and development.
Ultimately, she chose Aspen Dental Management Inc. (ADMI), an organization that provides business and administrative support to independent dental practices that operate under the Aspen brand. “I had the biggest connection with Aspen,” says Almodovar, who joined ADMI in August 2016 and is now the vice president of culture and people experience. “I felt like if I came here, I would be challenged to do things I never had before.”
In early 2018, ADMI supported 640 Aspen Dentalbranded practices across the country. Seventy-five more practices are scheduled to open throughout 2018. More than 560 dentists were hired in 2017, and 750 will be brought on this year.
Although the organization has come a long way, it’s still looking to ensure that the Aspen Dental brand experience is consistent across all markets— no easy feat for such a geographically dispersed, fastgrowing company.
But that is exactly what Almodovar wanted. From the beginning, she liked that she was walking into somewhat uncharted territory. ADMI already had its core human resources functions, which was her main focus initially, but ADMI chairman and CEO Bob Fontana wanted an increased focus on people. With that desire came a shift in Almodovar’s role. She’s now laser-focused on setting a strategic direction for company culture and the people experience.
“If we don’t get the people side of the business right, then we will be challenged in keeping the pace of our growth and achieving long-lasting results,” she says. “Talent is a hot commodity these days. When we get talented people, we want to keep them. That means creating an environment where they can thrive.”
Almodovar is doing lots of work around the Aspen people experience and building a purpose-driven
culture. Part of her job is to ensure Aspen is delivering on its employee value proposition and that when a team member comes on board, they live the experience they were promised. In the long term, she hopes to position Aspen on the “Top 100 Places to Work” list and strengthen the organization’s ability to consistently deliver on its brand promise—breaking down barriers to better care, better smiles, and better lives. To that end, 2018 will be a big year of gathering data.
“I work hard to create an environment where people can grow. If people aren’t growing, the business isn’t either. It’s not always easy, but if we lock arms and support each other through the good and challenging times, we are all better for it.”
JENNIFER ALMODOVAR
“We’ve moved away from the one-time a year engagement survey to regularly pulsing team members to better understand what’s working and what’s not,” Almodovar says. She is also leading a cross-functional team that’s chartered with creating a culture blueprint that supports the company’s business strategy. “We’ll fine tune our purpose and build leadership capabilities that enable an enduring culture that will propel the company forward like never before,” she says.
Almodovar is partnering with the Daggerwing Group, a global change consultancy, to help articulate and embed this purpose-driven culture. “Aspen Dental has incredibly passionate, dedicated people like Jennifer who are driven to make lives better for their patients and for each other every day,” says senior
JENNIFER ALMODOVAR
VP, Culture & People Experience
Aspen Dental Management Inc.
principal Michelle Mahony. “We are working with her and her team to harness that passion by telling a cohesive, consistent story and then driving it into every aspect of the people experience, which will translate into an even better patient experience.”
It’s important for Almodovar that while the company grows, it doesn’t lose its community feel and the company culture is not fragmented. She is proud of how Aspen Dental treats people in underserved communities and provides free dental care to veterans through its Healthy Mouth Movement program.
Almodovar certainly understands the importance of community. She grew up in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, back when it was mostly Latino. She describes it as a place where she learned the power of community, support, and courage.
“As kids, we were always outside, always together. Everyone on the block knew everybody else,” she says. “We spent lots of time together. It was a ton of fun, and people took care of one another, whether it was someone in your family or not. Everybody’s door was open.”
She credits her parents with teaching her people skills. Her parents were divorced, but her mother would call her father whenever Almodovar and her sister misbehaved. They would sit their daughters down and ask them to explain what happened. No one
left until the issue was resolved. This shaped her views as an executive.
“My parents didn’t know it, but I really grew from those times,” she recalls. “I learned that you can go through times and come out stronger, individually and collectively, because of them. Work is no different because you’re dealing with human beings. I work hard to create an environment where people can grow. If people aren’t growing, the business isn’t either. It’s not always easy, but if we lock arms and support each other through the good and challenging times, we are all better for it.”
It’s important to Almodovar as a leader that team members and peers know they can go to her for help. She strives to make people realize that things can always be better, and she likes to paint a picture of what’s possible. “I’m a driver of change, and I know that positive, sustained change happens when you start with your people,” she says.
She is thrilled to take ADMI and the Aspen Dental brand to the next level and help its leaders make sure they are equipped to help strengthen the company’s culture.
“It’s a tremendous undertaking,” she says. “I’m extremely grateful to be leading this vitally important effort. But even though I’m leading it, I couldn’t do it without everyone on board. It’s going to be a fun, gamechanging ride.”
Partnering with Patients
Cristina Contreras draws on her background in social work to make patients partners in their care at NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx
by Galen Beebe
When Cristina Contreras moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic, she didn’t speak English, she didn’t know the culture, and she didn’t have the support of her extended family. To make matters worse, she had to navigate the daunting world of a new high school.
But Contreras was not one to balk at a challenge. She kept her focus on the future that she saw for herself. “I always knew that I wanted to accomplish something,” she says. “I wasn’t going to let all these challenges dictate what I needed to do or not to do or what I could accomplish.”
Contreras saw the first glimpse of her future when she was put in a trial group therapy program for struggling students. She loved the program and was inspired by the therapist who ran it. “Her job to me seemed like the dream job,” she
says. “Working with people and helping people—what else do you want?”
After earning her bachelor’s degree in social work, Contreras began her career as a caseworker at NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island, a 371-bed hospital in the United States’s largest public healthcare system. “I really loved the environment in the hospital,” she says. “I had good resources, I had good people helping me and teaching me, and I was able to make a difference for a lot of patients.”
But Contreras wanted to make an even broader impact. After completing her master’s in social work, she transitioned to work in healthcare administration.
Contreras then climbed the ladder within NYC Health + Hospitals, and in 2016, she became chief operations officer at NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central
Bronx. She is no longer working in patient care, but her background as a social worker continues to influence the way she leads her team. “You don’t have to know everybody’s job, but you have to know how to lead, help, and support them,” she says. “I can relate well to people, and I think that gives me an advantage.”
Her background also gives her an understanding of the issues that patients face outside of the hospital that might impact the care they need. To address these issues, she and her team work with the community to expand their offerings and to invite patients to be partners in their own care. “We try to reach and engage patients in their community, where they live and work,” she says. “We bring hospital resources to the community, instead of waiting for them to come to us.”
We are specialists. Just like the healthcare industry we serve, we believe the best outcomes are driven by a deep passion in a chosen profession. Crothall’s specialized services can free you to attack both the challenges and opportunities that await in healthcare.
Contreras and her team attend community events where they can hear community members’ concerns firsthand. When a middle school invited the hospital to participate in its annual back-to-school event, Contreras took the opportunity to share information at a display table and to gather feedback from fellow attendees.
One parent told Contreras about the nutritionist who helped her to create a dietary plan for her family. “The mother explained to me how implementing the dietary plan at home really helped her family learn to make healthier food choices,” she says. “I asked her if she felt other families in the school would benefit from this service. Her answer was a resounding yes; it was then that I decided to bring healthy eating education to the community.”
Based on that community member’s feedback, a team of nurses, health educators, dietitians, and health insurance representatives coordinated with community partners to bring nutrition education out of the hospital and into the Norwood section of the Bronx. Two years later, the community nutrition program continues to thrive and offer a service that Contreras knows the community can use.
Community feedback also helps shape existing offerings, such as the hours available for primary care service. Originally, the only nonwork-hour appointments the hospital offered were in
the evening, but many patients who cared for their families after work weren’t able to make those appointments.
“We expanded our primary care services into the evenings, weekends, and early morning hours to make it convenient for our diverse patient population so they can plan their healthcare visit without interfering with their work and family lives,” Contreras says. “That said, simply expanding hours doesn’t mean you’re tailoring to the needs of everyone in the community. It works for some, but not all.”
To reach even more patients, Contreras challenged the ambulatory care leadership team to increase access across all service lines. In response, providers and administrators created dedicated emergency department slots to connect patients to ambulatory care services and avoid emergency room revisits.
Throughout her career, Contreras has met many people who told her that because of her background, she couldn’t accomplish all that she has. And yet, she has always found a way to advance her goals. “We always find people who give us encouragement, but we find more people who try to discourage us from doing the right thing,” she says. “You have to know what you want and mute the negative voices trying to tell you that you can’t accomplish something—because you can; everybody can.”
As with the patients who come into the hospital, there is more to Contreras’s
CRISTINA CONTRERAS Chief Operations Officer NYC Health + Hospitals North Central Bronx
story than meets the eye. “When a patient comes to the hospital, we’re just dealing with the current health problem,” she says. “It’s important to also take into consideration the whole person and the socioeconomic factors that may impact their care. Everything makes a difference in the care that we provide.”
“When patients and families come to North Central Bronx Hospital , they expect the best doctors, the best nurses, and the best care. Cristina Contreras has helped to transform the patient experience, by working hard to improve the health of the community. Her leadership and spirit fosters collaboration and a true compassion for growing NCB’s culture of caring and service. We support and congratulate her in this recognition of her efforts.”
Experience is Imperative at the Largest Nonprofit Health System in Texas
David Perez helps improve the patient experience at Baylor Scott & White Health’s Austin/Round Rock Region with skills he learned over the course of his life
by Valerie Menard
In 2013, Scott and White Healthcare merged with Baylor Health Care System to become the largest nonprofit healthcare system in Texas. Today, Baylor Scott and White Health (BSW) remains in growth mode, and David Perez, director of operations and service excellence, continues to develop ways to improve care by overseeing the patient experience throughout the Austin/ Round Rock Region of the BSW system.
“My passion for healthcare comes from a passion for helping people,” he says. “After working as a respiratory therapist for a few years, I felt an inner calling to transition to leadership. Providing care to help improve patient breathing conditions or support neonatal ventilation is rewarding
to the soul. Nowadays, I receive the same gratification when I help others build their career and leadership skills.”
Perez understands that acts of kindness sometimes make a permanent impression. As a child afflicted with asthma and who suffered from common attacks as well as ones that resulted in multiday hospitalizations, he became acutely aware of healthcare and the kindness of others. In his current role, he hopes to pay it forward by improving patient care and, more generally, just helping people—a passion he learned from mentors throughout his life.
Born and raised in Houston, Perez is the middle child of three boys born to Armando and Sylvia Perez. He considers
his father, a retired pipe-design engineer who worked for forty-seven years to support his family, his greatest mentor. Professional mentors also include Dr. Roy Smythe and his current supervisor, Jay Fox, president of BSW’s Austin/Round Rock region.
“I enjoy having multiple mentors because of their many different strengths,” Perez says. “However, there is a common theme among all my mentors in that they share my passion for helping people and truly care about the success of my career and life.”
After high school, Perez earned a bachelor’s in respiratory care at Texas State University and began working as a respiratory therapist. Five years later,
he returned to Texas State to pursue an MBA. As a graduate student, he joined several health organizations, including one that introduced him to BSW. After graduating, he was hired as a BSW senior project manager in 2013 and was promoted to his current position in 2015, where he focuses on all aspects of the health experience.
“I believe challenges with patient experience consist of multiple areas. However, the main contributors involve the employee experience, complexities of the care continuum, and an evolving consumer expectation,” he says. “Ten years ago, there was minimal focus on experience. Today, health systems are building teams specifically around experience, going so far as to create executive positions in experience to lead the way.”
David Perez, far left, meets with his colleagues Priya Patel, Freemon Walker, and Joey Rogan.
He defines experience as connecting with patients and families by alleviating anxieties, building trusting relationships, and supporting a healing environment. He relies on methodologies like LEAN that focus on minimizing waste and incorporating frontline ideas to achieve system goals.
“I utilize LEAN methodology to improve department processes and operations, which can, in turn, improve the patient experience,” he says. “However, there are additional benefits to utilizing LEAN methods. With my combined passion for organizational development and LEAN, I decided to
engagement opportunities, knowing it will build an exceptional patient experience.”
According to Perez, another example of how LEAN improves engagement is through thirty-minute coaching sessions with staff that focus on problem identification, problem prioritization, and solution development.
“This type of engagement and improvement work builds staff morale by setting up the team for success with a clear improvement plan that they helped identify and develop. It also provides confidence and team skills to continuously improve departmental initiatives,” he says. “It’s one of my favorite activities because it
“Today, health systems are building teams specifically around experience, going so far as to create executive positions in experience to lead the way.”
DAVID PEREZ
integrate the two to see if we could help improve the employee experience.”
For example, Perez says BSW can now take on culture challenges, such as low morale and ineffective communication, and incorporate process improvement models to find solutions. For Perez, it’s amazing to watch both employee and patient experience improve.
“I’m a big believer that employee experience spills over to the patient experience,” he says. “Therefore, much of my work involves improving employee
allows for fast implementation, and it connects me with leaders and frontline staff, which aligns with improving the employee and patient experience.”
Although few will escape a hospital visit as a patient or as a visiting family member, Perez hopes to enhance that prospect.
“In all, healthcare has many challenges when creating a positive patient experience,” he says. “We need to better understand that every touch point through a healthcare journey is vital to experience, particularly with the changing consumer.”
Tools for Success
A leader in developing the management capabilities for healthcare executives, the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) stimulates new tools, resources, and opportunities for leadership education for professionals across the continuum of care. Committed to improving the patient experience, David Perez joined the organization in 2010 on the advice of one of his mentors.
“I’ve committed myself to ACHE for so long because my values and purpose align well with the college—a focus on leadership development, networking opportunities, and community engagement,” he says.
Perez considers himself living proof of how effective the ACHE program has been in his professional development.
“Since joining, I’ve moved my way up the ranks to my current position as acting president,” he says. “It is so exciting to have a great team of leaders working to bring value to our members by building fantastic events and networking opportunities.”
by Ruth E. Dávila
Wired for Impact
Microsoft’s Sid Espinosa links underserved communities to tomorrow’s workforce through technology education
Philanthropy leader, community builder, and former mayor of Palo Alto, California, Sid Espinosa has advocated for those without a voice throughout his entire career. That theme carries through to his work as director of civic engagement and philanthropy for Microsoft, where his team works in cities across the United States to provide vital exposure to technology to those who need it most.
“Our company’s mission is about empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more,” Espinosa says. “Our philanthropy and corporate social responsibility is built into Microsoft’s DNA, tracing back to the history of Bill Gates and his incredible legacy around the world.”
For Espinosa—whose Mexican-born father surpassed language and cultural barriers to become a successful engineer in the United States and whose mother, of Norwegian and Scottish ancestry, was a teacher—giving the gift of knowledge to underrepresented communities is a higher calling.
Espinosa grew up in the farm town of Gilroy, California. He earned a master’s degree in government affairs from Harvard, worked in the public liaison office in the White House during the Clinton administration, and went on to lead the philanthropy efforts for tech giant Hewlett Packard before serving in local office. From 2008 to 2012, Espinosa progressed from city councilman to vice mayor to become the first Hispanic mayor of Palo Alto, California.
“My mom said to me early on, ‘People find joys through work in different ways,’” Espinosa says. “‘Some want to build things. Some want to work on big, visionary projects. I think your passion is going to be found in giving people a voice who don’t have one, and you are going to find great meaning in doing that.’”
With more $1.4 billion invested in nonprofits and social initiatives in 2017 alone, Microsoft is one of the leading corporate philanthropy players. Much of its US agenda centers on fostering opportunities for young people to develop technology skills.
“Technology is transforming the way we live, and we need to ensure all communities have access to the opportunities created by technology,” he says. “Digital skills and education are a big part of that.”
Microsoft’s efforts are meeting a real need: a national talent deficit in tech. In New York alone,
Code.org cited more than 31,000 open computing jobs in 2017, though there were only about 3,800 computer science graduates.
“Even with talent migrations from other global regions, we’re not equipped to meet our needs nationally,” Espinosa says. “It’s a crisis that Microsoft faces every day, and the company is investing heavily to counteract it.”
“We know that the skills gap will not be solved just through after-school programs or training teachers. We need to have policy change at the federal and state level.”
SID ESPINOSA
Microsoft deploys local programs that touch lives, one at a time, while also investing in larger issues, like access to technology education.
“We are focused on having a substantive engagement, tackling the major problems that these communities are facing, and looking at the value we can add,” he says. “It’s not so much about handing over a big check but about authentic local engagement.”
TEALS: Educating Educators
One of the primary barriers to technology education is the lack of qualified technology educators at the high school level.
“In most states, technology doesn’t count toward state college requirements, so high schools don’t teach it,” Espinosa says. “When teacher training programs are offered, the teachers sometimes then join a private tech company, so we see an exodus of folks leaving education.”
To train and retrain teaching talent, Microsoft Philanthropies launched a nonprofit initiative called TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) in 2009. Active in twenty-nine states and Washington, DC, TEALS pairs computer science
(CS) professionals with high school teachers to teach introductory and advanced placement computer science curriculum.
Teachers work directly with industry professionals to increase CS teaching capacity and build the programs at their schools. Eventually, teachers require less volunteer support, and the majority end up with the ability to successfully teach on their own.
“We’re looking at sustainability on projects like these and asking ourselves, ‘How do we really get teachers prepared to teach the subject on their own?’” Espinosa says.
TEALS is up against the odds in places like Arizona, where nearly half (44 percent) of all high school students are Latino, yet they represent less than 14 percent of advanced placement test takers in computer science, according to the College Board. This disparity leads to low workforce representation. Nationally, only 6 percent of professionals working in computing are Latino, according to Code.org.
Through TEALS, however, Microsoft has recruited volunteers from hundreds of companies—including Amazon, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Chase—to the
SID ESPINOSA Director of Philanthropy and Civic Engagement Microsoft
Microsoft is proud to partner with nonprofits, governments, educators, and businesses to help increase access to computer science education, so all young people are future ready.
microsoft.com/philanthropies
cause, serving more than thirty-seven thousand students to date.
Code.org: A National Agenda
In addition to helping students and teachers individually, Microsoft works at the state and federal level to fight for top-down policies. As a founding member and the largest corporate sponsor of Code.org, the company tackles issues such as access to computer science in school systems.
Microsoft rallies Code.org government affairs teams in every state to work on the panoply of policies that need to be fixed, Espinosa says.
Code.org has been successful in ensuring computer science courses count toward high school graduation in thirty-five states, which helps to shore up the talent shortage. “We know that the skills gap will not be solved just through after-school programs or training teachers,” Espinosa says. “We need to have policy change at the federal and state level.”
City Year: Impacting Students
In high-poverty, urban schools nationwide, Microsoft helps kids who finish high school get career-ready through its support of City Year, a nonprofit dedicated to helping students and schools succeed. An afterschool program for elementary through high school kids, codeveloped and funded by Microsoft, has served nearly twenty thousand disadvantaged youth. By late 2018, the program is slated to complete a three-year, twelve-city pilot in digital skills training, scaling to City Year’s national network of more than three hundred schools and twenty-eight cities.
In San Jose, California, Microsoft supports City Year AmeriCorps service teams, who are helping these kids not fall through the cracks, with activities like tutoring, in-class help, and walking them to school. It takes a hands-on approach in districts like these, whose dropout rates sore at 50 percent.
“These days, you can’t decide when you enter college that you want to suddenly become a computer science major,” Espinosa says. “If you’re that one Latina student in CS 101, you’re probably with a whole bunch who have been taking apart computers for several years. So, when you enter that classroom, you better be ready for success. That’s what we’re ensuring that Latino kids in San Jose are prepared for.”
I Industry
Top-level insight and updates on business in America
by Kelli Lawrence, photos by Cass Davis
The Beauty of Starting from Zero
Michelle Martinez Reyes brings her large-firm marketing experience to help put Greenspoon Marder on the national map
Michelle Martinez Reyes was on the path for a successful career in legal marketing. But in the mid2000s, a painful and difficult divorce left her with nothing but unfathomable debt and sole custody of her infant son. She refers to that time as a deep, dark, financial, and emotional crater.
Despite difficult years, Martinez Reyes turned things around for herself and her son.
Just as her Cuban-born parents had urged all four of their daughters to do, Martinez Reyes studied diligently, leaped into the workforce, and began contributing to a 401(k) at an early age. She then cashed out her 401(k) to support herself and her threemonth-old son for about a year while she got back on her feet.
“Family was always the core of it all,” recalls Martinez Reyes, who is now the chief marketing officer of Greenspoon Marder. “I remember my mother would say, ‘Come home. Come live here. We’ll help you.’ I said ‘No way.’ I found a day school for my son, got back to work, and started all over again from zero.”
Over the course of a decade, one well-established national law firm led to another for Martinez Reyes. By 2016, she had found considerable success working in the marketing departments of the largest law firms in Florida.
“If I’ve learned anything,” she says, “it’s that the biggest power you can have in your life is the power of choice. Sometimes your choices may be really bad, but sometimes they may be really good.”
There was most definitely a huge choice at hand when Martinez Reyes began considering work with Greenspoon Marder in 2016. For one thing, it was only thirty-five years old—a small-firm operation compared with the much older, legacy firms at which she had worked. Martinez Reyes entered the interview process as a favor to a friend, and she soon found herself intrigued with the possibilities.
“I was very adamant about not making a move, more out of fear than anything,” she admits. “I was concerned. It’s always scary when a firm is undertaking a new venture, and you have to be the person to lead it because the chance for errors are high and your life is on the line.”
Greenspoon Marder’s vision was to build the firm’s brand to help it grow to national status. Martinez Reyes knew the opportunity was rare, especially for a woman and minority in the industry. And that is why she felt the need for it to be amazing—maybe even industry-changing.
With the receipt of sage advice from her mother— who called it a no-brainer, much to Martinez Reyes’s surprise—Martinez Reyes was ready to come on board as chief marketing officer.
In no time at all, she was starting with the firm’s brand-building. “When I needed to make a decision, I was a decision-maker,” she says. “That’s something that most firms and most organizations don’t allow their CMOs to do because they have lots of bureaucracy and politics. I was able to work directly with the owners and gain the trust of the leadership. That’s very scary but also very cool.”
Martinez Reyes points to the creation of one definitive logo as an early example of the rebranding process with Greenspoon Marder when she started. She locked it into a single-line, black-and-white classic look. Nobody liked it, she says. Everyone wanted to know why it was just black and white.
“I told them the focus shouldn’t be the color,” she explains. “I told them we could use it with any color or image, but the Greenspoon Marder identity was going to be based on its name: two founders, one line—period.”
The firm’s identity is, as planned, plenty visible these days with twenty-four offices from New York City to San Diego and twelve locations across Florida. As
Chief Marketing Officer
MICHELLE MARTINEZ REYES
Greenspoon Marder
daunting as this whirlwind role has been for Martinez Reyes, some of it has been an easy sell thanks to the firm’s remarkable track record of great work.
“What makes my job easy is being able to say, ‘There are already great things to talk about; just give me a megaphone,’” she says. “So, that’s what I did. The best part is they let me do it. And the firm has achieved success because of it and lots of hard work.”
With all that Martinez Reyes has accomplished both in legal marketing and within her community— including being involved in numerous children’s, women’s and arts organizations—it’s both her humility and her wisdom that shine brightest. “I’m so grateful that Gerry Greenspoon and Michael Marder allowed me the opportunity to be a part of their team,” she says. “Nothing will ever be the same.”
“Clearly, I’ve made my mistakes,” she says, “But I tell my son, ‘You don’t always have to take advice, but you should always listen to it.’ Why? Because experience is the greatest teacher.”
What It Takes to Be in Real Estate
After
eighteen years in the banking
industry,
Anthony
Perez takes on enterprise-wide real estate leadership at Atrium Health
by Alison Ver Halen
Working at Bank of America for nearly two decades in a variety of roles provided Anthony Perez with opportunities he had never dreamed of. But the offer from Carolinas HealthCare System, now Atrium Health, a regional health system, was too good to pass up.
“I had been in the banking industry for eighteen years, so I was looking to learn something different,” Perez says. “At Bank of America, I was a regional leader, but not for the whole organization. This was an enterprise-level opportunity I wanted to take.”
Undertaking that role—initially assistant vice president of real estate—was no small feat. Atrium is a nonprofit network of hospitals, freestanding emergency departments, urgent care centers, and medical practices. That translates to
about 18.5 million square feet, more 500 buildings, and more than 1,600 leases. In fact, the company completed 731 deals just in 2017.
Perez’s first goal in taking over management of Atrium’s real estate department was to get the right people on his team. With a total of thirty-seven people working under him, it was a substantial goal.
“It started with getting the right people on the bus and then getting them in the right seats,” says Perez, who is currently the vice president of real estate. “Then, we really focused on the processes that we were using to make sure they didn’t have any defects and they were very lean and efficient.”
The final step, which he and his team are currently working on, is to make sure they have the right systems in place and
that they all work the way they should. “Technology is our big focus right now, as we’re toward the end of building our foundational platform for real estate,” Perez says.
With all of the areas of real estate that Perez’s team has to manage, the biggest responsibility by far is real estate transactions. This means negotiating both the acquisitions and dispositions of real property—land, buildings, and leases. On average, there are about 240 projects going at any one time.
In addition to his primary estate team, Perez oversees four other teams. He manages the planning team, which helps Atrium’s internal clients decide how much space they need, where they need it, and when they need it.
The development team makes sure all land purchases are executed properly.
PEREZ VP of Real Estate
“There are a lot of governmental aspects involved in making sure it’s done correctly: easements, permits, codes we have to meet, and also getting the land ready to build on,” Perez says.
There’s also a team devoted to managing the organization’s leases. “That all has to be tracked and monitored very carefully for a couple of reasons,” Perez says. “One, we have to pay rent, we have to receive rent, and it has to be done accurately. Two, there are a lot of critical dates that have to be monitored, like when the leases expire and when we have the option to renew. This team monitors and tracks all that.”
Last, but not least, is the space and information management team. “Eighteen million square feet has to be tracked somewhere, so we have a team
that is accountable for tracking all that space: how much we have, what type it is, where it is, who’s managing it, and who’s in it,” Perez says. “It’s a tremendous amount of data that’s really foundational in planning and lease administration, so we have a team that just manages that and makes sure we’re tracking and monitoring all of our data.”
Perez adds that keeping track of all those numbers is also a compliance issue. Because Atrium is a health system, the organization has to abide by many governmental laws and provide information to various governmental agencies.
All of these responsibilities are par for the course for Perez, who has dealt with every aspect of real estate at some point in his career. For example, until recently, his job included security before
ANTHONY
Atrium Health
Three Major Skill Sets
Anthony Perez shares the three skills he builds among his Atrium Health team members.
Business acumen: “We currently are a $9 billion revenue system, so that’s real adult money. You have to have good business acumen and understand the risk and the return on investment of our decisions.”
Analytical skills: “We’re a big system with a lot of chairs, a lot of parking spaces, and a lot of square footage. You have to be able to filter that down and make really good decisions based on a lot of data. Without analytical skills, you could get really overwhelmed.”
Communication skills : “These are probably the most important skills, regardless of your subject matter expertise. In real estate, you have to deal with so many people on so many different levels. One day, we could be meeting with the CEO, and the next day we can be working with janitors to make sure our spaces are clean. Being able to motivate and get your ideas across is really important.”
it was moved to another department. “Security was unexpected, but that was a great experience, and I learned a lot,” Perez says. “Parking is always an interesting role, and I had that for a while. Facilities management of all of our medical and general office buildings was also a role I’ve managed here at Atrium.”
Considering Perez initially made the move to from banking to healthcare out of a desire to challenge himself to do something different, his roles at Atrium Health have certainly fulfilled that desire. Perez stays ahead of his competition by constantly challenging himself to work on a wide variety of projects and educating himself by avidly reading books.
“‘Health. Hope. Healing. For all.’ is Atrium’s mission. Tony Perez is a gifted individual who personifies, and as VP of Real Estate, plays a key role in physically expanding this noble cause. Congratulations and many thanks to Tony for tirelessly contributing his exceptional talents to great effect.” —Smoky Bissell, founder and Chairman of The Bissell Companies
Benavides transforms the culture of compliance at Kaiser Permanente
by Valerie Menard
As a child, Vanessa Benavides always wanted to be a doctor.
Benavides grew up in an economically depressed area along the Texas-Mexico border. In her community, in fact, many people did not have healthcare coverage, so they either did not receive care or only interacted with healthcare providers in settings like the emergency room.
“I was fascinated with social issues,” Benavides says. And the healthcare debates during President Bill Clinton’s years in office sparked her interest in healthcare, specifically.
While taking premed courses at Vanderbilt University, though, she found that she preferred the humanities to science. So, she changed course and started working toward a path to law school. There, she also experienced a cultural sea change, transitioning from a humble community to one of the wealthiest college campuses in the country.
“Neither of my parents went to college,” she says. “They did well with a strong work ethic and determination. I have always admired that, but I knew education was my path to a broader array of opportunities.”
After attending law school at the University of Iowa College of Law, Benavides began her career at a large law firm as an associate in the healthcare practice. After moving in-house to a large healthcare organization, Benavides took the leap from law to compliance when she discovered that compliance would allow her to integrate both law and business skills and enable her to have a big impact on issues she cared about.
“It was a great leap,” she says. “Rather than focusing on discreet legal questions, compliance work requires a broader scope and allowed me to be part of business decisions. There’s such an identity to being a lawyer, so it was hard to give up practicing law, but I’ve never looked back.”
Through compliance, Benavides has found a career in healthcare that looks different from the traditional legal path she initially had in mind. After holding senior compliance positions at Tenet Health, she is now the senior vice president and chief compliance and privacy officer at Kaiser Permanente. In her current role, Benavides is focused on building a culture of trust, one that supports the organization’s mission and ensures that people at all levels of the organization are delivering consistently excellent care and service to the nearly twelve million Kaiser Permanente members.
Over the years, Benavides has seen the perception of compliance change at the organizations she has helped lead. Rather than solely reacting to issues as they arise, she has made compliance discussions more proactive and business-oriented. At Kaiser Permanente, she and her team are focused on developing a culture where compliance is an accessible, trusted source
From Healthcare to Human Rights
Vanessa Benavides is passionate about supporting important causes.
“I’ve learned my biggest leadership lesson through volunteering, and it translates beautifully to my career in healthcare,” she says. “I’ve experienced how every person can make an impact when they harness their passion toward a purpose greater than themselves. If you can inspire the same passionate purpose in others, it’s very empowering.”
Since 2001, Benavides has volunteered with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and she currently chairs the organization’s board of directors.
HRC is the largest national civil rights nonprofit working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Americans. Best known for advocating for marriage equality and legislation like the Equality Act, HRC’s work has helped millions of LGBTQ people in every community across the nation. Benavides is particularly proud of the way that HRC has stepped up to meet new challenges facing the LGBTQ community.
In the wake of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, HRC took a stand to fight for common sense gun legislation. HRC also mobilized against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which would have had a devastating impact on people living with HIV/AIDS. And in the wake of attacks on DACA—including seventyfive thousand LGBTQ Dreamers—the organization has stepped up to fight for DACA recipients.
“The LGBTQ community is a cross-section of this diverse country,” Benavides says. “We come from all walks of life, and we all want the same thing—equal access to the promise of this great nation.”
of counsel to employees throughout the organization.
Still, many challenges remain as the national healthcare landscape continues to change, with an impact on the rules and regulations that Benavides’ team navigates day to day. Benavides keeps a close eye on the landscape and an even closer eye on the responsibility her team shoulders: maintaining the trust of members and people in the communities that Kaiser Permanente serves. And that’s the most rewarding aspect of her job, she says.
“It’s a big privilege and a big responsibility,” she says. “We can do good with our business. Witnessing the actual impact of what we do in people’s lives and in the community—it’s very rewarding.”
Building Relationships to Drive Success
How Herb Mazariegos and George Walz keep BMO Harris Bank compliant while promoting the importance of Latino leadership at the national bank
by Alison Ver Halen
As the two most senior Hispanic executives at BMO Harris Bank, Herb Mazariegos and George Walz are keenly aware of what it takes to help elevate the next generation of Hispanic leaders.
“We need to be engaged and visible, not just with our own staffs, but with the entire US employee base,” says Walz, the bank’s US chief compliance officer.
Both Walz and Mazariegos—the senior vice president and chief US BSA/AML sanctions officer for the bank—mentor students and coworkers, both formally and informally, drawing on their previous experiences and current leadership roles at the bank.
Tragedy shaped Mazariegos’ career trajectory. When the World Trade
Center towers fell on September 11, 2001, Mazariegos was leading back-office operations for a bank in Charlotte, North Carolina. His bank had operations in one of the towers, and he lost colleagues that day. The attack made him think differently about his industry.
“At that point, I realized the importance of what having an AML (anti-money laundering) program meant, not only for banks but for our families and communities,” Mazariegos says.
The framework for detecting money laundering was similar to the framework used to identify terrorist activity. The common denominator is that they all need financial institutions in order to move money around the world to fund their activities.
“Immediately after 9/11, I led efforts to strengthen our AML program, including overhauling technology solutions, while developing people and process strategies,” Mazariegos says. “I recognized that it was imperative to understand the connection between people, processes, and technology to ensure the success of transformational strategies.”
Mazariegos was speaking at an AML conference one day, describing the strategies he had implemented, and one of the audience members was BMO’s enterprise chief AML officer. He liked what Mazariegos had to say about the strategies he was putting in place, and he was looking to transform BMO’s AML program. So, he reached out to Mazariegos and offered him a position with the bank.
“Immediately after 9/11, I led efforts to strengthen our AML program, including overhauling technology solutions, while developing people and process strategies. I recognized that it was imperative to understand the connection between people, processes, and technology to ensure the success of transformational strategies.”
HERB MAZARIEGOS
Walz, on the other hand, followed a more direct path to his current position as chief compliance officer. He spent nearly two decades at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)—first in Chicago and then in Washington, DC, where he oversaw US securities markets and securities firms.
“My job at FINRA evolved to managing the design and development of the regulatory program to oversee securities firms and the risk assessment program to help prioritize where we mobilized resources,” he says.
Walz was tapped by BMO’s US chief compliance officer at the time to oversee compliance for BMO’s wealth management business. After about six months, Walz was named US chief compliance officer, and his predecessor became the enterprise chief compliance officer in Toronto. Walz’s experience positioned him well to collaborate and counsel other professionals in technical assistance projects across Latin America through his involvement with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. His reputation for developing risk-based approaches to oversee financial firms, which prepared him for his current role at BMO, helped him to get involved with the organizations.
Similarly, his current position includes being responsible for the bank’s US Compliance Risk Management program. That responsibility involves making sure
HERB MAZARIEGOS SVP, Chief US BSA/AML Sanctions Officer BMO Harris Bank
GEORGE WALZ SVP, Chief Compliance Officer
Harris Bank
the bank is compliant with US laws and regulations as well as with the bank’s own internal compliance and risk management policies.
That could explain how Mazariegos has found that each bank has its own AML solutions, despite the fact that they’re all governed by the same US regulatory requirements. “The unique solutions implemented by banks to address their enforcement actions vary by their unique geographical, product, and customer exposures,” Mazariegos says. “In addition, relationships between bank management and regulators often influence the development of their strategies.”
Both Mazariegos and Walz are charged with owning relationships with regulators as a key part of their jobs. “I regularly meet with various regulators, including, but not limited to, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the State of Illinois,” Mazariegos says. “I also meet annually with senior OCC officials and the BSA/AML Officers of the nineteen largest US banks.”
Walz also meets with regulators on a consistent basis, but his focus is broader than that of Mazariegos. “Herb’s role is more specialized in that it focuses on anti-money laundering, whereas my purview is broader,” Walz says. “My team focuses on a number of critical rules and regulations from looking at bank deposit accounts to making sure that complex derivative strategies in our capital markets business comply with regulations. It’s the people on my team who do heroic things every day to fulfill our mandate. That energizes me and keeps me coming back every day.”
Mazariegos feels similarly about his team. “Our employees are the most important asset we have in not only meeting our regulatory requirements but also in helping the bank to grow,” Mazariegos says.
That’s why Mazariegos is the executive sponsor of the GenBMO Employee Resource Group (ERG). It’s a group of employees who are focused on the best ways to attract, develop, and retain younger generations, as well as fostering
BMO
multigenerational teams and serving as advocates for the customer segment.
“GenBMO allows me to connect with and learn from a large base of current and future leaders who will help the bank grow,” Mazariegos says.
“My team focuses on a number of critical rules and regulations from looking at bank deposit accounts to making sure that complex derivative strategies in our capital markets business comply with regulations. It’s the people on my team who do heroic things every day to fulfill our mandate. That energizes me and keeps me coming back every day.”
GEORGE WALZ
In addition to internal development, Mazariegos is also involved with external organizations that are active in helping up-and-coming talent in the Chicago area, such as Arrupe College of Loyola University Chicago. Arrupe is a two-year college that primarily consists of diverse students in the Chicagoland area, and Mazariegos recently joined their board.
Walz is also involved with organizations—both inside of and outside of the bank—to help promote Hispanic leaders. He’s a member of the Latino Alliance, the bank’s Latino employee resource group. Walz also speaks on panels and mentors people at BMO, both formally and informally. “They’re mostly diverse employees, and it’s important to me to have a broad, smart network of people at all levels,” Walz says.
He also uses his senior position at the bank to help promote the people in his network. “We have talent round tables where we discuss the leadership potential of our employees,” Walz says. “I’m lucky to be in a position where I can advocate for people in my network that have demonstrated strong potential.”
by Jeff Silver, photos by Winni Wintermeyer
Changing the Playing Field
Jesus Soto Jr. is helping Pacific Gas and Electric Company become the safest, most reliable gas company in the United States with breakthrough strategies, techniques, and technologies
In the fall of 2010, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and its customers experienced the unthinkable. A large diameter pipe ruptured and ignited in San Bruno, California, killing eight people. Ever since, the company has been on a mission to regain customer trust and establish itself as the safest, most reliable gas company in the United States.
“You can lose trust overnight,” says Jesus Soto Jr., PG&E’s senior vice president of gas operations. “It takes much longer to get it back, so community relations are a work in progress that we focus on every day.”
When the company set out to transform itself, it did so with a clear strategy of putting people and safety at the heart of its business. PG&E invested in system integrity and reliability, and it is continuously improving process effectiveness and efficiency.
To initiate momentum toward achieving those objectives, PG&E departed from simply complying with industry norms, such as internal monitoring and simply adhering to industry-established standards. After several years of benchmarking against best practices at numerous other companies and industries, the company earned ISO 5501 and PAS 55-1 certifications, two of the highest internationally recognized asset-management accreditations, in 2014. The company was recertified in both certifications in 2017.
Then, in 2015, it became the first US company to comply with the American Petroleum Institute Recommended Practice (API RP) 1173. In 2016, it was the first utility to receive the American Chemistry Council’s RC14001 certification for process safety; community communications; product safety; and occupational safety, health, environmental and security practices.
“As highly regulated as we are by state and federal guidelines, we’ve taken the position that if we’re
dedicated to safe operations, we have to do more than what the regulations require,” Soto says. “There are very important differences between just being compliant and truly putting safety at the center of everything we do.”
PG&E has made substantial investments in innovative technologies. Picarro Surveyor is a gas leak survey technology that is one thousand times more sensitive than the equipment the company previously used. It has helped reduce minor leaks by 99 percent since 2010 without increasing the existing workforce. Soto points to this achievement as successfully increasing safety while staying mindful of the cost pressures on consumers.
“You can lose trust overnight. It takes much longer to get it back, so community relations are a work in progress that we focus on every day.”
JESUS SOTO JR.
A state-of-the-art Gas Control Center opened in San Ramon, California in 2013, which provides realtime data about operations across the enterprise. The center monitors flows, pressures, and alarms that may arise in a transmission system that consists of thirty-inch to thirty-six-inch pipes that operate at pressures of up to nine hundred pounds-per-squareinch. Operators view data on an a ninety-foot-long video wall and can communicate with field personnel through SmartBoards, which function as interactive whiteboards. They can control and isolate the flow
JESUS SOTO JR. SVP, Gas Operations Pacific Gas and Electric Company
PG&E by the Numbers
PG&E is the 2nd largest utility in the United States, surpassed only by Southern California Gas Company.
86,000 miles of gas pipeline (enough to circle the Earth 3.5 times)
6,438 miles of natural gas transmission lines
4.3 million natural gas customer accounts
PG&E’s service area is about 70,000 square miles in northern and central California
of gas using automatic shutoff valves and remotely control components.
This has led to tremendous improvements in monitoring and maintaining the system. In 2015, when a bulldozer ruptured a pipe, the company identified the situation and halted gas flow in fourteen minutes. Overall improvements have resulted in a nearly 40 percent reduction in response time to customer concerns (such as smelling gas) between 2010 and 2017.
PG&E’s Gas Safety Academy opened in Winters, California, in the summer of 2017. The $85 million centralized training facility can accommodate up to 150 students a day and offers a virtual learning center, with tools such as backhoe simulators, a welding shop, a large flow lab that mimics the entire system, and a utility village, with simulated homes, pipelines, and meters that create both simulated
and hands-on drills for a variety of maintenance and emergency situations.
A section of the ruptured San Bruno pipeline is prominently displayed in the Academy’s lobby. “We want the pipeline to be the first thing employees see when they arrive and the last thing when they leave,” Soto explains. “It’s a constant reminder of why they’re here.”
Keeping consumer convenience in mind, PG&E has developed the largest rolling stock of mobile compressed and liquid natural gas equipment in the country. This enables repair crews to take up to fifty thousand customers off-line during transmission line maintenance without interrupting their gas service.
Other safety innovations sound as if they have crossed into the realm of science fiction. One robotic in-line inspection tool is propelled inside pipelines by the gas stream. As it travels, it performs the equivalent of MRI scans to identify anomalies, like corrosion and structural defects. PG&E Research and Development is also working with engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to repurpose a methane detection device that was originally developed to explore Mars.
The company readily shares its innovations and benchmark processes with other utility companies. “Improving safety and system integrity shouldn’t be a competition, so we’re proud to share our practices and breakthroughs,” Soto says. “We want to help spread a very positive ripple effect.”
Even the Environmental Defense Fund has become a partner in an effort to help spread new strategies, techniques, and technologies that foster safety and reduce emissions. PG&E is also looking for ways to help California meet its aggressive carbon reduction goals by offering natural gas as an alternative to gasoline.
When asked about the financial savings resulting from a safer system, Soto is quick to correct the focus of the conversation. “Everything we do is aimed at building more robust, reliable, and safer operations, not at saving money,” he says. “When it comes to safety, it’s a never-ending pursuit.”
WWorldview
Cruzando fronteras: a look at strategies driving business across borders
by Tina Vasquez
Understand the Big Picture
As a first-generation American who didn’t earn a college degree until his late twenties, Fugro’s Carlos Tamez wants others to understand that someone from a different background or untraditional path can still make a great career for themselves
CARLOS TAMEZ Head of Legal, Americas Fugro
Growing up in Baytown, Texas, Carlos Tamez had a history teacher who recognized something in him that he didn’t see in himself.
“She said I’d make a good attorney and for whatever reason,” Tamez says. “That stuck with me.”
Well, she was right. Tamez is now the regional head of legal in North and South America for Fugro, a leader in integrated geotechnical, survey, subsea, and geoscience services.
Fugro employs more than ten thousand highly skilled people in sixty countries, and Tamez says its engineers use some of the most cutting-edge technology that exists. Tamez calls all of this the “global implication.” He means that the depth and breadth of Fugro’s reach adds a layer of complexity to all of the legal work he does.
Depending on where business emerges—whether it’s the Middle East, Africa, or Asia—international sanctions, export controls, and legal regimes vary wildly. This requires the company to have the ability to not only anticipate but also to navigate additional layers of challenges and risks. Leading during challenging circumstances and unforeseen conditions is something Tamez has been doing since he was a kid, which equipped him with a special skill set that peers at his level are less likely to have, he says.
Tamez is the youngest of three boys in his family and the first to go to college. He is also a first-generation American who, as a child, helped his Mexican immigrant parents navigate the unfamiliar culture of the United States. Tamez contends that his background is untraditional given his line of work. He also says it gave him skills he needed to succeed.
“When I was growing up, going to college wasn’t something that seemed like a possibility,” Tamez says. “The idea seemed very remote, given where we were in our lives at the time.”
“
Sometimes helping business people think through their problems logically is more valuable than a wellresearched legal memo.”
Aggressive Trial Attorneys Dedicated to Complex Business Disputes
Dobrowski, Larkin & Johnson is one of the premier commercial trial firms in Houston and Texas. We don’t just work harder; we work smarter. When we take a case, we assume it will go to trial and develop a trial strategy from the outset. Because the best way to ensure a successful trial or a successful settlement is to ensure that our strategy and preparation are unmatched. We combine creativity with hard work and significant trial experience to help our clients win in their most important legal matters. We work with our clients as partners to understand their needs, their capabilities, and their goals. Hard work. Creativity. Experience. Results.
4601 Washington Ave Suite 300 Houston, TX 77007
www.dobrowskillp.com
After high school, Tamez worked in construction to make ends meet and soon decided to pursue higher education by attending a local community college. Not entirely sure what he wanted to study, his history teacher’s suggestion rang in his ears when he saw that the school offered a paralegal program. After obtaining his two-year degree, his path was set. He worked as a paralegal for a few years before earning his bachelor’s degree just a few months shy of his twenty-seventh birthday. Tamez eventually obtained his law degree from the University of Texas Law School.
“I had to chip away at my education, and then when I finally graduated, it was in a pretty lousy legal market. I was definitely scrappy, but I hope whoever hears my story understands the big picture, which is that someone from a different background or untraditional path can still make a great career for themselves.”
CARLOS TAMEZ
“I had to chip away at my education, and then when I finally graduated, it was in a pretty lousy legal market,” Tamez says. “I was definitely scrappy, but I hope whoever hears my story understands the big picture, which is that someone from a different background or untraditional path can still make a great career for themselves.”
Tamez asserts that everyone is born with some leadership qualities, but his were definitely honed over time, starting in childhood. Tamez can still remember being thirteen and helping his parents figure out how to buy and sell a home. At fourteen,
he helped his father settle a personal injury insurance claim from a car accident.
“I was tossed into situations that demanded maturity,” he says. “It might have felt overwhelming at the time, but it definitely helped shape my leadership qualities and style.”
Now, Tamez enjoys leading his team of in-house lawyers. Before joining Fugro, when he was just one of a handful of attorneys at a firm, he disliked how rarely he saw the fruits of his labor. That’s not the case anymore. Tamez now regularly supervises teams that focus on emerging concerns. And whether the team is addressing an issue or resolving a dispute, Tamez says he derives a great deal of satisfaction from the tangible accomplishments he and his team achieve.
“I’m proud of the in-house lawyers on our team, and I believe the reason they’re so effective is that they fully understand the business they’re in,” Tamez says. “If your company offers ten or fifteen different service lines, it can get complicated because you need to be able to understand—to a reasonable degree—what all of them do. You can’t effectively review a contract for a service line without knowing the kind of work they do. You can’t analyze the risks inherent in business without understanding it. We have these kinds of highly effective people on our team.”
Knowing the business is good advice, but Tamez says another piece of advice would have served him well as a young person entering his field: an in-house lawyer working for a company is very different than working at an attorney in a law firm. Although that might seem obvious enough, Tamez says he was slow to realize that in his current role.
“The key isn’t necessarily the brilliance of your legal arguments. In this role, it’s really about being able to deliver solutions clients can use,” Tamez says. “It’s a different skill set, and it might take a minute to get used to. You have to think quickly on your feet and realize there’s an intersection between legal and commercial. The advice you’re providing may not be 100 percent legal in nature. Sometimes you’re bringing logical reasoning skills to the table. Sometimes helping business people think through their problems logically is more valuable than a wellresearched legal memo.”
Greg Ziegler and Macdonald Devin, PC congratulate Carlos Tamez on his accomplishments in stellar service to Fugro Consultants.
Victor Arias p.62, Kim Casiano p.66
Tere Alvarez Canida pg.79, Michael Alicea
Maria Otero p.74, Luis Aguilar p.76, pg.82, Augusto Lima p.85, Luis Ubinas pg.88
Illustrations by Caroline Chriss
How to Move the Needle
Guest editor Victor Arias speaks on his role in bringing more Latinos onto corporate boards
OOnly 2.5 percent of board directors at Fortune 500 firms were Hispanic in 2015. By 2017, that percentage rose 0.1 percent, according to a recent Korn Ferry study that was released at the Latino Corporate Directors Association (LCDA) Convening in November 2017.
“Latino board representation has really not improved, but I think that there are some silver linings about where we’re headed for the first time,” says Victor Arias, who recently joined RSR Partners as managing director after nearly eleven years at Korn Ferry.
The study, which Arias led, also showed an increase in overall first-time directors—many of whom are Hispanic. In the Fortune 500, twenty-seven Latinos were elected to new seats, and eighteen of those were first-time directors.
“For the first time, we are seeing the majority of the elections from the past year, those new seats, went to first-time directors,” Arias says. “That’s a really good sign, rather than just recycling former board members.”
by Frannie Sprouls
Arias, himself, has served on multiple boards, corporate and nonprofit: the Stanford Board of Trustees, PepsiCo’s Advisory Board, and Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen. Today, he serves as a cofounder and board member of the Latino Corporate Directors Association (LCDA). “It is an organization that helps move the needle,” Arias explains. “My work is really symbiotic: one as a corporate director and the other as an executive search consultant that specializes in corporate governance.”
Arias is Hispanic Executive ’s featured guest editor for the annual Best of the Boardroom feature section. He spoke with Hispanic Executive about his passion for increasing the number of Latino corporate directors and how others can move the needle forward.
What sparked your interest in board membership?
When navigating the corporate ladder early on, I learned about the significance of corporate governance and the role of corporate board members. I aspired to either work with or be a part of corporate or nonprofit boards.
Boards are opportunities to serve. That’s a really important thing to remember because if someone’s motivation is not to be of service, then that’s that wrong reason to be aspire to be on a board. A board member is seated to govern and serve the interests of shareholders or stakeholders and also the mission of the organization.
When did you become focused on helping other Latinos join boards, whether corporate or nonprofit?
From day one of my executive recruitment career, I began trying to clearly understand why there few Latinos on boards. The biggest eye-opener for me was serving on the Stanford Board of Trustees. It’s a big board, a prestigious board, a nonprofit board, and a great example of proper governance. There were few Latinos on that board, but even so, the importance of social capital and social networks was apparent. The need to plug in Latinos and Latinas into those social networks is critical.
Looking back on the boards that you have served on, what types of disruption have you seen?
The disruption has really been around economic cycles. You’re there to serve the shareholders in a corporate environment. If financial results are not positive, then there’s a high potential for some needed change.
When I got on my first board in 2001, the fast-paced world of the dot-com industry created tremendous upheaval—including
VICTOR
the so-called bust. Many shareholders were asking how to have a better say as to what should be happening and how to protect themselves. There was a huge disruption about the process of electing boards, the number of boards that CEOs sit on, the liability that the directors have to bear, and emphasis on the duty of care. SarbanesOxley was born, and that legislation has had a profound impact on corporate governance today.
I think the second one I had to deal with was the downturn of the economy in 2009. That was more of economic survival. For example, there were some older directors that had reached the mandatory retirement age, but many boards extended early retirement age so that they could keep that kind of expertise on their boards rather than have to go out and recruit new directors in a time of great uncertainty. Meetings were long, and scrutiny on financial performance was high.
Another one has been the advent and the rise of the millennials. I think that’s going to tremendously impact corporations because most millennials are not traditional in the way that they consume products. They’re much more attuned to the environmental issues, attuned to the packaging, and attuned to a lot of the social issues that I think companies have to really come to grips with. Additionally, they represent the future workforce and value different aspects of their work environment.
What can the Latino board directors now do to help balance out boards?
I believe we share a responsibility to change the narrative in the boardroom and remind our colleagues about the changing demographics and the new American mainstream, by which I mean US Latinos. However, it’s a balancing act for sitting directors because, first and foremost, the responsibility is to shareholders and advocating for Latinos can be viewed as risky. However, if not we do not advocate for Latinos, then who will?
Another area for opportunity is increasing the pool of candidates. Most companies have to be more mindful of ensuring that they have Latinos who manage P&Ls and touch the revenue stream. That’s a natural pool for board election. I think that most corporations have would also be open to others for some key functional areas that will be in demand in the future.
I know that you recently stepped down from the Popeye’s board in back in 2016. Are you looking to join another corporate board?
I would definitely consider joining another corporate board if asked. I’m still young enough that I can add a lot of value, especially in the area of executive compensation, which is a hot topic today. I will continue my passionate work around changing the face of the corporate boardroom. Adelante!
LCDEF BOARDREADY INSTITUTE
Addresses a Critical Need in the Boardroom
On November 1-3, 2017, the Latino Corporate Directors Education Foundation (LCDEF), proudly launched the inaugural LCDEF BoardReady Institute (BRI), an executive program whose goal is to surface, develop, and grow the supply of qualified Latino candidates for the corporate boardroom. The BRI is first exclusive program tailored to position US Latino executives for the boardroom and connects them with Latino corporate directors, CEOs, search executives, and a network of boardroom influencers. We congratulate all seventeen top executives selected for the program as they initiate their journey to the boardroom!
1. Anne L. Alonzo, president and CEO, American Egg Board (AEB)
2. Raul A. Anaya, president of Greater Los Angeles; Pacific Southwest Region Executive, Global Commercial Banking, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
3. Bernadette Aulestia, EVP of global distribution, HBO
4. Jose A. Avalos, VP of Internet of Things Group and global director of visual retail and digital signage, Intel Corporation
5. Anthony Barrueta, SVP of government relations for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., Kaiser Permanente
6. Vanessa M. Benavides, SVP, chief compliance and privacy officer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Hospitals, Kaiser Permanente
7. Richard Campillo, managing director, XY99 Advisory
8. María-Elena Carrión, CFA, certified M&A advisor, founder and managing Partner, Multicultural Capital LLC
9. Romulo (Romy) Diaz, Jr., VP and general counsel, PECO Energy Company
10. Christopher Lalan, Esq., SVP and director of the legal division, Banco Popular North America
11. Anthony López, CEO and managing director, AZZUR Group
12. Hon. Pedro Pierluisi, former resident commissioner for Puerto Rico, 2009-2016
13. Lisa Garcia Quiroz, SVP of Time Warner Inc. and chief diversity officer and president of Time Warner Foundation 14. Dr. Maria Rivas, M.D., FACP, FACE, SVP for global medical affairs, Merck 15. Anthony Salcido, VP and corporate controller, Toyota Motor Sales and Toyota Manufacturing, U.S.A 16. Hon. Loretta Sanchez, former US Congress member, 1997-2016
17. Yasmine Winkler, regional CEO for Community and State Central Region, UnitedHealth
As the first Hispanic woman to serve on the board of a top-five Fortune 100 company, Kimberly Casiano is establishing a legacy of diversity that goes beyond tokenism
A Balance of Business and Heart
by
Galen Beebe, photos by Cass Davis
kKimberly Casiano’s path to the boardroom began when she was an undergraduate at Princeton University where she studied politics and Latin American history. Although there were not many Latino students in her class—she was one of only two from Puerto Rico—her Latin American studies courses were almost entirely composed of Latino students. “At that time, Hispanics were not high on the radar screen of most non-Hispanics as being an important economic or political group,” she says.
To liven up the discussions in one of these courses, Casiano regularly argued against one of the few non-Latino students in her class, even when she agreed with his statements. She later learned he was Bill Ford, the great-grandson of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford.
By the time Ford and Casiano reconnected two decades after graduating, Ford had become chairman of the board at Ford Motor Company. When he asked Casiano to consider joining the board, he hearkened back to their college days. “He asked if I hadn’t changed my style since Princeton,” she says. “He wanted a Hispanic director for the board—but not a token Hispanic.”
Casiano hadn’t changed her style. After graduating from Princeton, she became the youngest woman at the time to receive an MBA from Harvard Business School. She went on to found Caribbean Marketing Overseas Corporation, a consulting firm that worked with the US Agency for International Development and the US Department of Commerce on economic development projects in the Caribbean and Central America.
Casiano then joined—and later became president of—Casiano Communications,
a publishing company started by her father that produced Spanish-language magazines. “I’m not a product of corporate America,” she says. “I’m a product of an entrepreneurial family, so the idea of a board of directors of a public company was really not in my realm of experience.”
Despite this, she joined the board of Ford Motor Company in 2003, becoming the first Hispanic woman on the board of a top-five Fortune 100 company. Three years later, she joined the board of Mutual of America, a retirement products and insurance coverage provider.
During her tenure at Ford, the company went through a particularly challenging period of reinvention. Along with balancing day-to-day issues, such as compliance and investor relations, the board was helping to re-engineer the company’s strategy. “Boards can get lost in the myriad of time-consuming, bureaucratic things that we need to do,” Casiano says. “During that period, there were so many things to discuss that the importance of being able to communicate in a concise, succinct way became especially important.”
Among the board’s challenges was cutting costs while maintaining the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility. “A company can have a heart, and a company can be socially responsible, committed, and passionate while, at the same time, being profitable,” Casiano says. “I look for those kind of companies.”
It was this balance of business and heart that drew Casiano to both Mutual of America and Ford. The former was created to establish retirement plans for workers in the nonprofit sector who were not eligible for social security benefits at the time. “Their core—their very DNA— has to do with making the world a better place as well as maximizing success,” she says.
Similarly, Ford’s legacy began with Henry Ford’s philosophy of paying
KIMBERLY CASIANO
President
Kimberly Casiano and Associates
I’m not a product of corporate America. I’m a product of an entrepreneurial family, so the idea of a board of directors of a public company was really not in my realm of experience.”
Thoughts from Victor I’ve had the pleasure of working with this dynamo. She exudes courage and is an absolute catalyst for change. Kim has a powerful voice in the board room and is highly effective! Felicidades Kim!
factory workers a fair wage, and today, Bill Ford is committed to environmentalism. “He was talking about [environmentalism] before people in corporate America were even mentioning it,” Casiano says. “He was very involved in changing manufacturing processes at Ford to more environmentally sustainable processes.”
In establishing her own legacy, Casiano seeks to help build a case for women and minorities in the boardroom—one that goes beyond tokenism and demonstrates proven growth and shareholder value.
As the Hispanic market in the United States has grown, she has seen diversity initiatives shift from legislated programs, such as affirmative action, to a business interest in a market that now has significant economic and political power. “No longer is it simply a feel-good decision on the part of corporate America to pay attention to the Hispanic market,” she says. “It’s a business decision that makes sense.”
As a board member, Casiano helps set a culture that values diversity at Ford, at Mutual of America, and at the companies where her colleagues are executives. “They’re going to sit back, and they’re going to say, ‘Gee, do I have any Hispanics on my board? Do I have women on my board?’” she says.
When Casiano visited Harvard Business School in 2017 to give a talk to Latino students, she stood in front of a room of future leaders, men and women alike. “When I entered Harvard Business School in the late 1970s, I was one of the few women—never mind Hispanic women,” she says. “Change is happening as we speak. I think that there will be some very different numbers ten years from now.”
Ford Motor Company congratulates board member Kimberly Casiano for her recognition as one of the “Best of the Boardroom.” We join Hispanic Executive in celebrating your leadership and dedication. Thank you for your insights and contributions to our governing board.
The best table doesn’t need a reservation.
A Legacy of Service
Maria Otero brings a lifetime of diplomacy and serving the underserved to Herbalife’s board of directors
MMaria Otero came with her family to the United States from Bolivia when she was twelve years old. A time of many transitions for any adolescent, Otero had the additional challenge of learning an entirely new language and culture. For several years, she desperately wanted to assimilate as much as possible. She even avoided speaking Spanish in public and yearned to have blond hair.
It wasn’t until she graduated from high school that she began to realize the value of being so familiar with two different cultures.
“I could speak two languages,” she says. “I could keep score at a baseball game and go out and dance salsa. Being able to navigate those different worlds created great opportunities.”
Among those opportunities were paths that led to Otero working as an economist for the United States Agency for International Development; serving as president of Accion, a pioneering organization in international microfinance; and becoming the highest ranking Hispanic official at the US State Department, where she was the first Latina Undersecretary in the department’s history.
Serving others, though, runs in Otero’s family. One of her sisters has been deputy mayor of Washington, DC; another sister is CEO of a major nonprofit in New York City; a third sister was a community organizer; and her brother headed the first commercial microfinance bank in the world. Her paternal grandfather was minister of education in Bolivia; an uncle was mayor of La Paz, Bolivia; and one of her cousins was Bolivia’s ambassador to the United States.
by Jeff Silver
Currently, Otero serves on the board of directors of Herbalife, where she chairs the compensation committee. This places her in the key role of guiding decisions on salaries, bonuses, compensation philosophy, long-term incentive plans, as well as human resources and diversity issues.
Most of her career has been devoted to providing opportunities and access to resources to underserved populations. She
believes Herbalife is a good fit for her because it strives to reach similar groups.
“Herbalife provides a means for its distributors, many of whom are women, to help maintain their families and improve their economic situations,” Otero says. “Through my previous work, I understand the challenges and constraints those families face, so Herbalife’s business perspective and sense of purpose both speak to me.”
To help illustrate, she points to visits she’s made to nutrition clubs set up and managed by women. She says those women feel empowered and have a sense of pride and dignity in their work. She also says she’s able to personally relate to their experiences because of her own accomplishments and the way her husband and three children have helped her balance their work and family.
Herbalife is unusual in that there are two other Hispanic directors on its board: Richard Carmona, former US Surgeon General, and Michael Montelongo, former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force who was featured in Executive ’s 2017 Best of the Boardroom section. However, Otero still serves as the board’s only female director.
“Being the only Latina in the room, I’m able to bring complex, nuanced in sight and a historical perspective about a growing, vitally important segment of our population ,” she says.
For example, Otero was able to advise the company against a particular approach to marketing to Hispanic women. She pointed out that Latin culture views being a little overweight and curvaceous as perfectly acceptable and recommended finding a different way to encourage improved fitness and nutrition. “A fiftyfive-year-old Latin woman would no more start exercising to get thinner than she would start believing in the man in the moon,” she told the board.
When asked about the diversity of most corporate boards, Otero points to the fact that only 1.5–2 percent of the Fortune 1000 have Latino members. She
Herbalife provides a means for its distributors, many of whom are women, to help maintain their families and improve their economic situations. Through my previous work, I understand the challenges and constraints those families face, so
Herbalife’s business perspective and sense of purpose both speak to me.”
Boards
Thoughts from Victor Immigrants add tremendous value to this country, as did Maria’s family. The move to the United States has been transformational for her family and for our country. She has tremendous insights, especially as a Latina!
by Galen Beebe
firmly believes that achieving effective diversity requires intentional, purposedriven efforts. It’s a lesson she learned from Hillary Clinton, who appointed women to four out of six undersecretary positions while she was Secretary of State.
She gives Herbalife high marks for its emphasis on finding qualified minority professionals for its board of directors.
“The company isn’t interested in token representation,” Otero says. “It reached out to minority professionals who tapped their own networks for candidates. That kind of authentic access is the only way to reach beyond the perspectives of existing, nonminority board members.”
She adds that there also has to be genuine desire all sides. “I’ve been interviewed by boards of other companies that were doing what they thought they should but weren’t really interested in increasing their diversity,” she says.
Otero sees much of her role on the board and as committee chairwoman as helping to bring about consensus of different viewpoints. As a woman and former diplomat, she feels it’s something for which she’s well-suited.
“I believe any group is enriched through a variety of viewpoints,” she says. “In the case of Herbalife, they all contribute to creating a world-class company.”
Promoting the Change He Believes In
Throughout his career as a lawyer and SEC Commissioner, Luis Aguilar advocated for equality. Now, he’s doing the same as a director on three boards.
LLuis Aguilar’s interest in law began when he was in grade school and he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. The schools had recently desegregated, but social separation persisted, and Aguilar, a Cuban immigrant, was in the middle.
As he witnessed the aftermath of desegregation, Aguilar was struck by the power of the legal process. “The thought of being a lawyer starts to creep up because you realize there’s this power out there that can force people to do things they don’t necessarily want to do volitionally—things I thought were good,” he says.
Aguilar began law school with the intention of becoming a civil rights lawyer, but he soon shifted his focus to corporate and securities law. He began his career as an attorney at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and for more two decades, he worked at both nationally recognized law firms and as general counsel, head of compliance, and executive vice president for a global asset management firm.
He then entered a brief retirement, but it soon became clear that sitting at home wasn’t satisfying for the self-described “type-A workaholic.” He became a partner at Alston & Bird before moving to McKenna Long & Aldridge. Shortly thereafter, he received a call on behalf of the majority leader of the US Senate asking if he would consider joining the SEC as a commissioner.
His term as commissioner began on July 31, 2008, six weeks before the stock market crashed, and the agency entered one of its
Boards
Envestnet Inc.
Donnelly Financial Solutions Inc.
MiMedx Group Inc.
I was a product of the generosity and the charity of the American people.”
most active periods. “I was in the middle of the eye of the hurricane of what they call the Great Recession,” Aguilar says. “For better or for worse—and I hope for the better— my fingerprints are on the new generation of regulations that are going to govern the capital markets.”
Originally appointed by President George W. Bush, Aguilar was reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, becoming the eighth longest-serving commissioner in history of the SEC and only one of three commissioners who were appointed by presidents of two different political parties. He has often heard himself described as a no-nonsense communicator—a trait that was a job requirement for years. “As a commissioner, I didn’t have the luxury of straddling fences,” he says. “You actually have to vote yes or no on things. If you’re going to vote yes or no, I think you owe it to the American public, to the SEC staff, and to your fellow commissioners to be clear as to why you’re a yes or why you’re a no.”
When he left the SEC at the end of 2015, Aguilar was approached by various companies about serving on their boards. In due course, he joined the boards of Envestnet Inc., a provider of portfolio, management, and reporting solutions to financial advisors and institutions; Donnelly Financial Solutions Inc., a financial communications and data services company; and MiMedx Group Inc., a regenerative medicine and biopharmaceutical company.
MiMedx’s chairman and CEO Parker H. Petit is grateful for the work Aguilar has accomplished throughout his career. “We thank you for your dedication and commitment to improving diversity, especially for women and minorities throughout your career and all you have given back to your communities and constituents.”
LUIS AGUILAR Partner Falcon Cyber Investments
developing and marketing regenerative and therapeutic biologics utilizing human placental tissue allografts and patent-protected processes for multiple sectors of healthcare. Our PURION® Processed allografts are clinically effective and more than 1,000,000 allografts have been distributed to date with zero reported adverse reactions attributed to our products.†
Thoughts from Victor Hay que dejar huellas. We need to leave evidence that we have been here. Luis has left his prints as a game-changer in corporate governance for this country. Muchas gracias Luis!
In addition, Aguilar became a partner at Falcon Cyber Investments, an equity investment firm.
If he represented the American people as a commissioner, then as a board member, Aguilar works with his fellow directors to oversee the overall direction and strategy of the company, with the goal of maximizing the company’s growth and, ideally, benefiting the shareholders, the employees, and the community at large. “In a way, a successful company lifts the boats for everybody,” he says.
Aguilar has also been public about the importance of increasing diversity. As a commissioner, he often drew attention to the lack of women and minorities on boards, and in wealth management firms, C-suites, and the SEC itself. He has also advocated for the Rooney Rule, an NFL policy named after former Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney that requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate when hiring coaches.
“At the end of the day, I think you hire the best and the brightest that you can, but I’d like the process to make sure that it includes women and minorities, otherwise you’re likely to leave good candidates out of the loop,” Aguilar says. “My belief is that by broadening the search process and finding the best and the brightest, it’s common sense that your employee demographics will mirror what our diverse community has to offer.”
Both in and out of the boardroom, Aguilar uses his position as a lawyer to promote the changes he believes in, and to give back to the communities that have supported him. “I came to this country with three pairs of underwear and two changes of clothes. I was a product of the generosity and the charity of the American people,” he says. “When I was asked to go to the SEC, I viewed it as a way of beginning to pay back a debt to what I think is the greatest country in the world.”
by Jeff Silver
Investment Pioneer
Tere Alvarez Canida views challenges as opportunities. Now, she brings her perseverance, passion, and investment expertise to Infinity Property & Casualty’s boardroom.
aAs a cofounder, principal, president, and highly successful portfolio manager at Taplin, Canida and Habacht (TCH), Tere Alvarez Canida has been a role model and groundbreaking pioneer for Hispanic women in the traditionally male-dominated financial industry. Her entrepreneurship and leadership helped make the company a top performer for thirty-one years with nearly $11 billion under management when it was ultimately sold to Marshall & Ilsley Bank (now Bank of Montreal) in 2008.
Having retired from TCH, she now sits on the board of Infinity Property & Casualty and has cofounded a new company, Cito Capital Group (CCG), with her husband, Bill, and children Brian and Carolina. She has also been named one of the most influential Hispanics in the United States by Hispanic Business and inducted into the National Association of Securities Professionals Hall of Fame.
Canida attributes her accomplishments to a passion for the capital markets that she inherited from her father and to lessons that she learned from both parents about perseverance and hard work.
“When I started, there were very few women, let alone Latino women, in the investment world,” she says. “But I never viewed the hurdles as challenges. I saw them as opportunities that I could take advantage of.”
One of her first clients as a senior investment officer at Southeast Bank Trust Company—prior to launching TCH—was a wealthy woman who was initially upset that a young Latino woman had been assigned to her account. Through extensive communication; Canida’s philosophies of making the client her first, second, and third priorities; and always attempting to anticipate and exceed expectations, that woman (and her family since her death) have remained loyal clients through both TCH and CCG.
TCH’s performance caught the attention and gained the respect of competitors, including Jorge Castro, executive chairman of the board and former CEO of Lombardia Capital Partners, who became one of Canida’s personal friends. He
also served on the Infinity board and recommended her for the seat she now holds.
She brings value to the position through both her professional expertise and personal experience. For example, she is quick to point out that her perspectives on investment policies, portfolio management strategies, and decisions for business growth have always been based on objective processes, measures, and extensive research and analysis. But from a personal perspective, she feels that Hispanic board members can make businesses aware of the differences between distinct Latino populations and cultures, which are hard to quantify and often overlooked.
“By having a diverse group of board members, companies can learn to attract new customers and significant new sources of revenue,” Canida points out. “Diversity isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s smart business.”
Unsurprisingly, even with her years of experience and acting as the chairman of several key committees within Infinity’s
“When I started, there were very few women, let alone Latino women, in the investment world. But I never viewed the hurdles as challenges. I saw them as opportunities that I could take advantage of.”
board, Canida still views serving as a board member as an opportunity to learn more, including how to build consensus.
“Building consensus requires a great deal of listening to others with very different experiences from my own,” she says. “It’s nothing like leading your own company, but it can still be viewed as a kind of research that helps you learn from their strengths. And hopefully, they learn from yours.”
Canida views younger generations of Hispanic professionals as being more entrepreneurial, more flexible, and less afraid of taking risks. That, in turn, will lead to more diverse groups getting involved in every aspect of business and prepare them to be the board members of the future.
In addition to always putting clients first, second, and third, she advises them to be as transparent as possible, to remember that integrity is never negotiable, and to remember that you must constantly adapt to changing situations.
She offers her own experience during the financial crisis of 2008 by way of example. “There was no way to know who the next Lehman Brothers would be, so I stuck to our processes and methodologies, took in the latest data and analyzed, analyzed, analyzed to make the best possible decisions for our clients,” she says.
Canida is excited about developing Cito Capital Group as a boutique multifamily investment office. Since TCH had a significant portion of its business in institutional investing, she sees CCG as returning to her roots, given that it will allow her to focus one-on-one with clients on everything from investment strategies and portfolio structures to estate planning.
Looking back on her career, Canida hopes that she and many other Hispanic professionals have helped lay the groundwork for new entrepreneurs to succeed and for many different industries to recognize the importance of diversity.
Thoughts from Victor
I first met Tere with New America Alliance. Tere is the poster child for persistence and perseverance. The worst thing you can tell Tere is “You can’t do that.” She will prove you wrong!
“Many of us have worked very hard to make it easier for the next generation,” she says. “It doesn’t mean they won’t still need to work hard, but hopefully it gives them a leg up from where we started.”
Infinity Insurance c ongratulates Tere Canida for her vision and leadership inside the boardroom and her dedication to the communities we serve. Her work with organizations like The New America Alliance, and support of Infinity’s Read Conmigo program demonstrate the power of street-level investments to energize markets and build shareholder value.
How Nielsen’s Michael Alicea took an unorthodox path to reach the boardroom
Return on Investment
by David Baez
TThe common wisdom about career progression is that you move steadily up from positions of lesser to greater responsibility, each advancement bringing a hike in salary. How could you possibly get to the top other than climbing up one rung at a time?
Looking at the career of Michael Alicea, executive vice president of global human resources at storied consumer-research firm Nielsen, it becomes clear that there is not only one path to the pinnacle.
“I realized that, for me, the path was less about taking on bigger and bigger roles,” he says. “Whenever I took a job for money, I always regretted it. I made decisions based on the things that were attractive to me and engaged me. That’s why I always tell young people, ‘Do things that will give you the biggest return on investment in your life. When you do that, the money will eventually come.’”
By not looking at his career as a simple vertical trajectory, Alicea was able to focus on broadening the scope of his expertise. With very new business, he would quickly study the industry, find out the businesses’ competitors and key drivers, and learn what was happening in the overall market. Bringing competitors to a playing field in which they can’t compete drove his thinking. “The ability to not only look at what is in your own company for a solution to a problem but to also partner with companies like TCS and RiseSmart that can help extend your capabilities is part of the answer,” he says.
He didn’t see it at the time, but every new job he took—even if they were horizontal moves—built up his credibility in the eyes of employers to come. The ultimate proof of that is that he now oversees thirty thousand employees at Nielsen, and he recently joined the Board of Emerald Expositions, the largest tradeshow organization in the United States.
“Looking back, most of it was planned,” he says. “It really was just about trying to take my innate abilities and talents and hone them and develop them. As
I did that, I became a better and better manager, leader, and business partner. Through my broad experiences I was able to add value quickly to the organizations that I joined beyond the role.”
Emerald, a $1.6 billion New York Stock Exchange-traded company, is the leader in the trade-show business, holding shows across myriad industries, in spaces that can exceed 600,000 square feet. For a Hispanic who built his career without much external help, sitting on the board of such a major player is a kind of crowning achievement. It is also Alicea’s latest choice to do something that gives him yet more value as a leader.
“It’s been very significant to me because it’s been another way for me to stretch my abilities,” Alicea says. “It takes me out of my comfort zone and creates another opportunity to take what I’ve learned and apply it in a different way. Shareholder value gets created when you have a set of different perspectives and approaches in the boardroom.”
On the board of Emerald, Alicea’s vast experience is indispensable. The company values the key insights on matters the general manager may have no familiarity with. These are big decisions— ones that shareholders will benefit from.
“With everything I’ve seen, I can say, ‘I saw this before, and this is how it played out,’” Alicea says. “One of the most important things I learned in my career came from situations in which there was no money to throw at a problem. That meant you needed to be creative. I’ve never lost that scarcity perspective.”
Growing up in the Bronx as a child of Puerto Rican parents (a Nuyorican in the city’s parlance), Alicea got a close look at scarcity from the get-go. His father worked as an elevator operator. When he clocked out there, he headed immediately to another job. By the time the young Alicea became a page at the New York Public Library, he was acutely conscious of the divide between the financial condition of the people in his neighborhood and the people he saw in glittering Manhattan.
“Whenever I took a job for money, I always regretted it. I made decisions based on the things that were attractive to me and engaged me. That’s why I always tell young people, ‘Do things that will give you the biggest return on investment in your life. When you do that, the money will eventually come.’”
VP,
“I remember being a dead broke college student and walking down Park Avenue and seeing a guy pull up in a limo,” he says. “It was so different from where I came from. I’d think, ‘What does this guy do?’”
The first in his family to go to college and someone who was building a career at a time when Hispanic mentors in the business world were pretty much nonexistent, Alicea didn’t have the support network that many Anglos had to help guide him through his career. But when he thinks back on that, he feels no resentment—quite the opposite. Alicea recognizes the advantage it gave him.
“It really enforced what my father had instilled in me, which was a strong work ethic,” he says. “I worked full-time to pay for school. It all gave me a very clear understanding that whatever I had to do, I had to do it on my own.”
That fortitude, combined with an ability to look at a horizontal career progression, has brought Alicea to a place in his career where he can serve as a mentor to young Hispanics and provide them with the benefits of networking he didn’t have when he was coming up. He started a Hispanic employee resource group and got on the board of a nonprofit that helped minority students. Now he does whatever he can to let the next generation know things have changed: there are other Hispanics in leading roles now, and they are available to help.
“I can advise them about the challenges they’ll face,” Alicea says. “I tell them that the roadblocks in front of them are only temporary, that they can overcome them. I want to pass that on because I believe strongly in the idea that if you know you can make something better, you have to do that, otherwise you are part of the problem.”
Thoughts from Victor Michael is a great testament to the American dream. He has shown that managing the people part of the equation is critical for corporations to understand, and he adds that value to the boardroom.
Adelante Michael!
“Michael, congratulations on being featured in Hispanic Executive! Well deserved! We are proud of our decadelong partnership; by leveraging our deep contextual knowledge and digital expertise, we enable Nielsen to deliver a superior customer experience.”
—Anupam Singhal,
Senior Vice President, Tata Consultancy Services. Visit us at http://www.tcs.com/
Doing The Right Thing
Augusto Lima promotes empowerment and collaboration within Novartis.
Now, he brings this viewpoint to the GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Holdings Ltd. board.
AAugusto Lima’s education and career set him on a global journey. He was born and raised in Brazil, where he also attended law school. Additional training brought him to Georgetown University Law Center before he assumed positions with Arnold & Porter, Pinheiro Neto Advogados (Brazil’s largest law firm), Skadden Arps, and then in-house posts in the United States with Sealed Air Corporation, and AnheuserBusch InBev.
His latest journey came in spring 2017, when he joined Novartis—based in Basel, Switzerland—as head of legal transactions. There, his team is responsible for global corporate and transactional matters. Soon after, he was also selected to serve on the board of GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Holdings Ltd. (GSK JV) as part of a joint venture between Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline.
In a global company like Novartis, which has products available in approximately 155 countries, one of Lima’s key responsibilities is to manage smart risk taking. He characterizes it as a complicated, sensitive endeavor that is always being adjusted as he and his team attempt to build consensus among parties with different ideas on assessing risks and determining what actions should or shouldn’t be taken as a result.
“Just having a conversation about risk is expected to move the needle in one direction or the other. How much it moves depends on how well you listen to the parties and how you integrate the various positions—including your own,” he says. “It’s essential to always directly address the differences and to stay open to all the viewpoints.”
Lima’s goal is to reach a consensus that serves the best interests and objectives of the organization, not just one person or line of business.
by Jeff Silver
That type of collaboration and consensus-building extends to Lima’s role on the GSK JV board of directors. The company was created when Novartis was preparing to reduce its over-the-counter business. Lima and Novartis’ CFO, head
of human resources, and president of AAAP, makes up the remaining Novartis board seats. Other board members include the CEO and CFO of GSK.
Aside from the fiduciary duty that all board members have to protect the company’s best interests, Lima has been impressed by the level of unified efforts to guide and improve operations. “We constantly challenge each other with questions—how a proposed plan will be implemented or why we’re not performing better in a certain region—but it’s always with the greater good of the organization in mind,” he says. “That level of professionalism and collegiality is a beautiful thing to see.”
In addition to the varied professional experiences in his background, Lima acknowledges that his identity as a Hispanic gay man adds to the diversity he brings to the board, as well as to his role within Novartis.
“I’ve never been part of the majority, and that’s created a kind of courage and pride and perspectives that help shape who I am,” he says. “I don’t necessarily want to be defined by those characteristics, but it’s also important that they be valued and accepted without judgment. Because there are so few of us in leadership positions, I do feel quite a bit of pressure to succeed and set a positive example.”
Lima’s leadership style is to empower his staff, engender trust, and to do the right thing in the right way. “Augusto brings inspiring vision to an exceptional in-house team at Novartis,” says Mark Greene, partner at Cravath, Swaine, & Moore. “He is experienced, knowledgeable, and commercial—always looking to find innovative solutions. It is a pleasure to work with him.”
Within Novartis, that means making decisions that lead to improving and extending patients’ lives. But those decisions have to be made in an environment where individuals are willing to share their open and honest opinions. To help create that type of space—what Amy Edmondson, the Novartis professor of leadership and management at the
Harvard Business School calls psychological safety—Lima frequently admits his own weaknesses.
“When you acknowledge your limits as a leader, attitudes change dramatically,” he says. “It makes people feel that they are needed and gives them an opportunity to use their own expertise to help.”
His approach does more than encourage engagement and welcome honesty and vulnerability. In a highly competitive marketplace, Lima believes it also helps avoid the risk of minimizing or discounting high-caliber staff members’ contributions. “Augusto’s approach to leadership, alongside his wide range of experience, has been pivotal in enabling him to make a successful transition into— and make an immediate positive impact at—Novartis,” says Matthew Bland, partner at Linklaters LLP.
Lima expects that empowerment, collaboration, and trust will continue to hold positions as top priorities within Novartis’
Just having a conversation about risk is expected to move the needle in one direction or the other. How much it moves depends on how well you listen to the parties and how you integrate the various positions—including your own.” Board
GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Holdings Ltd
Thoughts from Victor
From Brazil to the United States to Switzerland, Augusto displays the adaptability of many Latinos who straddle multiple countries, languages, and cultures and can do it seamlessly.
culture. Former CEO Joe Jimenez began emphasizing their importance several years ago when he was working to break down silos between departments within the company. Since then, current CEO Vas Narasimhan has significantly increased similar efforts. Lima points to the recent approval in the United States of Kymriah, a drug for treating certain kinds of acute lymphoblastic lymphoma, as evidence of the great results produced by the cooperative atmosphere that now fuels the company. He believes it will continue to enhance both the company’s product pipeline and corporate mission for the foreseeable future.
“When people stop competing with each other internally and, instead, are working together toward shared goals, they achieve so much more,” Lima says. “That’s how you come to making decisions that do the right thing in the right way. And you know when you’re making them because they produce results, that truly calm your heart.”
by Zach Baliva
The Common Thread
Although Luis Ubiñas has spent time in many industries and sectors, one thing unites his work: an unending passion for sparking and implementing dynamic change
TThe Great Recession of 2008 hit philanthropic organizations hard. The Ford Foundation watched its endowment fall from $13.5 billion to less than $8 billion. The foundation’s support for grantees was under threat, but the nation needed their work more than ever.
That’s when a new president of the foundation stepped in to restructure the organization: Luis Ubiñas. He shifted tens of millions of dollars from internal spending to external grant making through a comprehensive cost restructuring; focused the foundation’s work by deeply engaging on thirty-four initiatives, instead of over two hundred; reinvested 80 percent of the foundations endowment to prepare for the inevitable market rebound; and renovated most of the foundation’s technology systems and field offices.
LUIS UBIÑAS President, Board of Trustees
Pan American Development Foundation
By 2013, when Ubiñas left to return to private sector activities, the foundation was a fundamentally different place: its strategies focused on impact, its endowment rebounded to $12 million, and its operations modernized.
Ubiñas, the foundation’s president from 2008 to 2013, credits the work of his staff and board in the turnaround effort, but those who know him well are confident that his leadership was a major factor. Ubiñas joined the foundation after eighteen years at McKinsey & Company. As a senior partner there, he led the firm’s West Coast media practice and helped
My childhood showed me how important it is to serve the community and help others have educational and economic opportunities.”
companies adopt successful strategies during the competitive and often unpredictable transition from analog to digital and omnichannel platforms.
Ubiñas’ ability to calmly lead others through challenging times helped him prosper in both settings. It’s an ability that comes naturally to Ubiñas. He grew up in New York’s South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s, when the borough’s battle against arson, murder, drugs, and disease hit crisis levels. His father battled addiction while his mother sewed dresses and used food stamps to provide for five children.
Determined to rise above his challenges, Ubiñas sought a way out of his situation and found a lifeline in education. Financial aid allowed him to attend well-respected private schools. Then, Ubiñas attended Harvard College and Harvard Business School on scholarship.
Ubiñas started his career as a journalist before taking a job in business to support his ailing mother. She had sacrificed her own health to support Ubiñas and his siblings—but even then, the young professional knew that he would have to come back his foundational years in the South Bronx.
“When you grow up in that environment, you know you have to spend your life making a difference,” he says. “My childhood showed me how important it is to serve the community and help others have educational and economic opportunities.” Those days on the streets of New York’s roughest borough have motivated a career that’s been all about navigating challenging situations for the greater good.
When Ubiñas decided to leave the Ford Foundation in 2013, he took a look back at the first phases of his career. He spent six years earning two degrees at Harvard. He had consulted leading companies for nearly twenty years and then another six guiding one of the world’s biggest philanthropic organizations through a major crisis. It was time to try something new.
“I wanted to see if I could use a different operating model,”’ he says. “I wanted to serve as an investor and advisor, using my experience to serve on public and private boards in a more entrepreneurial way.”
In 2015, Ubiñas joined Shorelight Education’s board of directors when it was a start-up organization. Today, the company has more than $60 million in revenue. As lead independent director and chair of the nominating and governance committee at Electronic Arts, he’s been part of an effort that’s taken the video game producer’s stock price from $11 to more than $100. He was also on the first public board of CommerceHub, which went public in 2016.
Although his expertise helps in many areas, Ubiñas specializes in working with organizations that re undergoing fundamental change. When he joined Electronic Arts, it was an analog company using traditional retail channels to sell video game disks in plastic boxes. Now, thanks to what he describes as an extraordinary management team, EA is a digital company with hundreds of millions of gamers in its virtual community.
Ubiñas fulfills his desire to give back through service in the public sector, where he is active with many groups, including the New York Public Library,
where he heads the nominating committee, and the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, where he serves as vice chairman. Internationally, he is president of the board of trustees at the Pan American Development fund, which assists vulnerable people in Latin America and the Caribbean and serves on the advisory committee for the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships.
When Ubiñas considers joining a board, he looks at two factors: integrity and potential. “I want to be around talented people of pristine character, and we need to be doing something where transformation is possible,” he says. “I want to be part of a team that makes not just incremental, but fundamental contributions to shareholders and employees. I want to see the substantive difference that our work makes for shareholders and in the world.”
Today, with nearly every sector in transformation, board members with experience like that of Ubiñas are in high demand. “Any company that thinks it can avoid transformative change is wrong,” he says. “All companies need strong support and accountability from dedicated board members who are comfortable with change—with unpredictable and dynamic environments.”
Because economic factors and consumer trends change so rapidly today, Ubiñas believes that the board seats of tomorrow will go to those who are unfazed by uncertainty—who live with the understanding that the combination of technological advancement, globalization, and emerging factors like climate change make uncertainty the only certainty. Although no class teaches these skills, Ubiñas says young professionals can take steps to prepare. “Take chances,” he says. “Reason through risk. Put yourself in unfamiliar management situations, work globally, and don’t hide from challenges.”
That’s how Ubiñas has lived his entire life: managing through uncertainty. And the uncertainty prepared him for a lifetime spent helping organizations navigate fundamental change.
Thoughts from Victor
Success sometimes comes from being chameleon-like and adapting to new surroundings. Luis has done that and has been incredibly successful at changing lives from corporate offices, foundations, and boardrooms. Mucho orgullo Luis!
Profile shares the stories of the modern executive.
YES THAT MEANS YOU
Share your story of exceptional leadership with our network of powerful business leaders.
TTalent
Plotting the path to Hispanic leadership
by Joan Livingston
A Voice for Diversity
Endress+Hauser’s Marisol Sanchez shares her story of success and how she lends a hand to the next group of Latina leaders
On Marisol Sanchez’s first day as vice president and general counsel at Endress+Hauser, the company’s general manager, Todd Lucey, asked what the company could do so she wouldn’t be overwhelmed by requests for legal advice. After all, Sanchez’s position was brand new at Endress+Hauser’s US operations.
Sanchez’s response took Lucey by surprise: “I said, ‘No, let the floodgates open because that’s the only way I will learn the business.’”
So she did, creating relationships with departments as a business partner and learning the issues people were facing.
Sanchez’s willingness to take on a challenge headon is key to what makes her a successful executive. She worked hard on her academics growing up in Puerto Rico before pursuing legal studies in the United States. Prior to Endress+Hauser, she rose through the ranks and was named partner for a large legal firm in Indianapolis—the first Latina or Latino lawyer to do so.
Then, there’s keeping up with her young family. Part of her drive comes from a sense of obligation.
“I have to show the next person—whether it’s a woman, man, Latina, or Latino—that if you want to be engaged, if you want to push those issues through, there are ways to do that and people there that can support you and lend a hand,” she says.
In 1993, Sanchez participated in an exchange program between the University of Puerto Rico, where she was earning a business degree, and Indiana University-Purdue in Fort Wayne. There, she made friendships that would prove invaluable when she and her husband, Rafael Sanchez, also of Puerto Rico, came to the United States to become lawyers.
A few months after graduation, the newly married couple moved to Fort Wayne. They pooled their savings from working two to three jobs and lived out of suitcases in their friends’ living room while they figured out their new life.
Both worked in banking and quickly rose to branch managers for National City Bank. “We blinked and
three years had gone by,” she says. But they reminded themselves their ultimate career goal was law.
Sanchez and her husband quit their jobs and became full-time students at Indiana University–Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law. To prepare for the highly ranked school, they were selected for the Indiana Conference for Legal Education Opportunity (ICLEO) Fellowship program, a summer institute designed to expose students, in particular minority and economically disadvantaged, to the rigors of law school.
“Whether it’s you reaching up for support from people who came before you or you reaching your hand down and pulling others up, that’s the responsibility we have when we engage in those types of leadership positions.”
MARISOL SANCHEZ
Attending law school together was a financial burden, but it was a purposeful decision they found mutually beneficial. “We defined success as both being successful,” she says.
Sanchez worked as a litigator and appellate attorney for more than eight years at Bose, McKinney, & Evans LLP. Making partner was a huge milestone for her personally and professionally. Such an accomplishment came with responsibility, certainly in Sanchez’s mind, to be involved in various diversity initiatives within the firm and the state and local bar associations, as well as being involved in the community.
“A voice was needed from a diversity perspective, and I felt I could add that voice,” she says.
VP, General Counsel
MARISOL SANCHEZ
Endress+Hauser USA
The C Suite’s Legal Solution
Tool Kits: almost everything you need for common projects
Practice Notes: get up to speed fast on new matters
State Q&A: visually compare laws across states quickly Learn more today at legalsolutions.com/ hispanicexecutive
Marisol
Sanchez General Counsel, Endress & Hauser
Practical Law customer
Despite making partner, Sanchez left for Endress+Hauser, a Swiss-based company that specializes in instrumentation and process automation. Endress+Hauser, a former client, recruited her to create an inhouse legal department for its US operations, headquartered in Greenwood, Indiana.
As general counsel, Sanchez offers what she says is a business solution to a legal problem.
Say a business partner seeks her advice about whether it can take a certain action. Sanchez will study it from a legal perspective, but in the end, she aims to reach a solution by finding a mutual understanding that benefits the company while protecting its interests. Success in her role is being valued and viewed as a business partner.
Then, there are the company initiatives concerning diversity and women that she is leading , as well as being involved in programs to develop and further groom leaders throughout the company. Sanchez is also highly engaged in the community, sitting on numerous boards where she adds a diverse perspective as a lawyer, Latina, and woman. These initiatives and boards allow her to bring together her passions for diversity and community.
Sanchez gives talks at schools, including her alma mater, where she tells soon-to-be law school grads what the future will hold. “Get involved early and be a leader” is one of the pieces of advice she shares.
“Whether it’s you reaching up for support from people who came before you or you reaching your hand down and pulling others up, that’s the responsibility we have when we engage in those types of leadership positions,” she says.
She has had her own role models, including her husband, parents, and Randall T. Shepard, Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, for whom she clerked.
She and Rafael, who’s now a CEO for a utility company, have demanding careers, but they make their three children—ages eight, eleven, and fifteen—a priority. Her personal time is family time, which she spends attending her kids’ athletics and school activities; running half-marathons is another part of her personal time. Putting her kids to bed each night is an opportunity to debrief their day and have a conversation about school and friends.
Often she and Rafael bring them to kidfriendly community and business events, such as dinners or charitable events. She wants their children to grow up involved and philanthropically inclined.
“It’s always good to give back,” she says.
MICHELLE FREYRE President, US Beauty Johnson & Johnson
JOHNS & LEENA PHOTOGRAPHY
A Fresh Take on Beauty & Skincare
Michelle Freyre says diversity and digital are internal forces driving Johnson & Johnson’s success
by Ruth E. Dávila
Since Hispanic Executive spoke with Michelle Freyre in 2016, she has made a leap within Johnson & Johnson (J&J). Moving from general manager of Neutrogena to president of US beauty, today she leads the entire portfolio of beauty brands including Neutrogena, Aveeno, Clean & Clear, RoC, Lubriderm, and Le Petit Marseilles.
Hispanic Executive spoke with Freyre about her own personal career growth, and she provided an inside look at the company’s most effective strategies to engage a growing base of Latina consumers—and employees.
How did you rise to the role of president of US beauty?
Early in my career, I had a mentor who encouraged me to broaden my career experiences to build the foundation that I needed
to make me a better business leader. These risks helped me ascend to the position I’m in today.
Taking the role of US beauty president was definitely the biggest risk I’ve taken. The position was offered to me when I was on maternity leave caring for my fourmonth-old twins. While I was extremely honored and excited, I had to take some time to make sure it was the right decision because it meant that we would need to pack up our newly expanded family and move from Los Angeles to Princeton, New Jersey. With the support of my husband, we decided it was worth it and took the plunge.
What are some of the biggest wins and challenges you’ve faced since assuming the role?
I see it as a challenge and an opportunity to bring the best-in-class marketing practices
we employed at Neutrogena to our other beauty brands. A great deal of the success at Neutrogena stems from the importance we place on diversity. This prior experience allows me to carry these multicultural learnings to other brands, such as Aveeno.
In 2017, we engaged our first ever Latina brand ambassador, Adamari Lopez. She connects with our Aveeno audience in a very special way by being a wonderful representation of the Latina woman: a hard worker, an accomplished performer, and a great family woman. She is friendly, approachable, and authentic— and she has one of the largest social media footprints, with more than nine million followers. The partnership has already delivered excellent results, increasing the exposure, knowledge, and affinity of the brand among Latinas.
In terms of challenges, I’ve had to learn how to be more selective with my
limited time since I assumed my role. Motherhood made me realize that time is extremely precious and if you want to accomplish your career goals, you need to remain laser-focused on the things that will have a real lasting impact. Ruthless time management is critical to succeed at work, and nothing teaches you that more than motherhood.
“Motherhood made me realize that time is extremely precious and if you want to accomplish your career goals, you need to remain laser-focused on the things that will have a real lasting impact.”
MICHELLE FREYRE
Diversity is a passion point for you when building teams. How does J&J go about attracting and retaining top Latino talent?
Given who our consumers are, it’s important that we recruit and retain the right young Hispanic talent. We want our workforce to be representative of the consumer. To do that, you need to have those voices in the company, and you have to start developing them early on. As diverse female leaders are rising at J&J, we are focused on mentoring and sponsoring Latina women to give them opportunities to grow. I informally mentor many Latina employees, and part of my responsibility is to help the next generation grow into leaders. I make it a point to set up time to have coffee with anyone that reaches out to me for advice, and I actively
Recognition for Diversity and Inclusion
Johnson & Johnson has built its diversity and inclusion strategy on three strategic pillars: to advance the company’s culture of inclusion and innovation, build a diverse workforce for the future, and enhance business results and reputation. In fact, over the past several years, the company has been recognized for its diversity and inclusion initiatives.
• No. 8 on DiversityInc.’s list of top 50 companies for Diversity & Inclusion in 2016
• No. 5 on Latina Style magazine’s Top 50 Companies for Latinas
• No. 2 on the National Association of Female Executives’ list of Top Companies for Executive Women in 2016
• A 100 percent score from the Human Rights Campaign Equity Index for fully inclusive workplace policies and benefits for the LGTB community in 2016
• No. 2 on the 2017 Thomson Reuters Diversity & Inclusion Index
seek out others who have potential but might not feel comfortable reaching out on their own.
Why is Latino representation important at the leadership level in US markets?
Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in the United States, consisting of more than fifty million consumers. It is necessary that our boardroom aligns to the reality of the market and that leaders understand that business solutions are not going to succeed unless they benefit all segments of US society.
I feel a great responsibility to pay it forward—especially to women like myself who grew up in different cultures. These young women need role models they can identify with to succeed. But, according
to a Lean In survey of gender in the workplace, women are less than half as likely as men to say they see people like them in senior management—and they’re right. Right now, only 20 percent of C-suite executives are women, and only 3 percent are women of color.
It’s up to those of us who have been able to push past invisible barriers to be more intentional about seeking out and promoting young, diverse women. If we want our company’s workforce and leadership to reflect what America looks like, we need to proactively mentor the next generation of talented women.
How do your brands stay in tune with the Latina community?
We consistently communicate with the Latina consumer, learn from her, and
maintain an ongoing conversation to address her beauty and skincare needs. The key is being relevant, providing value, and respecting the relationship by not being invasive. It is about keeping the consumer’s best interests and voice at the center of everything we do.
Our beauty brands work closely with beauty influencers to bring a relevant, authentic message to consumers through new technologies and social media, while making their needs an integral part of our new product innovation. Additionally, we focus on one-onone interactions with consumers, such as in-person events and conferences, that allow Latinas to experience products firsthand and learn about product efficacy from relevant and trusted expert voices.
Do you foresee any seismic shifts and impacts to the beauty business over the next five years?
The digital space has flipped traditional marketing on its head. The way we engage with our consumers now is via a bottom-up strategy vs. top-down; in the past we talked to her with TV ads, print, etc. Today, however, we look to influencers, social media, and the digital space to connect with consumers. I have no doubt the digital space will continue to evolve and keep the beauty industry on its toes.
Across industries, the world is changing faster than we are. Winning companies are lean, innovative, nimble, faster to market. An essential quality they share is high learning agility. They act fast—succeed or fail fast—and efficiently translate what they learn to what they do. This new way of thinking and acting is going to continue impact the beauty business.
by Jeff Silver, photos by Sheila Barabad
Culture as a Competitive Advantage
Peter Muñiz uses The Home Depot’s servant-leader philosophy to create an empowering environment for his legal department
Walk into any branch of The Home Depot, and signs of the company’s culture are everywhere. It’s in the time and attention associates devote to customers, and it’s even prominently displayed on the iconic orange aprons. There, the company’s values wheel spells out its priorities, including excellent customer service, an entrepreneurial spirit, building strong relationships, taking care of its people, and doing the right thing, among others.
Peter Muñiz, vice president and deputy general counsel, points out that the company’s culture is also guided by the inverted pyramid—a version of the servant-leader philosophy—in which the needs and well-being of customers and associates are considered top priorities, even ahead of managers and executives.
“There is a family atmosphere here that nurtures respect and caring for each other,” Muñiz says. “It’s built into the DNA of the company and engenders a sense of loyalty, which helps us serve customers better, and, ultimately, makes the culture a competitive differentiator.”
He works hard to bring that same spirit to his legal team. That has resulted in an environment in which team members feel empowered, don’t allow the fear of failure stop them from introducing innovative solutions, and are comfortable constructively challenging one another. That includes Muñiz himself, who is frequently called on to justify his perspective on a range of roles and responsibilities, project priorities, and risk profiles on various transactions.
That atmosphere is challenging to create and maintain, but he believes it produces benefits that are worth the effort.
“When there’s enough trust, transparency, and candor, you organically help solve problems in ways that balance opportunities with risk,” Muñiz says. “The goal is never to create a ‘gotcha situation.’ It’s an ongoing dialogue in which we challenge ideas, not each other, in pursuit of the most effective and appropriate approaches.”
Challenging ideas is a trait that has appeared throughout Muñiz’s leadership roles over the years, says Maurice A. Watson, chairman at Husch Blackwell.
“He is continuously challenging himself to learn and master new skills and serve in new roles, excelling
PETER MUÑIZ VP, Deputy General Counsel
The Home Depot
in each job while looking toward new challenges and demonstrating humility at all times,” Watson says.
As the team’s leader, Muñiz helps set the tone by admitting that he doesn’t have all the answers. “Just because something comes from the top doesn’t mean it has to be right,” he says.
According to Muñiz, that overarching culture— along with leadership that’s humble and willing to listen to external voices—was largely responsible for the way that The Home Depot responded to the 2008 financial crisis, which went against the prevailing wisdom at the time.
It took the servant-leader philosophy to heart by listening to its customers and letting them lead its response. So, while many other companies pulled back and hunkered down to ride out the economic storm, The Home Depot invested significant capital in its supply chain, which left it better prepared to respond to customer demand and preferences when the financial environment stabilized.
“When you’re trying to go where customers want you to be, speed to decision-making and to market become clear competitive advantages.”
PETER MUÑIZ
The entire team contributes to interconnected strategies with other departments and business lines that help The Home Depot react effectively to dramatic changes that are impacting the entire retail landscape. That means finding ways to say yes to clients and business partners even when what’s required goes outside the legal department’s comfort zone.
This was the case when the company partnered with the Google Express Online Marketplace and its voice-activated Google Home platform. The business needed to react quickly to customer demand, but
Distinction with a Difference
Wargo French is a member of the National Association of Minority & Women Owned Law Firms (NAMWOLF) and is a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) by the Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council (GMSDC). The strong and long-standing bonds between the firm and its clients are a product of the level of service provided by our attorneys. It is this focused team effort and commitment to clients that distinguishes Wargo French from its competitors and has allowed the firm to develop a client base which rivals that of larger law firms.
PRACTICE AREAS:
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Appellate Litigation
Class and Collective Action Litigation
Commercial Lending
Commercial Real Estate
Complex Litigation
Creditor’s Rights and Bankruptcy
Employment Litigation
Engineering and Construction
Financial Services Litigation
General Corporate and Securities
Insurance Coverage
and
Uniting for Diversity
Thompson Hine is proud to serve The Home Depot and its Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Peter Muñiz and to share the company’s commitment to fostering an inclusive culture.
the time frame to consult with internal IT and marketing teams, assess risk, and negotiate with Google would typically have taken the legal team many months. But consulting with critical business partners and negotiating and entering into a contract was done in a week.
“Being part of an interconnected strategy means being aligned with business priorities, removing obstacles, and giving my team the resources they need to work as efficiently and effectively as possible,” Muñiz explains. “When you’re trying to go where customers want you to be, speed to decision-making and to market become clear competitive advantages.”
To further facilitate that type of response, Muñiz encourages the legal staff to engage directly with clients to fully learn their businesses and understand their key drivers. That approach enables the team to provide solutions to clients’ issues in the same way that the company offers answers to its customers’ home improvement challenges.
Like staff at all levels throughout the company, legal associates in the Sales Support Center spend time each year working on the floor in the stores. This gives them first-hand experience with what is happening on the front line and gives them the opportunity to see how initiatives they’ve helped develop are impacting customers and associates.
In this same spirit, associates themselves are all encouraged to go directly to store, district, and regional managers with feedback on which efforts are working, which are not, and whether specific products are meeting customer expectations.
In both instances, Muñiz and his team are highly responsive to ensure that decisions they make are providing the intended benefits and outcomes.
As he strives to consistently live up to the company’s values, Muñiz repeatedly checks to confirm that he and his team have done the right thing—something he feels every lawyer should do every day. But he is also guided by a quote from Bernie Marcus, The Home Depot’s cofounder: “If we take care of our associates, they’ll take care of our customers, and everything else will take care of itself.”
By always taking care of his legal team and their clients, Muñiz believes the results will be the same.
Diversity and Inclusion Matter
Husch Blackwell shares a commitment to diversity and inclusion with Peter Muniz and The Home Depot. We believe these values are at the heart of our ability to serve our clients well.
Senior Counsel, Litigation Uber
ARIEL RUIZ
The Benefit of Paying it Forward
How Uber’s Ariel Ruiz got his dream job in the unlikeliest of circumstances—from his Morrison and Foerster colleagues
by Cristina Merrill
Kindness counts with Ariel Ruiz. If there’s one thing he believes in, it is giving colleagues, friends, and acquaintances a helping hand so that they can meet their professional goals.
Ruiz would know. He came by his new job at Uber in a very unconventional way: he got a heads-up and tons of interview preparation help from his colleagues at Morrison & Foerster, where he worked for eight years before joining Uber. Most people might find it awkward to get interview tips from their current employer for a job at different employer, but Ruiz really appreciated his colleagues putting his career development first. He always knew his career would take him to an in-house role at a technology company, and Uber in particular caught his attention.
“I was attracted to Uber because, frankly, it does cool stuff,” Ruiz explains. “It had created a two-sided market that enabled access to increased options for transportation and also gave people the ability to earn extra cash on their own time, at their convenience. I was also
aware that Uber was expanding its research into artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and vertical take-off and landing aircraft, which will not only change the way we live but also the cities that we live in. Uber is the future, and I wanted to be part of it.”
In January 2016, Ruiz was sitting at his desk when he spotted a job posting for a litigation role at Uber. That same day, one of the Morrison & Foerster partners called him to chat.
Naturally, Ruiz thought the partner was going to ask him to take on a new case even though he had just taken one on and was juggling a few others. “I had also been traveling back and forth to southern California a few times a week to defend depositions and didn’t feel comfortable taking on another project,” he says. But Ruiz did the right thing for an associate and grabbed pen and paper to take notes.
The exchange that followed was a huge surprise.
The partner knew someone on the legal team at Uber who told him they were
looking for someone with Ruiz’s experience. Ruiz ended up getting interview pointers from the partner and from others at the firm. He received tips about the team at Uber he’d be interviewing with and ideas on how to talk about the company. Of course, Ruiz also did his own homework, including all night-research sessions and mock interviews with his husband. Ruiz says his colleagues at Morrison & Foerster assured him that if he did not get the role at Uber, his future at the firm would not be jeopardized.
“I didn’t want my colleagues at the firm to think that I was not a team player,” Ruiz says. “There’s a fine line you have to walk at a firm when you are interested in pursuing other opportunities. If everything went south with the interview at Uber, I didn’t want them to think that I was not interested in being there anymore, because that wasn’t true at all. I had found my home with some wonderful partners I loved working with.”
All of that interview preparation paid off. “It was just a wonderful surprise and
series of events that led me to ultimately land this job,” Ruiz says.
It makes perfect sense that Ruiz got his current job the way he did. He believes strongly in paying it forward. Ruiz is grateful to the partners who took time out of their schedules to help him prepare for his interview, time that he says meant extra evening and weekend hours for them.
Ruiz has been at Uber since April 2017, and he’s still thriving in his new role. He describes Uber as a company that values diversity, which extends to the ranks of outside counsel that help on Uber’s legal cases.
“It’s very important for us to have diverse attorneys on our matters; women, attorneys of color, and LGBT attorneys,” he says. “We have to do our part to enable opportunities for folks to get experience in and out of the courtroom.”
When it comes to his own style of working with people, Ruiz stays away from the word “management” and leans toward “partnership” and “collaboration.” “Ariel is an extremely quick study, very strategic in his thinking, and a genuinely nice, thoughtful, and funny person,” says John Bovich, an attorney at Reed Smith. “He is an absolute pleasure to work with.”
It has always been important to Ruiz that people realize he wouldn’t ask anything of them that he is not willing to do himself.
“When people who you lead or manage, for lack of better terms, see you doing things because they are too busy, they respect you and are more likely to extend themselves in the future and to help you out, too,” he says.
Ruiz is more than happy to share his experiences with others and give advice when asked for it, whether it is about working at or applying to a law firm or in-house position or applying to or surviving law school, including reviewing résumés, sharing frequently asked interview questions and his go-to answers, and conducting mock interviews. He often acts as a sounding board for colleagues, including paralegals who express an interest in going to law school.
At Uber, Ruiz is planning a legal networking event among Uber in-house counsel, associates at law firms who partner with Uber, and law students. Uber attorneys from a few different groups will hold a
fireside chat regarding best practices for partnering with Uber. The goal is to enable law firm associates to network with Uber in-house counsel, who typically interact primarily with law firm partners. It also enables law students to interact with associates at law firms where they may apply for a job and may also ultimately prepare them for how to think about client service once they start.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when reaching out for advice, he says, is not being specific or mindful of a person’s time. Broad questions won’t get you far with Ruiz, but if there is something specific you want to know and you’ve made an effort to come up with the right questions, he’s game.
“It was just a wonderful surprise and series of events that led me to ultimately land this job.”
ARIEL RUIZ
“I find it hard to pay it forward or mentor when someone’s like ‘Hey, can you meet up for coffee and tell me about your experience?’” Ruiz explains. “An answer to this kind of generic question doesn’t go very far in helping a person understand what I do or what to do with that information.”
When it comes to helping others, Ruiz believes in doing what you can. If he doesn’t have an answer, he’ll try to connect you with someone who does. He pointed out that not everyone has the network or connections they need and that it can take as little as thirty seconds to connect people.
“I have no interest in someone coming to a wrong or misguided answer,” he says. “There is no benefit to someone spinning their wheels when all it takes is a few minutes for me to guide them to the right person who can help. It’s just the right thing to do.”
no lo sabíamos
[We didn’t know until this issue . . .]
Luis Aguilar was appointed to the SEC as commissioner by President George W. Bush in 2008 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2011.
Victor Arias shared that only 2.5 percent of board directors at Fortune 500 firms were Hispanic in 2015. By 2017, that rose by 0.1 percent, according to a recent Korn Ferry study.
At Princeton, Kimberly Casiano was classmates with Bill Ford, great-grandson of Henry Ford.
Growing up, Michael Alicea’s father was an elevator operator.
Herbalife has three Hispanic board directors, including Maria Otero, former US Surgeon General Richard Carmona, and former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Michael Montelongo.
Augusto Lima worked for Brazil’s largest law firm, Pinheiro Neto Advogados, before moving to US-based in-house positions.
Tere Alvarez Canida was inducted into the National Association of Securities Professionals Hall of Fame.
Luis Ubiñas started his career as a journalist.
TOP TO BOTTOM: SHEILA BARABAD (ARIAS), CASS DAVIS (CASIANO), JACEK DOLATA (ALICEA), COURTESY OF HERBALIFE
p.
Congratulations
We are pleased to support the in-house leaders featured by Hispanic Executive with whom we are honored to work.