SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018
ANNA MARIA CHÁVEZ
From the White House to the National Council on Aging, guest editor Anna Maria Chávez has built a career on perseverance. Now, she shares her insight with the next generation women in leadership.
Anne Alonzo of the American Egg Board + Maria Fernandez of Sony Music + Cristina Scarano of BBC Studios FEATURING AND MORE P56
From industry trailblazers who have been working to break the glass ceiling for decades to rising stars who are paving the way for future generations, these women are making 2018 the year of leading Latinas.
P56
Many pundits have proclaimed 2018 the year of the woman in politics. I would argue that it is also the year for Latinas to lead—in every facet of society.
Latinas are at the nexus of women, families, and communities. They are uniquely positioned to take on moral leadership—the kind that brings other women along with them and ensures that diverse voices are heard.
As Latinas, we have an obligation to foster and mentor the women coming behind us. We must model the behaviors that inspire them to act. And we must build environments that support Latina leaders, especially during these times of change and social challenge.
I’ve been incredibly lucky to have women mentors and role models throughout my life and career. Traditionally, girls like me—young, Hispanic, poor and in a rural county in Arizona in the 1970s—didn’t break significant economic or educational barriers. Most of my childhood friends faced poverty, the risk of teen pregnancy, and low achievement rates in school.
But I grew up watching my mother lead as an elected official in our community. She challenged the common conventions of her day—and she expected the same of me. I was canvassing the neighborhood at age eight and decided to be a lawyer at age twelve. She taught me early that if you’re willing to advocate for others, then you must lead.
Often, we are role models without even knowing it. When my son was one year old, I volunteered to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court’s Committee on Examinations. After six years, I was asked to chair the committee and lead the proctoring of the Arizona bar exam. It was a huge responsibility, and I could feel the tension in the room as the more than seven hundred examinees hunkered down at their seats to begin the two-day exam. Each day, I would stand on stage and give instructions and then would wander the examination room to monitor the proceedings.
Several months later, my mother was attending a luncheon in Tucson and was seated next to a young Latina who excitedly shared that she had just passed the bar exam. As they spoke, the young lawyer shared that she
was so nervous about the exam that she was packing up her things to walk out early. She was going to give up.
But then something stopped her. She glanced up to see another Latina standing next to her exam table. The Latina was wearing a badge that read “Examiner Chávez,” and she paused and smiled at her.
With this brief encounter, the young lawyer decided to stay and finish the exam, and she ultimately passed it. She shared with my mom that seeing this other person who looked like her and had broken down barriers gave her the confidence that she could do the same.
This story taught me a great lesson about our ability to impact people around us. Even if we think we aren’t making a difference, our own actions speak volumes to those who are watching. Even with our own crosses to bear, we must take on these duties to lift the load for others.
In my career, I’ve been blessed to have bosses that did this for me. They taught me to always look for opportunities, even in the face of challenges and risks. They put me in roles where I could grow and learn. And they always had my back.
The time for mentoring is now because the statistics are sobering. In its annual list of “Most Powerful CEOs,” Fortune saw a 25 percent decline in the number of women chief executives in 2018. Only one Latina made the list: Geisha Williams, CEO and president of PG&E.
I ask each of you to be a moral leader. Be a mentor. Bring women with you. Model the behavior you want to see in the next generation of leaders.
When we have gender-balanced leadership in this country, then things will really start happening!
Anna Maria Chávez
Tackling today's issues facing the Hispanic community
Bob Jimenez of Cox Enterprises connects with the company's corporate social responsibility efforts
Jenny Flores knows the social impact that companies like Bank of the West can have
Top-level insight and updates on business in America
34 From negotiating contracts for music legends like Randy Newman and Hans Zimmer to forecasting how laws around the world will affect the company, Bernardo Silva is invigorated every day by his role as legal counsel for Disney Music Group
42 Go inside Jeff Castillo’s work at Merz Aesthetics, including how he helped the company sign supermodel Christie Brinkley as a spokesperson
At Jacobs, Michael Alvarado has turned his passion for computer science into a role in strategic planning
Cruzando fronteras: Strategies driving business across borders
138 How Ariel Rodriguez Mercado went from a professional volleyball player in Puerto Rico to a rising star at New York Life Insurance Company
151
Javier Enrile shares his practical advice on how manage global mergers and acquisitions
Plotting the path to Hispanic leadership
166
175 Chris Guzman sets up Inktel Holdings Corporation’s employees for success through her role as CFO
How Gloria Caceda became the first-ever director of global administration for World Fuel Services
160
Jorge Frausto is developing the next generation of Hispanic leaders at GE Power
NOV / DEC 2018
The annual "Top Ten Líderes" issue will feature ten executives who are changing the business landscape.
Hispanic
Executive joins Goldman Sachs to host its first 2018 #NextGen event at the Mezzanine NYC
By Vianni Busquets
Hispanic Executive’s #NextGenLideres series kicked off on June 14, 2018, in New York City, in partnership with Goldman Sachs. The event series, which began three years ago, is a networking platform for talented, multicultural professionals to come together for an evening of learning and connecting with like-minded peers and rising millennial leaders.
The series partners with forward-thinking companies committed to building a pipeline of diverse talent, and it connects
them with an impressive network of up-and-coming Latinx professionals.
The first 2018 event took place at the Mezzanine NYC, in the heart of the Financial District, and it brought together a group of seventy young professionals from Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deloitte, JPMorgan, IBM, KPMG, and more.
The evening’s guest of honor and featured speakers included Goldman Sachs’ Steven Gonzalez, managing director of the compliance division, and Lindsey Morfin, vice president of the risk division. Gonzalez— who has managed large teams globally that have covered all aspects of compliance—spoke on the importance of mentoring, forging strong relationships, and taking risks.
Gonzalez also discussed the importance of adaptability to succeed as a leader and shared insights into his own experiences dealing with change. “The best advice I’ve ever received was to slow down and be okay with your plan not working,” he told the audience. “Just because it wasn’t in your plan, does not mean something better won’t come along.”
Morfin, who interviewed Gonzalez, also shared insights into her leadership journey and similar perspectives on why change is good. “Don’t stop asking questions," she added. "When someone asks you why something is done a certain way, it’s usually a problem if the answer is ‘just because.'”
Right: Attendees networked over cocktails before the marquee conversation at the #NexGenLideres event at the Mezzanine NYC.
Below: Steven Gonzalez, managing director of compliance at Goldman Sachs, speaks with Lindsey Morfin, vice president of risk at Goldman Sachs.
Following the brief program, the group connected over light food and cocktails for an evening of intimate networking.
The next #NextGenLíderes event will take place in Chicago on September 20, 2018.
Those who attended the first #NexGenLideres event of 2018 experienced a night of networking, featuring a Q&A with Steven Gonzalez and Lindsey Morfin of Goldman Sachs.
Advocate Health Care 50
Alameda Alliance for Health 24
Alexion Pharmaceuticals 102
Alonzo, Anne 66
Alvarado, Michael 28
American Egg Board 66, 72
athenahealth 126
Bank of the West 17
BBC Studios 88
Caceda, Gloria 175
Carnival Corporation & plc 96
Castillo, Jeff 42
Castro, Karina 108
Chávez, Anna Maria 58
Cox Enterprises 12 D E F
Danone 108
David, José H. 146
Diaz, Maritza 149
Diaz, Vanessa 112
Disney Music Group 34
Dominguez-Larrea, Agustin 143
Enrile, Javier 151
Equity Prime Mortgage 20
Feliciano, José 50
Fernandez, Carmen 132
Fernandez, Maria 92
Flores, Jenny 17
Franchini, Indrani 102
Frausto, Jorge 160
Garcia, Cindy 169
GE Power 160
Guy Carpenter 132
Guzman, Chris 166
Guzman, Jaime 53
Inktel 166
Mazzilli, Gisella
Roxanne
Virginia
Jacobs 28
Jimenez, Bob 12
KFC 143 Liberty Mutual Insurance 120
Tackling today's issues facing the Hispanic community
By Jeff Silver Portraits by Gillian Fry
From opera and healthcare to Walt Disney World and Cox Enterprises, Bob Jimenez’s passions and heritage have led to professional success
senior vice president of corporate communications and administrative services at Cox Enterprises Inc., has turned his passion for people and innate cultural understanding into a thriving career. Over the past fifteen years, these skills have helped him build a fifty-person team dedicated to driving a positive corporate reputation and social and environmental impact for a $20 billion communications, automotive, and media company.
Since childhood, Jimenez has been guided by a natural curiosity to seek out different points of view. He says that he owes this to his parents, Puerto Rican immigrants who, he says, were keenly observant of the world around them and fostered an acute awareness of cultural nuances and expectations.
While working toward an MBA at Rollins College Crummer Graduate School of Business, he participated in a mentoring program at Young & Rubicam in Orlando, Florida. That experience helped him discover public relations as a career. “Public relations unveiled amazing ways to help shape messages and influence audiences,” Jimenez says. “I found that very satisfying.”
During his MBA program, Jimenez started a part-time telemarketing job with the Orlando Opera. A lifelong pianist and singer, his genuine support of the company’s mission helped him become its most successful telemarketer. “Being authentic, passionate, and knowledgeable is incredibly helpful in any kind of pitch,” he says. “To this day, if someone is lukewarm in their presentation, I find it hard to take them seriously.”
After earning his MBA and working briefly in sales at AT&T, Jimenez returned to Orlando Opera and leveraged his enthusiasm once again. He convinced the company to use him instead of its current PR firm. He made a bold prediction that he would garner more exposure and publicity for the same price.
They took him up on the proposal, but arts funding was being cut in the early 1990s, so the relationship was short-lived.
However, a local newspaper highlighted the volunteer work Jimenez continued to do with other local nonprofits. This led to a position at Florida Hospital, where he developed strategies for reaching the Latino community. These included designing Spanish-language campaigns and sponsoring a radio talk show that featured Latino physicians. He was also a pioneer in the health tourism sector, positioning the hospital as a resource for everything from routine physicals to more complex procedures for international visitors.
Before joining Cox, Jimenez also worked at Walt Disney World, where he served as manager of public affairs. He learned valuable lessons in issues management and crisis communications by responding to thousands of media calls during the 9/11 disaster and managing a reputation platform for “100 Years of Magic,” which celebrated Walt Disney’s one-hundredth birthday.
Jimenez secured his job at Cox after fourteen separate interviews with a half-dozen division presidents and the entire executive team. As the process went on, he began to recognize consistent themes: the importance of employees and their professional development and the company’s commitment to service in local communities.
“Initially, I thought everyone had studied the same talking points ahead of time,” Jimenez jokes. “I realized those points are all actually part of the company’s ethos and success. Everyone truly believed in them because they had experienced them in their own careers.”
Since 2003, Jimenez has built a multifaceted communications practice at Cox that has evolved into a strategic advisory arm of the C-suite and a key player in community affairs.
He began by developing a business case for combining his existing team of three with another group that supported communications for human resources. The newly integrated
Many organizations talk the talk, but Cox Enterprises’ Cox Conserves walks the walk. The company has publicly committed to significant impact to improve the environment:
• Eliminate waste to landfills by 2024
• Make operations carbon and water neutral by 2044
Cox Conserves partners with The Trust for Public Land, American Rivers, and the Ocean Conservancy, and has completed more than fourhundred projects in twenty-nine states. This has resulted in:
$116.5 million invested in environmental sustainability since 2007
$44.5 million in contributions toward sustainable organizations
Nearly 93,000 tons of carbon offset
58 million gallons of water saved
130,000 tons of waste diverted from landfill
group of ten then tackled the task of identifying gaps in the company’s PR/public affairs platform. This led to a more proactive and coordinated approach to communications in all the communities where Cox does business.
Jimenez also helped formalize the Cox Conserves program. Previously, corporate giving and environmental sustainability initiatives—which Jim Kennedy, the chairman of the board, had introduced—had been implemented without official recognition or promotion.
“Cox Conserves initiatives were wildly successful, but they were launched at a time when recycling, waste removal, and conserving electricity weren’t sexy,” Jimenez points out. “We’ve been able to promote and grow Jim Kennedy’s vision and are always looking to do things in more environmentally friendly ways.”
Cox’s communications practice has purview across the Cox family of businesses, including household names like Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book as well as dozens of top-tier media outlets, like the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, WFTV 9 in Orlando, and Houston’s 93Q FM, one of the nation’s topranked country radio stations.
Earlier this year, Jimenez’s team rolled out an enterprise-wide campaign that introduced the company’s dynamic new CEO— Alex Taylor, the great-grandson of the company’s founder. This included a new messaging platform to empower employees to build a better future for the next generation. “In the communications space, we have sharpened our focus on strategic thinking and effectiveness, raised the bar creatively, and developed remarkable career paths for industry professionals,” he says.
Jimenez continues to honor his passions through professionally mentoring others and staying involved with the arts by serving on the board of the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.
“After my father died, I heard lots of stories about how he helped others when they were struggling—encouraging them to stay in school and even giving them money to pay for their books,” he says. “He demonstrated the importance of not only showing gratitude for what you have but also sharing what you have with others.”
At Bank of the West, Jenny Flores is implementing a corporate social responsibility program that is helping to build a better world
By Lori Fredrickson
Jenny Flores knows how much corporate social responsibility can change an organization’s culture. After nearly twenty years of working in community development, she’s seen firsthand how it can transform companies.
“A corporate social responsibility program ingrained within a company is a powerful force,” Flores says. “This level of commitment and training for colleagues empowers them to go out and make a difference in the world.”
Flores, who is the head of corporate social responsibility (CSR) at Bank of the West, has spent the past four and a half years working with colleagues at all levels of the bank to build that culture at the organization. Although she’s deeply invested in banking, she is emboldened by her longtime passion for addressing community issues. Flores started her career as the executive director of the nonprofit Congress of California Seniors, where she traveled throughout the state to address issues of affordable housing, healthcare, and economic prosperity for its most vulnerable communities. During that time, she realized how corporations have the power to address many of those issues. Her next ten years were at Citibank, where she advanced the organization’s community relations and development programs.
In 2013, Flores joined Bank of the West to drive community impact on a
Jenny Flores discusses how organizations can take a leadership role in sustainable development with Academy Award-winning actor and humanitarian Forest Whitaker during the 2017 Bank of the West Philanthropy Awards.
national scale, an opportunity that excited her. She was thrilled to execute the bank’s commitment and strategy, both internally and externally, across the company’s footprint. The bank’s parent company, Paris-based BNP Paribas, is committed to a sustainable future that promotes the well-being of people and the environment at a global level. “Our organization’s commitment to making an impact in the world creates a natural synergy for the company’s leadership, business, and employees,” Flores says.
At Bank of the West, Flores and her national CSR team focus on four key areas: small businesses and supporting diverse entrepreneurs; youth and youth
“Our organization’s commitment to making an impact in the world creates a natural synergy for the company’s leadership, business, and employees.”
leadership; sustainable energy; and contributing to local communities. She works closely with the executive team on strategies that are both aligned with the business and are deeply authentic.
The Bank’s commitment involved looking at its customer base and where it could address underserved communities. In 2016, Flores helped the bank create a fund to put low-cost capital into microfinancing organizations, so people who would not otherwise be bankable could have access to loans. Most recently, Flores is focused on building a women’s entrepreneur program to address a gap in access to capital, knowledge, and networks. Despite a rise in women-owned businesses in the United States, only 16 percent of all small business loans in 2017 were to women.
Through the Women Entrepreneur Initiative, which set to formally launch in late 2018, Flores collaborated with her colleagues in the innovation department, human resources, and small-business
lending to deliver human-centered design training for twenty employees across the bank. Since then, those employees have reported ways they’ve found to incorporate design thinking into their own business strategies.
To help make an impact in the communities Bank of the West serves, Flores has helped provide employees with opportunities to volunteer time and talent with local nonprofits. Over the past four years, the organization was able to generate 160,000 hours of volunteerism.
In 2016, she launched the Community Ambassador Program, which places an employee in a full-time position at a nonprofit for one year while still receiving full salary and benefits from Bank of the West. The first community ambassador was assigned to a workforce development organization, where he enhanced a program to help un- and underemployed job-seekers find sustainable careers in the banking industry. The second ambassador
is currently on assignment helping a microfinance organization hone in on strategy in the marketing landscape.
With these initiatives, Flores has received overwhelmingly enthusiastic feedback. “Employees are proud to work for a bank that enables them to be involved in community issues,” she says. “They’re also able to increase professional networks that help them in their own careers.” Volunteering helps employees to develop new skills and to bring new opportunities back to the company. For example, through the first Community Ambassador experience, the bank was able to identify and hire talent from the job training program.
As the bank’s corporate social responsibility program has expanded and evolved, Flores is finding ways to align with Bank of the West’s parent company, BNP Paribas. One area Flores sees an opportunity in is sustainable energy. Within this focus area, the bank has created financial opportunities for solar panel business owners and recently awarded its Philanthropy Award in Innovation to a nonprofit advancing sustainable farming and food chains. Moving forward, Flores hopes to align more programs and partnerships like these with BNP Paribas’ global commitments and to find new ways to finance and support renewable energy.
From the outset of the corporate social responsibility program, Flores has credited Bank of the West’s deep culture of collaboration as a key factor in bringing these big ideas to life. And the results have been particularly rewarding for Flores, whose passion for innovation and social impact extends to her work on nonprofit boards for organizations like EARN and Operation Hope. “I feel privileged to be in a position where I can live my values in ways that reflect how I was raised,” Flores says.
What she’s most proud of, however, is simply the way corporate social responsibility has been integrated within Bank of the West. “Building sustainable communities and environmental awareness lives in all parts of the bank, not just on my team; it’s a part of how we do business,” Flores says. “We’re seeing a major transformation and cultural shift.”
By Rhiannon Root
Eddy Perez isn’t a gambler. In the event that his life’s story is turned into a movie, however, he says there would be one moment where he would go all in.
That moment arrived after the global financial crisis in 2008. Perez and his business partner KP Patel knew they had to act swiftly. They didn’t want their new company Equity Prime Mortgage—only three years old at this point—to fail. After all, the young entrepreneurs started the mortgage lending company with only themselves and about a thousand dollars in capital.
“So, we went all in,” Perez says. That means they invested their entire savings into the fledging company because they needed the capital to grow the business. “It was do or die,” Perez says.
Today, Equity Prime has 270 employees and offices across the United States. From the company headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, Perez serves as the president.
Perez and Patel first met in the early 2000s at Perez’s first job in the mortgage industry. “His cube was two cubes down from me,” Perez says. The two built a friendship and had ended up having a great deal in common. Patel immigrated to the United States with his family as a child. Perez’s parents emigrated from Cuba, fleeing from communist rule. Both went into kindergarten without speaking English, Perez says.
Both Perez and Patel ended up leaving that job for better prospects but ran into each other several years later while still working in the mortgage industry.
Unfortunately, those brighter opportunities with other companies began
to dim. In 2005, Perez found himself working with people he didn’t trust. He sparred with the leadership at a company that wanted him to report to a manager he clashed with. Perez tried to circumvent the problem, but the company’s leadership did not agree with his proposed solution.
“They told us, ‘If you think you can do it better, go do it’. So, we did,” Perez says about founding Equity Prime. “And they’re not in business anymore.”
Perez says that Equity Prime’s mission is a simple one; it’s to make other people successful. “If you take care of clients, the money will come,” Perez says. He divides clients up into four categories: consumers, employees, referral partners, and vendors. All are important, but the key is to meet their needs within reason.
Perez jokes that he tells his own children the same thing. “‘Dad, would do you anything for me?’ ‘Yes, within reason.’ ‘Can I have more allowance?’ ‘Now, see, that’s not reasonable,’” he says with a laugh.
Sometimes “within reason” means being brutally honest, but it never means, Perez says, being coldhearted.
Although first-time home buyers don’t always have to have perfect credit or put twenty percent down, Perez stresses that they have to be realistic about what is possible. But once they know what is possible, they can address the issues and make it happen. It’s that type of approach that has helped Equity Prime succeed in helping first-time home buyers, especially those in the Hispanic community, achieve their piece of the American dream.
“It’s not a popular thing to say, but there were a lot of people involved with the crash, not just one group. In any situation, it’s the environment that creates the problems.”
Perez attributes a lot of Equity Prime’s success to the fact that he surrounds himself with capable team members. He meets with his sales force monthly to address issues and to strategize. In those meetings, Perez wants to make sure that Equity Prime delivers on its promises and mission.
Anyone can make predictions, Perez says, but he wants statistics and numbers to inform the company’s strategy. These numbers, he stresses, give a financial portrait of a company. “Finance helps give a bigger picture,” says Perez, who earned a degree in finance, himself, from Georgia State University in 1999.
Today, the future forecasting is a lot better than when the company was founded ten years ago. And as Perez reflects
upon the company’s roots, he says the Great Recession affects the company in a variety of ways.
On one hand, there are more thorny government regulations to deal with. Perez says some of the regulations can be difficult because there’s a lack of clarity.
On the other hand, one of the positive effects of the crash is that the mortgage industry has a more harmonious spirit now. Before the crisis, there were a lot of bad actors, he says. “It’s not a popular thing to say, but there were a lot of people involved with the crash, not just one group,” he says. “In any situation, it’s the environment that creates the problems.”
In addition to bad actors, so to speak, Perez says there was a cutthroat attitude, that you had to step on people to get on top. The crash got rid of this attitude. This is a very good thing, Perez says, because there’s less ego and established professionals are mentoring younger folks. There’s more unity overall.
Mortgages and real estate are a huge part of the American economy, and Perez says that it’s part of what gives the country its distinct character. To be part of that means a lot of to Perez, especially as a first-generation Cuban American whose parents escaped communism to find their own piece of the American dream.
Congratulations to Eddy Perez, long-time member and esteemed Advisory
— David H. Stevens, CMB, President & CEO, Mortgage Bankers Association
This means that every second we spend helping you understand the mortgage process is time you get back to focus on the things that matter most.
We know it’s a big step — one filled with decisions only you can make. But today our industry is strong, safe and transparent, helping you to efficiently make your dreams come true.
We believe we’re in it together.
How Gil Riojas, chief financial officer of Alameda Alliance for Health, connects
By Karen LeBlanc
Growing up in southern California to parents who had him as a teenager, Gil Riojas had a modest upbring; money was tight and resources were limited. Riojas, who is now the chief financial officer for Alameda Alliance for Health, would have been exactly the type of member the organization aims to serve.
“My upbringing connects me back to the mission of the Alliance,” Riojas says. “If my parents lived in Alameda County when they had me, I would have been a member of the Alliance.” Today, he is responsible for four teams at the Alliance: accounting; budgeting; legal; and the vendor management department.
On a personal level, Riojas connects with the Alliance’s commitment to making high-quality healthcare services accessible to lower-income people in Alameda County. When he took the job at the public, nonprofit managed-care health plan, Riojas moved his family from a suburb of Sacramento, two and half hours away, to Alameda County, a demographically diverse community that is 22.7 percent Hispanic. “It was a big move for my family, but it was very important for me to be a part of the community that
I served,” says Riojas, who is actively involved in his community and church.
“Our staff reflects the diversity of the county, bringing different cultures and backgrounds to the job,” he says. “This body of diversity allows fresh ideas, perspectives, and views that help us better tackle our daily challenges. We recently completed two big transitions with a new payroll and benefits system and change of banking providers. The collective finance team did a great job successfully making these transitions.”
Established in 1996, the Alliance was created by and for Alameda County residents. “Our focus is on positively impacting our community rather than on shareholder profits,” Riojas says. This might seem counterintuitive coming from a certified public accountant and CFO in charge of the organization’s financial health, but Riojas doesn’t see it that way. “It’s important that the organization understands the financial impact of what we do every day, whether it’s buying a stapler or contracting with a hospital,” he says. “My goal is for us to stay financially solvent so we can continue our mission of meeting people’s needs and helping them access quality healthcare.”
Riojas sees his role as CFO in three parts: he is a financial steward, a mentor, and an educator, helping the organization’s employees and management understand the complicated language of accounting and finance. “Financial details are complex but very important,” he says. “One of my overarching goals is to provide education so that everyone in the organization understands our financial picture on a fundamental level.” Riojas holds regular educational workshops and staff meetings. He also does presentations at board meetings to review finance fundamentals.
On a typical day, Riojas shuttles between two office buildings on the campus working with the finance, accounting, and legal teams. “Every day brings different challenges that keep me excited about my job,” he says. His daily responsibilities include contract review and negotiation, reviewing financial statements, monitoring the investment strategy, forecasting, budget analysis, and translating financial issues to the rest of the organization. “I also
“It’s important that the organization understands the financial impact of what we do every day, whether it’s buying a stapler or contracting with a hospital. My goal is for us to stay financially solvent so we can continue our mission of meeting people’s needs and helping them access quality healthcare.”
mentor people who come up the ranks and encourage everyone on my team to maintain a good work/life balance,” says Riojas, a married father of two young children. “It is important for me to make time for my family. I expect and promote that for my team. The time that you have with your loved ones is more precious than anything you can do at work.”
Keeping his team connected to the mission of the Alliance is an ongoing effort. “In finance, we don’t directly touch our members,” Riojas says. “For people to be on board with the mission, they need to know how they fit in.” He keeps his team connected through regular discussions about the mission and fundamental purpose of the organization. “We like to
When you go above and beyond, the sun rises on boundless potential. We believe in the value of applauding your achievements—and the possibilities they inspire.
Congratulations to Gil Riojas of Alameda Alliance for Health
RISE WITH THE WEST.
reconnect to our core values and what are we doing to fulfill them,” he says. “Some organizations talk about their mission once and never again. When we are having a bad day and things aren’t going well, I encourage my team to focus on the individuals who are depending on us to access healthcare services.”
Riojas says he originally wanted a career in human resources, but his path took an unexpected detour into finance and accounting. “I graduated college with a degree in business, and I hated accounting,” he says. “I thought I would do great in human resources, but I soon found out that wasn’t my calling.”
Early in his career, Riojas worked for the California Department of Managed Health Care and discovered an affinity for accounting and healthcare. “I had the ability to see, on a global level, what health care plans were doing well and what plans were not,” he says. He joined the Alliance in 2016 after getting to know the company’s CEO and staff through his work at the state health department.
“Beyond the Alliance, there are many groups in our county focused on the same mission: physicians, hospitals and county partners are all striving to provide high-quality access to care for members in our community,” Riojas says. “It’s great to be part of a network of local partners that works, every day, toward improving the quality of life of Alameda County families.”
Top-level insight and updates on business in America
By Alison Ver Halen
by Gillian Fry
How Michael Alvarado discovered his passion for technology and found his home at Jacobs
versus nurture debate rages on, Michael Alvarado’s love and affinity for technology owes a fair amount to both. His father has always been early adopter of technology—the guy who is always first in line to buy the latest gadget.
“One of my earliest memories was when my father purchased a Commodore 64 with cassette tape storage,” Alvarado says. “I was probably four or five years old, and he sat me down and showed me how to use the console display and navigate directory structure to access the games.”
In middle school, Alvarado immersed himself in Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes). Many of Alvarado’s friends were also technologically inclined and gravitated to BBSes, soon discovering their knack for programming. A few started developing door games that were relatively successful. “I was just amazed that, at a young age, someone could create something that could have such positive impact on the world,” Alvarado says. Not mechanically gifted, Alvarado recognized that technology offered him an alternative means of creativity and creation.
Entering college, Alvarado wasn’t sure what he wanted to study. His father stepped in to influence him again by suggesting he try electrical engineering. “I took an introduction course to C programming, and it quickly sparked my interest in computer science,” Alvarado says. “I quickly transitioned my major and fell in love with the combination of analytical, imaginative, and creative forums that computer science allows.”
In 2006, Alvarado found the perfect place to pursue his interests when he started working for Jacobs Engineering, which provides professional and technical services to commercial, industrial, and government clients. After Alvarado had worked
in many areas across Jacobs, a former client called him about an emerging project and encouraged him to pursue it.
“I called my supervisor, told him about the inquiry, and challenged him to let me bid on it. He said, ‘Hey, let’s take a stab at this. We can win it,’” Alvarado says. “I was young and had a little bit of swagger. Thankfully my supervisor recognized my passion, and he put me in touch with the local director of business development.”
Looking back on it, Alvarado says the project itself probably didn’t make a lot of sense, but he bet the director of business development that they could win it. “I think that bit of audacity, combined with some encouraging words from my supervisor, led me to be offered a place on the business development team after an aggressive interview process,” Alvarado says.
After six years of growing the business with a small, high-performance team, Alvarado’s boss and mentor assumed a new position, whereupon Alvarado was offered a new role, specifically focused on leading growth of the company’s portfolio of systems acquisition, logistics, and testing and training services. Quickly thereafter, he was asked to assume growth-strategy responsibilities for Jacobs’ burgeoning intelligence, IT, and cyber business.
Alvarado recently added yet another role to his résumé: delivering growth-strategy integration and orchestration across Jacobs’ diverse set of markets, clients, and geographies within its aerospace, technology, environmental, and nuclear lines of business.
A large part of Alvarado’s current role is focused helping clients through the
digital transformation process, and he says it’s a surprisingly personal experience.
Alvarado compares it to multigenerational families, wherein, for some members, just turning on the computer to access email is a challenge. For others, technology is an integral part of their lives: they use social media to get their news, online platforms to date, and mobile technology to control and monitor their homes. Data saturation is an imperative, and the need for active information security behaviors in known.
“For Jacobs, it’s about truly understanding our client’s and their mission needs,” Alvarado says. “We apply our deep domain expertise, coupled with our robust digital solutions, to deliver appropriately tailored technology to those areas that are most opportune for transformation.”
For some clients, this might be as simple as moving from pen and paper to a basic digital document workflow. Others, however, are looking to use advanced analytics, visualization, and artificial intelligence. “Much of the challenge is cultural and focused on balancing the speed of transformation,” Alvarado says.
Maintaining a pipeline of skilled personnel to lead this transformation can be difficult in today’s hypercompetitive environment. “The war for talent is fierce,” Alvarado says. “Highly skilled individuals, particularly in technologically aligned fields, have a propensity for variety. Jacobs’ diverse client base and capability offering is a great strength in that regard. Opportunities abound for our employees to tackle new and interesting problems.”
Another challenge Alvarado has faced since rising within the ranks of Jacobs is defining his own leadership style. He ended up drawing on the examples of great leaders for whom he’s worked in the past.
“I espouse our culture of accountability and ownership. I set clear expectations and then provide folks the requisite autonomy and authority to achieve their visions,” Alvarado says. “I couple that with supplying our personnel with the tools and support network they need for success.”
Although Alvarado noted that the idea of accountability tends to connote isolation, he emphasized that it’s quite the opposite at Jacobs. “This is absolutely a team sport,” Alvarado says. “It requires a keen appreciation for people. Empathy, patience, and compassion are imperatives; you must serve those you work with.”
Today your vision meets its full potential, as CH2M joins Jacobs, creating greater solutions to deliver more: The promise of a more connected, sustainable world.
Everything is possible.
Find out more at www.jacobs.com or follow us @jacobsconnects
Bernardo Silva is still a fan as he helps guide music publishing at the Disney Music Group
By Jeff Silver
After earning his JD from Stanford Law School and joining the workforce, Bernardo Silva realized that working at a private law firm wasn’t speaking to his passions. Luckily, he discovered a job listing for a corporate lawyer at Sony Music Entertainment, “no corporate experience required.”
“You don’t see opportunities like that anymore,” says Silva, who is now vice president of business affairs and legal counsel at Disney Music Group. “Sony gave me the chance to learn the nuts and bolts of the music industry as I went—including the legal work that contributes to helping the company run its business.”
Silva had always had an interest in music. He grew up with five older siblings who all shared a love of music. Because of the range of their ages, he listened to everything from classic rock to punk and new wave. He and two of his brothers were also avid guitar players.
At Sony, Silva got an inside look at the industry. He gained valuable experience negotiating and drafting a range of different types of agreements that covered everything from recording contracts to soundtrack distribution. He also learned the nuances of the music business, such as how artist royalties are calculated and what deductions are taken from those royalties for items such as recording costs, packaging, and breakage, a term historically related to vinyl records and lost inventory resulting from units damaged during shipment.
But when the online digital music world appeared, the traditional music industry initially panicked, Silva says. In 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued the peer-to-peer music sharing website Napster and ultimately shut down the site. But legal action couldn’t stop CD sales’ long, slow decline.
Silva, VP of Business Affairs & Legal Counsel, Disney Music Group
“Disney wants its music to be heard and is receptive to negotiating deals for outside uses as long as those deals make sense from both a business and brand perspective.”
As record labels went through successive rounds of layoffs, Silva decided he needed to find a more secure environment. He landed at Paramount Pictures, where he again learned from the ground up, this time about the business and legal aspects of how music is used in films. His work was now focused on agreements for work-forhire music content for studio projects and related soundtrack releases. “Representing a film studio definitely felt more secure because music is just one component—although a critical one—of their primary offerings,” Silva says.
Now at Disney, he is responsible for overseeing the business and legal affairs of Disney Music Publishing (DMP). One primary focus of Silva’s job is to close deals that monetize the company’s extensive catalog of musical compositions—from “Spoonful of Sugar” to “Let It Go”—through various commercial uses. Historically, Disney had a reputation for being extremely proprietary about its song catalog, but his work is part
In his role at Disney Music Group, Bernardo Silva oversees everything from the royaltymanagement system to licensing agreements.
of company efforts to actively recalibrate its strategic approach to music licensing.
“Disney wants its music to be heard and is receptive to negotiating deals for outside uses as long as those deals make sense from both a business and brand perspective,” Silva says. “The more of these types of exploitations of our song catalog we can facilitate, the more we can contribute to the bottom line.” Those uses include deals with a varied range of digital service providers including Apple, Facebook and Google; print music publishers; and non-Disney commercial advertisers.
The team that Silva manages performs a range of copyright administration activities in the music publishing space. This includes
everything from negotiating and inputting splits for individual songs (details on how the ownership and future royalties are divided among the songwriters and publishers) into DMP’s rights and royaltymanagement system to creating cue sheets (detailed logs on writers, publishers, duration, and use type for any music appearing in film or television).
When it comes to technology in the industry, Silva admits that legal departments often play catch-up to innovative music formats, platforms, and uses. For example, the transition from downloaded purchases of individual songs to streaming music services has led to a proliferation of new companies attempting to capitalize on how listeners consume music. In stark contrast to the industry’s lack of insight into the digital music environment more than twenty years ago, Disney is more open to considering the possibility of issuing provisional or limited licenses to start-ups that are eager to engage music
his recognition in
rights holders early in their companies’
“Entertainment companies always try to anticipate the next big thing,” Silva points out. “To help nurture relationships and to protect our intellectual property, we can provide shorter duration limited licenses or licenses tied to milestones that can trigger more extensive rights or a longer term when values and overall parame-
Even with so many business processes and a constantly evolving business landscape, Silva is committed to being an educational resource for others. He is involved in outreach to local law schools and is actively involved in the company’s Disney Lawyers of Color affinity group.
Silva has become a seasoned music business professional over the course of his career, but he continues to learn every day. He points to how energizing it can be to realize that an industry development in Germany or Japan tomorrow can impact the company’s bottom line six months or
At heart, though, he remains a true music fan. He still gets excited about being able to sit in on a score recording session with Quincy Jones; about negotiating deals for industry titans like Randy Newman, Hans Zimmer, and Kristen and Bobby Lopez, the songwriting powerhouses and Coco; and having had producer, writer, performer Moby accidentally wander into his office and chat
“No matter how long I do this,” he says, “there’s something exciting about riding in the elevator with Richard Sherman, who cowrote songs for Mary Poppins and The , or with Ozzy Osbourne as part of my day at the office.”
William Sevilla takes television production to warp speed at Twentieth Century Fox
By Valerie Menard
TVs may be thinner and viewing mediums more varied, but the magic of television remains constant. Like the Wizard of Oz, however, much of that magic happens behind the scenes. At Twentieth Century Fox, William Sevilla, executive director of digital manufacturing and distribution – TV mastering, works his magic.
“I think viewers would be surprised to know that a lot of hard work goes into making television available around the world,” Sevilla says. “Behind the scenes, people grow gray hairs making sure the minute details are taken care of. This industry makes the impossible seem possible, but at the end of the day, it’s about hard work.”
The California native is the eldest of three children born to Arturo and Lourdes Sevilla, both natives of Mexico. Living in his grandmother Rosa’s house, Sevilla grew up around an extended family and remembers being inspired by his uncle Armando and his extraordinary work ethic. “He worked full-time in manufacturing but also worked in construction, restored classic cars, and worked as a DJ on weekends,” Sevilla says. “But he was also a great family man and made sure to spend time with Grandma and his siblings.”
It was also as a child that he became fascinated with television, particularly his favorite shows, Married with Children and The Simpsons. “I sat in front of the television for as long as my parents would let me,” he says. “I had never seen shows like that, and I remember wanting to find out how they worked.”
As an undergraduate at California State University, Fullerton, he switched majors from business to radio, television,
and film (RTF), landed internships at Dr. Phil and Cartoon Network, and began his career at Fox as a temp.
“When I took Introduction to RTF, that’s where I hit my stride,” he says. “I found that I enjoyed coming up with project ideas, collaborating with classmates, and editing all together. It felt natural to me.”
In a baptism by fire, he was quickly catapulted into the world of television distribution when his boss at Fox left for a month-long vacation. Because of his bilingual skills, he was hired to help oversee localization of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking markets.
“I would go through old purchase orders and find the contacts,” he says. “I reached out to vendors to ask advice and questions. It was through asking question that I figured out my role. I got hired as a full-time employee after three months.”
Now, he’s come full circle, surviving multiple management changes and reorganizations at Fox. Today, he manages a team of his own, trains them on the process he developed along the way, and continually reevaluates that process to finds ways to improve.
In the television industry, that fluidity of thought is essential, particularly with the growth of technology and the speed that it requires to remain competitive. Focused on the digital supply chain and post-production, Sevilla looks to outcompete other digital product providers like iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix—and not just in the United States but in countries like France, Germany, and Spain.
“In the tech area of TV distribution, every hour matters,” he says. “The faster we can get a show out the door, the better. Once
a show hits the air, it can be pirated, and if so, it loses all its value. It’s important for my team to be quick so that other countries can create sound tracks and subtitles and get the same experience of getting something new, like a US audience.”
This season Fox is handling fifty original series on different networks, including Homeland on Showtime, This Is Us on NBC, and The Simpsons, the longest-running show on Fox with more than six hundred episodes.
According to Sevilla, it took a natural disaster to flip the industry on its head—specifically, the tsunami of 2011 that devastated Japan. Content had been distributed via videotape, but the process was disrupted when Sony, the chief tape supplier, could no longer produce.
“I think viewers would be surprised to know that a lot of hard work goes into making television. This industry makes the impossible seem possible, but at the end of the day, it’s about hard work.”
“The shortage forced clients to switch over to taking shows digitally, and within a year, we had to reinvent the supply chain,” he says.
At the time of the interview, Disney was in the process of purchasing Twentieth Century Fox.
“Before, we were media a company that sold content,” he says. “Now, we’re turning into a tech company that sells content.”
Sevilla relies on his team of thirteen to meet the challenge and happily mentors them.
“Even though we rely on technology, we ultimately depend on people first,” he says. “People make these difficult deadlines manageable and the workplace fun and exciting.”
WGBH is honored to be a partner of 20th Century Fox Television, an organization committed to making their content accessible to everyone.
How Jeff Castillo helped Merz sign supermodel Christie Brinkley to promote the company during a time of intense competition
By Russ Klettke
is an executive who knows how to step into different roles because his life and career have involved plenty of varied places and transitions. Count that as a plus for anyone working in the ever-changing aesthetics industry.
Now the vice president of injectables for Merz Aesthetics, a division of Merz North America, Castillo started out in a place distinctly removed from the company’s Raleigh, North Carolina, headquarters. It was also nowhere close to the “smile centers” of affluent New York, California, Florida, and Texas, where aesthetics products have their strongest markets.
Castillo’s parents moved from Cuba to America in 1961, shortly after the Castro regime took power and three years before he was born. They learned English as he learned to speak. In his early childhood, the family lived in a working-class area of Detroit, but they eventually moved to one of the city’s toniest suburbs, Bloomfield Hills, as his father ascended to the executive ranks with the Ford Motor Company. His father ultimately became the president of Ford Motor Credit Mexico.
Castillo, the younger, achieved his own early successes in the toilet paper business—a proving ground to be sure in the consumer packaged goods segment. Today, he is responsible for things such as a celebrity direct-to-consumer activation initiative with supermodel Christie Brinkley, which supports Merz’s aesthetic line of injectables and energy-based devices
He joined Merz in mid-2017, recruited by the company’s new CEO, Bob Rhatigan, who worked with him in previous positions. At the time, Merz Aesthetics was being confronted by declining sales, aggressive competition, and an ever-changing market—a transition that brought no small set of challenges. Rhatigan called on Castillo to bring together and lead a team of people who know how to bring benefits to customers, Castillo says.
“First, we reorganized the sales force—we called it Project Spear—into three separate units to sell the different lines: injectables, devices, and skincare,” he says. “We trained them to be experts on the products and taught them how to meet expectations.” Their business-to-business marketing targets healthcare professionals, including physicians, such as plastic surgeons and dermatologists; medical spa operators, and others in the medical aesthetic disciplines. Castillo believes that in his sales force, the largest sales division for Merz North America with representation in all fifty states, the ideal skills are being solution-oriented, personable, having a family-style touch, communicating strong values to the customer, and developing long-standing relationships.
“Shifting a company’s culture can be a unique challenge that takes time, focus, and dedication.”
“Ultimately, our sales team has to know what makes the practice tick,” Castillo says. Some sales people from the prior organizational structure didn’t fit the new model, but Castillo says they found a lot of untapped potential among existing personnel.
Getting the right mix of people, training, and focus were Castillo’s calls to action. “Shifting a company’s culture can be a unique challenge that takes time, focus, and dedication,” Rhatigan says. “I’ve found that onboarding the right talent can help positively shape the overall atmosphere of an organization and the mind-set of others.”
Castillo credits their fast success in this turnaround to the company itself. The 110-year-old organization is owned by the family that founded it in Germany, with several members still involved in its shareholders council. “People here respect structure but don’t let processes get in the way,” Castillo says. “Our CEO eschews corporate drama. It’s far more important that we stay close to the customer and make decisions that benefit them.”
That’s why, so early in his tenure, Castillo was able to successfully leverage the partnership with sixty-four-year-old Christie Brinkley. “She’s perfect for our demographic,” he says.
The Brinkley endorsement complements the work of Castillo’s sales team by adding a high level of credibility to the company. It also fits the sell-through partnership with Merz’s physician customers, who recommend it to their patients, and the patients themselves. “We have events with Brinkley that lend themselves to social media,” Castillo says. “A lot of our customers are social media-savvy, so this provides them with materials to use on their websites and social media channels.”
These types of programs are what round out the sales team’s work aimed at establishing long-term, high-touch relationships with customers. Castillo understands that very well—even if it’s a far cry from the days he worked on toilet paper.
“Jeff, in particular, inspires colleagues with his strategic leadership, upbeat attitude, and dedication to relationship building and coaching,” Rhatigan says. “His perseverance in the face of roadblocks helps us to create a winning culture at Merz.”
Castillo credits his rags-to-riches father for giving him this winning attitude. “We visited the Vatican in Rome, and my father said out loud, ‘Thank you, Castro,’” Castillo says. Had it not been for that 1961 escape to America, they’d never have the wherewithal to see the world—nor lead important brand-name marketing and sales programs.
With specialized expertise developed over 110 years in aesthetics and neurosciences, Merz works closely with healthcare providers to help them deliver the personalized care that people need. Today and tomorrow, we continue working to help people live better, feel better and look better.
Learn more at MerzUSA.com.
Salvador Padron looks at his career, encompassing everything from working in finance at Mexico’s largest financial institution to thriving in a marketing role at PepsiCo
By Jonas Weir
When PepsiCo hired Salvador Padron in 2010, the company was taking a chance. He was to be a senior manager of multicultural insights and strategy, yet he had no insights experience.
Padron was actually a finance major at Tec de Monterrey in Mexico City because he always wanted to be a stockbroker.
“I’m not sure why,” he says. “Maybe because of how it was portrayed in the movies, but it looked like a really exciting career, full of emotion and passion.”
It wasn’t until after college that he took his first marketing role at Banamex, Mexico’s biggest financial institution. Still, he had little experience in marketing and none around insights when he applied for a job at PepsiCo. But he says the hiring manager believed in him, and he was offered a marketing
position at the company. He has since risen through the ranks at PepsiCo, and today he is the global head of Doritos and Cheetos marketing. And throughout his time at PepsiCo, he has worked on a variety of thrilling projects: developing the first Hispanic segmentation in the North America beverage division; launching 1893, a mainstream premium, cola product; and opening Kola House, Pepsi’s first restaurant and bar in New York City.
“This industry is unforgiving if you’re afraid to take risks, which is why working alongside Salvador is such a privilege for Motive,” says Matt Statman, CEO of Motive. “He doesn’t fear risks, he embraces them head on.”
Padron spoke with Hispanic Executive about the intersections of finance and marketing, how he leads his team, and more.
From your roles in finance, how did you discover your interest in marketing?
I really got excited about marketing when I realized the power this function has to make or break an initiative. I think we all intuitively know which brands do a good job gaining your loyalty and which don’t, but I had never stopped to think about how it’s done until I was in my first role in Banamex. Whether we were looking to rebrand our ATM network or promote money transfer products, every project had a marketing component that was critical to its success. You could have the best product in the market, but if you couldn’t communicate that to your customers in a unique and meaningful way, it didn’t really matter.
How do the skill sets for finance and marketing overlap?
I think the main commonality is numbers. Marketing is actually a very numbers-driven discipline. Many of the tools used to understand your market, like data from Nielsen or Millward Brown, are based on numbers, statistics, and projections. Social and digital media are heavy in data as well as marketing mix models that help you understand the effectiveness of your campaigns. Being number savvy helps you ask the right questions and find insights that might not be evident, so I feel I’m very lucky to be able to bring these two disciplines together as it helps me assess and find solutions to challenges in a more holistic manner.
Before you joined PepsiCo, you had a very entrepreneurial role with Viva Chapata. Can you explain how that came to be and what you learned from that experience?
For years, I dreamed of having my own business. I’d even written a business plan, but I didn’t have the financial support to quit my job and dedicate myself to getting it off the ground. That was until I met my business partner, who was willing to back the venture financially but didn’t have the time necessary to run it. I decided to leave Banamex, and we went into business together and launched Viva Chapata, a mobile Mexican fast food franchise where the main objective was to make high-end Mexican food available to the masses.
This was one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had in my career to date. I learned how much goes into launching something from scratch, and every day brought a new challenge, whether it was learning to run a commercial kitchen or defining the ideal supply chain. I also learned how hard it is to build your reputation from scratch based solely on the quality of your product and communications like menus, promotions, and flyers. When I was at Banamex, every supplier would take my call and consider working with us. People would even vie for our business. That wasn’t the case with Viva Chapata, and I learned a lot from the challenges that came with establishing ourselves and building a viable business.
How have you grown since working for PepsiCo? Tremendously. I’m incredibly grateful for all the opportunities PepsiCo has given me to learn and grow with the company. One thing that I love about PepsiCo is that they invest in people,
Salvador Padron draws on three primary traits for his leadership. Here, he weighs in on each.
Collaboration:
“I think it’s one of the most important traits a professional should have, especially in a large organization like PepsiCo. My personal approach is to always put myself in the other person’s shoes and to always be open to adjusting my position for the greater good of the project or initiative.”
Transparency:
“My team always knows as much as I know about situations, and everybody knows where they stand. In my experience, this has been a key element to building trust with my teams and cross-functional partners as they know we operate with no hidden agendas.”
Empowerment:
“Empowering the team and giving them the exposure and resources they need to be successful is key for the team’s development. One of the greatest satisfactions for me is to see a member of my team get recognized or grow within the organization, and I’m happy to say I’ve been able to consistently do this in almost every role I’ve had in my career.”
which results in assignments that stretch you in ways you never imagined. I was a finance major with experience in banking and entrepreneurship, so my résumé was interesting, but the CPG industry wasn’t a natural fit. PepsiCo brought me in because they were looking for someone with multicultural experience, but more importantly, the hiring manager, who became a mentor for me, believed in me and gave me an opportunity. I helped build a multicultural insights team, even though I had no prior insights expertise. While incredibly challenging, this ended up becoming a true passion for me, and I was able to learn many new skills that helped me ultimately lead the insights team for Pepsi in the United States, which was a daunting task given the size and complexity of the business.
From that role, I transitioned back into marketing to lead the brand Pepsi business in the United States and then to my current role leading global marketing for two of the largest snacks brands in our portfolio, Doritos and Cheetos. I couldn’t have done any of the above without the support of an amazing team and managers that believed in me, so I’ll always be grateful to all of them and for this journey.
As a leader, you describe yourself as collaborative. How do you engage and empower your team?
I believe that people are the most valuable part of an organization, so I’ve always made sure I spend enough time understanding, supporting, and developing people I work with. I try to live my professional life based on three principles: collaboration, transparency, and empowerment.
What do you think makes a positive work environment?
I think there are three key elements to a positive work environment: Having a manager that sets clear and ambitious goals for the team while empowering them with the right tools and platforms. Having a motivated team delivering impactful results in a timely manner. And being in a role where you’re constantly challenged.
What are you most excited to tackle next?
I’ve only been working for our snacks division for a few months, so I’m really looking forward to continuing to learn this important side of the business before considering anything new. I’m fortunate to lead two of my favorite brands and to see them growing tremendously around the world, so I’m confident this experience is one I’ll treasure in my career.
One of the areas of the company where I can see myself longer term is nutrition, as I have a ton of respect for our team leading that business and firmly believe in the potential we have in that space, but then, it’s the unexpected turns in my career path that have led to some great experiences, so I’ll hold off on making any predictions for now.
José Feliciano wants to inspire others with his own story of hard-won success
By Sarah Breeden
José Feliciano helps to save lives. He’s not a physician or a nurse, though. Instead, he’s the vice president of environmental services at Advocate Health Care. Although the environmental services team might not be as visible to patients as their caregivers, they play a critical role in preventive care. Due to their nature, hospitals have the potential to play host to the viruses and bacteria that patients seek treatment for. With those potential health threats entering hospital doors each and every day, the environmental services team is charged with maintaining a healthy, clean environment, which means doing everything from providing hand sanitizer to patients, visitors, and hospital staff to disposing of hazardous materials. “I don’t want patients to come in with one diagnosis and leave with another,” Feliciano says.
To make his mission a reality, the environmental services team relies on
Feliciano’s strategic, visionary leadership to create a healthy, clean, and safe caregiving environment at Advocate. In fact, helping his team members grow and develop is one particular point of pride for Feliciano. One method for helping others reach their full potential is leading by example. “I want people to say, ‘If José can do it, why can’t I?’” Feliciano says.
In fact, Feliciano sees himself as a mentor and a role model for what others in the Hispanic community can achieve. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that he realized his own potential.
In 1985, Feliciano was just a recent high school graduate with a passion for baseball. He played in a summer baseball league while working at a laundry plant for a local hospital. After a few years, it became clear that Feliciano had talents outside of baseball. In the field and at work, people looked up to him. He was a natural leader who, at the time, didn’t
much of it until he got back to his truck and read the offer. “I started screaming,” Feliciano says, laughing. “I was getting a great package to go back to the Midwest.”
In 2017, Feliciano joined Advocate Health Care, and the company is a perfect fit for Feliciano’s forward-thinking mentality. Advocate Health Care seeks to provide world-class care. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are fundamental to realizing its mission. In fact, Feliciano has been impressed by Advocate Health Care’s progressive commitment to expanding opportunities to people of diverse backgrounds. “The timing is right, the culture is right, and the people are supportive,”
Recently, Feliciano attended a forum on behalf of Advocate, and it included a section on diversity in leadership, which he was asked to take part in with several other leaders. For him, it was an honor to take part in the forum because it provided him with a platform to share what diversity means to him. In that speech, he noted that he has not seen other Hispanic executives in roles like his. He went on to say how powerful it can be to have role models and mentors who reflect your own background, which is why he would like to inspire others in the Hispanic
To that end, Feliciano aims to effect positive change both at work and outside of his career. “Whether I’m playing golf or riding my bicycle, I want to leave an impression on that person, no matter what the industry,” he says. “Don’t let the dream fade away because of someone’s
Early on in his career, Feliciano heard discouraging comments. He was told he couldn’t succeed because of who he was. However, he used those experiences as fuel to prove them wrong, which is exactly what he’s done. “That dream is something that burns in your soul; don’t let anyone deter you from achieving it,” he says. “Surround yourself with men and women who believe in you. Trust God, and believe that he is your source of
By Rhiannon Root
Jaime Guzman knows how to adapt to the world around him. He has worked in twenty-two different countries during a seventeen-year, global stint— which included six years working and living in Dubai, where he held executive roles in credit risk, operational risk, and business performance—at HSBC Holdings, an international banking company based in London.
In 2012, Guzman felt like it was time for him to return to the United States. After looking for a place to bring his unique financial skill set, he found his home as the vice president of credit risk at USAA in San Antonio, Texas. USAA’s mission is to facilitate the financial security of its members, associates, and their families by providing of a full range of highly competitive financial products and services.
When Guzman was growing up, he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to be. Sometimes he wanted to be a baseball player; other times he wanted to be a police officer. He recalls a wise teacher telling him: “Don’t worry about that question. Focus on getting into college, and you’ll figure it out when you get there.”
At Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Guzman found the world of banking and finance. During a summer internship with Household Finance Corporation, which was later acquired by HSBC, he learned about underwriting, collections, and other operational aspects of retail banking. He continued to work for
the company as a part-time employee throughout his college years.
After graduating from Saint Xavier University and becoming the first person in his family to earn a bachelor’s degree, he went on to earn an executive MBA from Northwestern University. In addition to his early academic achievements, Guzman earned a professional certification in advanced risk management from the Wharton School in 2014.
In his years at USAA, Guzman has always approached his role in a thoughtful and strategic manner. “You have to understand the DNA of the organization and how decisions are made, and there is no better way to do this than to listen,” he says. “This is vital to figuring out not only how the company works but also what your role can be within the company to make it even better.”
After working abroad for so long, Guzman quickly learned the importance of building relationships and taking the time to know what drives behavior.
As a leader, Guzman believes communications is one of the most important aspects of his role. He recognizes that it’s not easy to make the difficult decisions leaders have to make so often, but he also knows the importance of transparency to his team. During his time as a leader at USAA, he has always prioritized building strong relationships with his team members.
In addition, focusing on achievable goals is what has made Guzman an effective leader at USAA. Since joining the company, he has improved upon the bank’s credit loss forecasting model through increased evaluation of data that focuses on membership and the various stages of economy performance.
“At USAA, we focus on taking prudent risk, ensuring we understand it and how it impacts our members and the association,” he says.
In 2015, Guzman took on additional leadership responsibilities by overseeing the Member Debt Solution team. This team plays an important role in helping USAA members through financial hardships.
“You have to understand the DNA of the organization and how decisions are made, and there is no better way to do this than to listen.”
Just as he knows building a strong relationship with his own team is crucial to success, he believes having a strong relationship with members lets them know USAA cares about their financial security. It also allows his team to provide the right tools to help educate those going through a hard time.
“It’s important that we are there to help our members when they need us,” he says. “At the end of the day, facilitating the financial security of our members is the most crucial part of what we do.”
We’re honored to work alongside Vanessa Diaz, Senior Director of Marketing Automation at Transamerica, and congratulate her on her nomination as a “Leading Latina.” We are proud of her accomplishments within our company and outside our walls and we wish her continued success !
“I want to congratulate Vanessa on her Leading Latinas honor in Hispanic Executive Magazine. Vanessa leads the Women’s Impact Network Employee Resource Group (ERG) here at Transamerica. This ERG serves to empower not only women but all Transamerica employees in our Denver office. As the Executive Sponsor of this group, I have enjoyed working with her and would like to wish her continued success both at Transamerica and in the community.”
Blake Bostwick,
Chief Operating Officer
“On behalf of Transamerica, I want to congratulate Vanessa on this well-deserved honor. I am proud of her leadership both in the marketing team and as a champion within our Women’s Impact Network. Vanessa leads by example and partners across Transamerica to leverage the ideas and strengths of others to exceed expectations.”
Julie Brown, Chief Human Resource Officer
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Few embody that sentiment more than our guest editor, Anna Maria Chávez. Here, she highlights the importance of mentors, global leadership, women in STEM, and women in HR along with fifteen Latinas who exemplify the best of these groups.
ANNA MARIA CHÁVEZ
ANNE ALONZO
GWEN RAMIREZ
BERNADETTE REYES
VIRGINIA MCGATHEY
ADIS VILA
CRISTINA SCARANO
MARIA FERNANDEZ
GISELLA MAZZILLI
INDRANI FRANCHINI
RAQUEL RIVERA
KARINA CASTRO
VANESSA DIAZ
ROXANNE MARTINEZ
LORRAINE VARGAS TOWNSEND
CARMEN FERNANDEZ
EVP, CHIEF GROWTH OFFICER
THE NATIONAL COUNCIL ON AGING
BY JONAS WEIR PORTRAITS BY CASS DAVIS
Anna Maria Chávez was born to be a public servant. Growing up in rural Arizona, she became engaged in her community under the direction of her parents.
“My mother was a community leader,” she says. “I don’t know if she necessarily labeled herself that, but she and my father actually were very engaged in my local community. They saw some discrepancies in the way that certain kids were treated in school. Because it was a rural community, a lot of our schools weren’t getting the same resources that schools in the urban areas were getting.”
So by age eight, Chávez was helping her parents canvas her neighborhood to draw attention to local issues, such as school funding. She sat at the kitchen table as they discussed politics and community action and even attended local government meetings with them. And those formative experiences evolved into a remarkable career in leadership.
After graduating from Yale University and earning a JD from the University of Arizona, Chávez went on to hold many positions in the Clinton administration, as well as in Arizona state government.
In 2009, she became the first person of color to lead the Girl Scouts of the USA as CEO. And in the following years, she was named one of Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders and was honored as one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company. She has been inducted into the U.S. News & World Report’s STEM Leadership Hall of Fame, too.
Today, she is the National Council on Aging’s (NCOA) executive vice president and chief growth officer. In that role, she is responsible for positioning the organization for greater social impact in the future through creative business strategies and innovative partnerships.
As guest editor of the “Leading Latinas” issue, Chávez offers her insights into public service, what inspired her to lead, and what others can do to be better leaders.
What traits have made you a successful leader?
I think a lot of it is my perseverance and resilience. I learned a lot growing up by watching my parents struggle to make ends meet. There weren’t a lot of resources in our local community, so they taught me how to make lemonade from the lemons life handed us.
They also taught me that success is determined by your attitude. To me, it’s about sticking with things even though it may seem pretty dark and gloomy. But anything that’s worth doing is worth doing well—even in challenging times.
I’ve also been told by my mentors and my former bosses that I can see opportunities where others see risk. I’ve had amazing bosses, and I often reach out to thank them because I would never have been able to do the things that I’m doing now if they hadn’t pushed me and challenged me to live outside my comfort zone. I’m really grateful that they taught me to always look at the opportunities versus the challenges.
What is one of the first times you were pushed outside of your comfort zone?
A huge opportunity that came my way was two years out of law school. I was working for Rodney Slater, who was the administrator of the Federal Highway Administration at the time.
He had known President Clinton when he was Governor Clinton back in Arkansas. When President Clinton came to Washington, he brought Rodney in as the federal highway administrator, which was very unusual because the Federal Highway Administration was more than a century old and most of the leaders in that organization had been engineers, not lawyers.
Rodney was this charismatic, smart, African American attorney from Arkansas. He saw the opportunity that government could give local communities, specifically how they decided to invest in local
infrastructure and state highways and bridges. He was a big proponent of ensuring that there were opportunities for women contractors, minority-owned businesses, and veteran-owned businesses to actually compete and win the federal highway contracts.
We were sued by a gentleman out of Denver who felt that the program was discriminatory. Two years out of law school, Rodney and his general counsel, who was my direct boss, put me on as assist with the litigation. This case went to the US Supreme Court. I served as the agency counsel that helped the Department of Justice prepare and litigate the case. This was an amazing experience, especially right out of law school. For me, it was a huge learning opportunity to understand that sometimes leaders put you in roles so that you can learn both good and bad things about your trade.
What are some other important successes in your career?
I don’t see my career as successes for myself. I wasn’t drawn to public service based on wishes and desires for myself. I see public service as an opportunity to be a positive and productive member of a community. Because I was trained as a civil rights attorney, I’m constantly looking at the environment to ensure that people who might not have as many advantages are given opportunity.
What advice would you give to other up-and-coming Latina leaders?
As a person of color, especially a Latina, and as someone who graduated from high school at the top of my class and went to Yale, the higher I got, the less I saw people who looked like me.
A lot of times, I was the first up. I was the first kid from my high school in Arizona to go to Yale. There wasn’t anybody to call and ask, “Hey, how’d you do it? What’s the blueprint for success? Help me.” I didn’t
Anna Maria Chávez has worked in Washington, DC, since her time at the Federal Highway Administration. Here, she overlooks the National Mall and the Pentagon.
“I wasn’t drawn to public service based on wishes and desires for myself. I see public service as an opportunity to be a positive and productive member of a community.”
have that. When you go through this experience as the first up, of course it can be very intimidating because you’re figuring it out on your own. Unfortunately, if you don’t have the mentors, you can make mistakes that other people may not have made because they have a blueprint from a friend who’s gone through that experience.
What I learned and what I always suggest to Latinas—especially those taking on new roles—is to have a really good understanding of the environment you’re going into. And don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes because you learn from those mistakes. Don’t dwell on it. Just pick yourself up and keep moving.
The number-one cardinal rule I have is always support other women. It’s critical. If women are going to succeed in leadership roles, we have to support each other.
What attracted you to the National Council on Aging, and what are you excited to accomplish with this organization?
I was actually in the aging sector before I went into the youth sector. While serving in Governor Janet Napolitano’s administration as director of intergovernmental affairs, I helped to launch the governor’s Aging 2020 initiative and led the team that created the Arizona Division of Aging and Adult Services.
Working on behalf of seniors was just amazing for me. It was such an honor. Back then, I was much younger. I was in my thirties, and I would wear this button that read, “Aging: If it isn’t your issue, it will be.”
People said, “You’re way too young to be advocating on behalf of aging issues.” My response was, “If we’re blessed, we’ll live to reach our senior years, so we’ve got to start thinking about that.” That’s when I really started to get a sense of state and public policy issues around aging in particular.
When I got the opportunity to come work at the National Council on Aging, I was delighted and honored to continue my work in the aging sector. NCOA is the longest-serving, most prominent national nonprofit focused on senior issues. We are the national voice for everyone’s right to age well. We believe that any individual, regardless of their background or where they live, should have access to tools and resources that help them age in the best way they can. That includes from a healthcare and healthy-living perspective and from an economic security perspective.
It’s an exciting time to be innovating tools and real-life solutions for the boomer generation and beyond. We teach young people how to become adults, but we don’t teach older people how to age well. At NCOA, we are going to change that to ensure that everyone can make smart choices that allow them to age on their terms. LL
Mentorship isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity, especially for Latina leaders. Every day that we show up and make change, we’re achieving firsts, and we’re modeling courage and success for those coming behind us. Our actions speak volumes, but so do our words, behaviors, and guidance. It is our responsibility to help build the next generation of Latina leaders. Mentorship is the way.
—Anna Maria Chávez
everything is possible in life and career with passion, focus,
BY SARAH BREEDEN PORTRAITS BY CASS DAVIS
Anne Alonzo has a mission. As president & CEO of the American Egg Board (AEB), the marketing arm for US egg farmers, she wants to educate the public on the “incredible egg.”
Given that eggs are already in more than 90 percent of US households, the challenge is to increase egg frequency. Her organization identified one of the largest targets for US eggs: Hispanics. Hispanic millennials, in particular, are central to the American Egg Board’s strategy to drive demand for eggs. After all, 18 percent of the US population is Hispanic, and it’s the fastest growing segment of the US population. From flan to chilaquiles, eggs are the main feature in many Latin American dishes. “Food and family are central to our culture, and eggs are central to both,” she says. “Eggs are nutritious, easy, affordable, simple—and perhaps most importantly—delicious.”
Alonzo is proud to represent both America’s egg farmers and her incredible team. Her leadership is informed by an impressive and diverse career in the nonprofit sector as well as the public and corporate worlds, mostly Chicago based.
Alonzo grew up on the South Side of Chicago. As a child, she loved reading and school, and she especially loved the sense of accomplishment and self-confidence derived from academic rigor and achievement. Although she was not armed with the financial means or the know-how needed to navigate a career, Alonzo forged ahead with strong family support and a laser-like ambition and passion to learn and thrive.
After graduating from the University of Illinois–Chicago, she attended ChicagoKent College of Law to pursue a career that was aligned with her own beliefs. “I believe in fairness,” Alonzo says. “I wanted to be equipped with the tools, and a legal degree helped advance the rights of others and do good wherever I worked.”
Her sense of mission led her to the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in Chicago. She then pivoted into a role as the first environmental diplomat representing the USEPA, where she assigned to the US Embassy in Mexico City during a time that coincided with the negotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Working abroad, she says, opened her up to the world of trade, diplomacy, and the role of government.
From Mexico City, she landed a job in Washington, DC, at the US Department of Commerce, where she devised and executed a global trade promotion program. “My worldview got even bigger,” Alonzo says. Working in government was an opportunity for her to serve the public.
In fact, advancing a mission that is connected to a public good has been central to her career, especially as she transitioned between the public and private sectors. “No other career track would have given me the kind of learning and level of responsibility,” Alonzo says. “It is also a privilege to serve.”
During her time in DC, she was recruited to the private sector for the first time. As part of the transition to corporate America, she earned an MBA from the University of Chicago. While law school had taught her how to write and think logically, her MBA program equipped her with quantitative analyses skills and business acumen.
After receiving her MBA, she spent several years learning trade policy at a leading trade association in Washington, DC. She was once again recruited to the private sector by a major food company, where she served as the vice president of global public policy, corporate affairs.
“It’s both my duty and responsibility to share learnings and develop and mentor others, especially Latinas.”
Transitioning between the public, nonprofit, and private sectors was challenging, but fortunately, Alonzo loves a challenge. “It’s been a huge learning curve as far as content and organizational cultures,” she says. “I thrive on challenges, and throughout, I’ve grown, learned, and stepped up.” Preparation, focus, and a tenacious mindset has been indispensable to her when adjusting to a new role. “I would invest the time and do all I could to succeed, and that has served me well,” she says. “Todo se puede (everything is possible).”
Throughout Alonzo’s career, she’s had a particular interest in food and agriculture that was solidified during her time as the USDA’s administrator of the agricultural marketing service. There, Alonzo oversaw a multimillion-dollar budget and a workforce of 4,300 employees and developed a deep love and respect for farmers.
“I visited many farms and interacted with many farmers and producers across multiple commodities,” she says. “Farmers need to be adept and sophisticated about so many issues and often amid challenging external circumstances.” Her respect for agriculture also connects with her belief in environmental sustainability.
Alonzo’s respect for farmers helps drive her work at the American Egg Board, which created Incredible Egg campaign. She especially admires how entrepreneurial and resilient egg farmers are. Modern egg farming involves many variables. Egg farms, like a majority of American agriculture, are also primarily family owned, often with multiple generations working together. “Egg farmers care about their hens, our environment, and communities,” Alonzo says. “Every day, the eggs they produce
feed their families and consumer across our country and the world.”
The care Alonzo takes in advancing the mission of the AEB extends to her daily interactions with her team. In this position since January 2016, she’s prioritized and focused on employee engagement, development, and satisfaction.
Throughout her career and wherever she has worked, she strives to “bloom where she is planted.” She looks to serve as a resource and model to others especially Latinas, who she hopes will become interested in careers in the food and agriculture sector.
“I’ve been very blessed,” Alonzo says. Throughout her career, she didn’t readily have role models available to emulate, so she’s especially sensitive to how impactful it can be when someone takes an interest in helping a young person succeed. “It’s both my duty and responsibility to share learnings and develop and mentor others, especially Latinas,” she says.
Latinas interested in succeeding and who show great potential—such as Gwen Ramirez (P. 72), AEB’s director of administration and employee relations—are of special interest to Alonzo. “Gwen is a star,” Alonzo says. Alonzo has mentored Ramirez, providing her with opportunities for growth.
For example, Ramirez joined AEB as an administrative assistant, but over time, her high potential became evident because of her strong work ethic and dedication to the organization. Alonzo promoted Ramirez to a director of administration and employee relations. “Gwen is key to our organization and, above all, really cares about its success,” Alonzo says. “She’s presently championing our HR policies, benefits, and other critical functions. I have let her take the reins.”
From mentoring up-and-coming Latino professionals to working in the food and agriculture sectors, Alonzo’s career demonstrates a sense of integrity, fairness, and social responsibility. She is extremely grateful to be where she is now. “I’ve had a lot of opportunities and want to do all I can to bring others along,” Alonzo says. Her biggest piece of advice to others? “Go forward with passion and confidence,” she says. Ytodosepuede LL
¿Cómo te gustan los huevos?
BY SARAH BREEDEN
PORTRAITS BY CASS DAVIS
Five years ago, Gwen Ramirez was looking to advance her career. After working in several administrative roles at large corporations, she wanted to go someplace where she “wasn’t just a box on an org chart” and where she could help market a product she could stand behind. Ramirez found an opportunity for growth as the director of administration and employee relations at the American Egg Board (AEB), the marketing arm of the US egg farmers, where she works closely with president and CEO Anne Alonzo (P. 66) to increase the public’s demand for eggs.
Not only was the shift an upward career move for Ramirez, but it was also a step toward a workplace that, she says, is now a home away from home. Since joining AEB, Ramirez has flourished, gaining new responsibilities and pursuing her interests in business administration and human resources. This has largely been made possible by the mentors at the AEB who believe in her.
One of the challenges Ramirez faced early on in her career was being overlooked—even though she was an exceptionally hard worker who demonstrated leadership potential. When Ramirez was just starting out, she worked a full-time job and went to night-classes to earn her bachelor’s degree in business management. On top of that, she was the mother to a young child and a reserve in the Illinois Air National Guard. Her education was sometimes interrupted by her job, parenting, and even military deployment. Yet, she continued to show resilience and unrelenting determination.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, Ramirez was sent to the Middle East, where she worked in the military police force. She had originally joined the military so that she could afford to go to college. “Serving my country gave me the opportunity to better myself and my future,” she says. Military service helped Ramirez
develop character traits that have since aided her in overcoming challenges: respect, hard work, resilience, and integrity.
Despite Ramirez’s incredible commitment to service and career advancement, she often heard no when she asked for more responsibilities. “I would hear things like, ‘You’re too young,’ or ‘You don’t have enough experience,’” Ramirez says. “But how are you supposed to gain experience in something new unless someone gives you shot?”
The American Egg Board entrusted Ramirez with an expanded list of duties. People in senior positions saw her promise and gave her the chance to develop new skill sets. Ramirez says she found mentors in the vice president of the AEB’s board of
directors and especially in her CEO, Anne Alonzo. “Anne fully trusts me and capabilities,” Ramirez says. “She finds ways to challenge me and increase my value.”
Alonzo counts on Ramirez for logistical support that keeps the office running smoothly, despite Alonzo’s hectic schedule. And Ramirez counts on Alonzo for direction and opportunities for development. “She’s honest with me, and usually it’s exactly what I needed to hear,” Ramirez says. “She reminds me to be confident.” Having a CEO who believes in her has enabled Ramirez to contribute more fully to the organization.
Some of Ramirez’s insights into organizational improvement include revising outdated policies, implementing standard operating procedures, and making AEB more adaptive to the needs of working mothers. She’s currently working on enhancing AEB’s HR policies to include more flexibility, and she is invested in helping mothers return to work after maternity leave. Ramirez was also instrumental in finding new offices for AEB last year. She says that they’re in a great location with lots of amenities, including a private room for nursing moms.
Ramirez also directly works with one of the AEB’s most important groups, the AEB Executive Committee, which she meets with three times a year. Aside from coordinating the meetings, she provides the committee with updates on administrative matters. As the CEO’s main support, Ramirez oversees Alonzo’s daily activities while working as a staff liaison. She fields policy questions from staff, helps employees when they face special circumstances, and directs the hiring process.
Helping to hire new staff has allowed Ramirez to find her own mentees within the organization. A year and a half ago, Ramirez interviewed an office manager who reminded her of her younger self. Even though there were other candidates with more experience, this particular person had fire and drive. She knew she’d be a great addition to the team. “It’s important to have a person who’s willing to take a chance on you,” Ramirez says. “Mentoring keeps you humble. It’s a reminder that someone helped you get to where you are, and now it’s your turn to help the next one in line.”
Ramirez feels very lucky to work with an organization with so many mentors who encourage her to professional development. “To have so many mentors in one place is very special,” she observes. In addition to expanding Ramirez’s responsibilities, Alonzo has invited Ramirez to conferences, like the US Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI) Conference, so that she can connect with other Latinas in business. “Conferences like these are great opportunities to hear from Latina role models and leaders who come from upbringings like mine,” Ramirez says. She recalled one speaker talking about how her father was the janitor at her school to help pay for her Catholic school tuition; Ramirez’s mother did the same thing. It felt like a light went off. “Seeing how far they’ve come helps you see how much further you can go,” Ramirez says.
With the support of so many mentors at AEB who believe in her potential, Ramirez can go anywhere she wants. LL
BY JENNY DRAPER
Bernadette Reyes is making room for women in her industry while helping Public Storage provide 142 million square feet of space for its customers across the United States and Europe.
“For us, storage is an extension of your home,” says Reyes, vice president of design.
Although it’s an industry that’s been historically dominated by men, Reyes was inspired to enter “tight nucleus” of the construction and design world early on in her life. As a kid, she often joined her father, an HVAC foreman and mechanic, at his shop. “I remember wanting to know more about the buildings and how they were built,” she says.
Both her father and mother were from Guatemala, but they immigrated to the United States to pursue better
economic and education opportunities. From an early age, their strong work ethic inspired Reyes, who later earned bachelor’s degrees in political science and architecture from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the University of Michigan.
Reyes began her career as a design assistant and technical coordinator at an architectural design firm and entered the construction industry as an office engineer. Today, she oversees Public Storage’s brand presence and department of architecture for thirty-eight states from the company’s headquarters in Glendale, California.
In addition to inspiration from her father, professional mentors proved to be a crucial influence on her career development in the niche field, despite the fact that it might have seemed difficult to find a mentor.
After her mother died unexpectedly from heart disease, Public Storage’s Bernadette Reyes jumped into the Go Red movement to help women. “I feel very passionate about spreading the story of what I experienced to help prevent someone else losing a loved one or even themselves,” she says.
Today, she serves on the Los Angeles executive leadership team of the American Heart Association’s Go Red campaign, a social initiative empowering women to take control of their heart health. Heart disease affects one of three women, and that number is even more startling when it comes to Latinas.
“I found it very startling that one out of two Latinas are likely to die of heart disease,” Reyes says. “It’s the number one killer of all Latinos, even compared to all other cancers combined.”
Reyes cites language and cultural barriers as factors that instill a hesitation in the Latino community to see doctors for help. Yet, she likens the importance of selfcare to airplane safety: passengers are required to put on their own oxygen masks first before helping others.
“It sounds counterintuitive for the Latino culture—we put family first—but it’s so important to take preventative action,” Reyes says. “I got involved to promote better heart health decisions for women’s sake; all the mothers, sisters, and Latinas.”
“I was always told to find a woman mentor,” she says. “But in the construction and design industry, there’s not that many women to go around. We haven’t had a backlog of mentors available to us. I’ve learned not to shy away from men’s mentorship because of it.”
Reyes challenges the notion of finding one perfect mentor. She’s developed what she calls a roundtable team of mentors, composed of men, women, leaders from in and out of her industry, former clients and bosses, and even college friends.
“The more diverse group of people you reach out to for advice, guidance, and feedback, the better,” Reyes says. “Your inner circle should expose you to different values and experiences. Some people are better at interfacing with colleagues, while others have more negotiation skills or are more finance-driven. And as your career changes, so do the seats at the roundtable.”
Reyes herself pays it forward by mentoring young women who are seeking to advance their careers in design, construction, and development. It’s a step, she says, toward combating the gender imbalance in the industry’s leadership roles.
“Companies are trying to do better, especially with corporate compliance,” she says. “Women also need to stay proactive and apply to the jobs that may be out of their comfort zone. They can’t be afraid to raise their voice and do more.”
Gaining the right technical expertise is an obvious must, Reyes says, but women also need the soft skills necessary to navigate office politics. For Reyes, that means staying informed and not acquiescing your perspective because someone may be resentful or jealous. “Don’t listen to the noise,” she says.
In fact, empowerment is the primary component of Reyes’s leadership style.
Before joining Public Storage in May 2017, Reyes served clients—which ranged from the federal government to Disney to the higher education industry—as Austin Commercial’s director of preconstruction for the western region. Prior to Austin Commercial, Reyes worked her way up from office engineer to senior design manager over a decade at Clark Construction. Those experiences exposed her to the mechanics of the architecture world, from construction to engineering to design.
Over the course of her career, she’s also learned how to manage direct and indirect reports, including architects
who were twenty years her senior and independent contractors.
For Reyes, that meant learning how to adapt her leadership style by reading the audience to deflect any preconceived notions about female leadership. Throughout her career, she has striven to empower her teams by giving them autonomy.
“Over time, I realized I grew when I took full ownership of what I was doing,” she says. “I didn’t like to be micromanaged, so why would I do that to my team? I find that empowering my team helps them be more innovative and focused. More importantly, it builds camaraderie.”
In 2006, she cofounded a strategic real estate investment venture, Traza, and she continues to implement those savvy business principles into her role at Public Storage. Reyes spent her first year at the company streamlining processes and creating a cohesive, cross-functional team.
“We’re going to serve our facilities group better by applying the same language and design principles used for new construction to existing properties,” she says. “We’re making it more convenient for our customers to walk into any property and get the same experience.”
Looking ahead, Reyes will further strengthen the brand presence through the build environment for one of the largest landlords in the world. In doing so, she cites the advice of her grandfather: “Do what you love to do, but make sure someone will need it. It will be valued, which brings about a higher level of fulfillment.”
How Virginia McGathey overcame discrimination to become one of the most prominent and longesttenured figures at the Chicago Board of Trade
BY LIOR PHILLIPS
On the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade/CME GROUP, the roars of men aggressively buying and selling compete with automated buzzers, and flurries of paper trades collect in drifts. But amid all the chaos and noise, Virginia McGathey stands proudly with a calm confidence. Just moments after displaying her immense knowledge and gregarious smile for a CME Group commentary spot, she returns to the floor and displays the quiet intensity and deft instincts that have made her one of the most successful and longesttenured professionals in the room.
But it took a lot of hard work, dedication, and bravery for McGathey to get to this point, to rise from a blue-collar kid from the suburbs thirty miles south of Chicago to the president of her own company. “I didn’t always know how, but I was preparing for greatness, and then I would fill it in afterwards,” McGathey says.
The sixth of nine children of a Mexican mother and an Irish-German father, McGathey grew up eager to keep on moving and growing. She graduated high school early, and because her family couldn’t afford to send her to college, McGathey went looking for a job— something, she figured, where she could make enough money to pay for school herself. But when she first walked onto the floor at the CBOE, she had no idea she was walking into a new life.
“I had an older brother and an older sister that worked as clerks who told me about how exciting it was,” she recalls. “Even the train ride was exciting at first— like leaving the farmland and arriving at the Emerald City from Wizard of Oz.”
But the reception she received on the floor wasn’t as exciting. The massive, bustling space was intimidating, and each and every manager she asked about open positions turned her down. But if she was going to prepare for greatness, McGathey knew she’d need to push even harder. She returned to one of the men who had at least bantered with her before saying no and offered to work for free for a week. “At the
end of the week, when I was ready to leave, the boss came down and said that they loved my work ethic and didn’t want me to leave,” she says. Not only did they hire her permanently, but they also paid her for the previous week.
She officially joined the workforce at the CBOE in December 1975, and she worked her way up to becoming a manager herself not long later. The excitement of riding the train into the city never wore off, and she began to feel an incredible passion for the markets. “I loved being involved in the hustle and bustle, elbow to elbow with people in the middle of the excitement,” she says.
By 1983, McGathey had established her skill set to the point that she decided to move to the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and explore new opportunities. Suddenly, she found herself following crop-growing trends in South America and weather patterns in Asia.
Looking around the room, McGathey quickly registered that she was the odd woman out in several regards. There weren’t many people of Mexican descent working on the floor, for one. There were only a couple of women traders at the time as well, she recalls. And to further differentiate herself, she had been out as a gay woman to her coworkers from the first day she entered the floor.
“My mother raised us speaking English and not Spanish—something she now feels great sadness about—so that we wouldn’t face discrimination. So when I told her that I was a lesbian, she thought, ‘Oh no. One more box to check on the discrimination side,’” she recalls with a laugh. “I’m proof that you can do it, that the opportunity is there for Latinos, the Mexican community, women, the LGBT community, everyone. In fact, women fund managers have been known to do better than male counterparts. We can do this. The door is opening, and we just need to step up and take hold.”
Rather than see her differences as a deficit, McGathey became even more determined to find a way to excel by standing out. For one, the options exchange was
only ten years old at that point, meaning that it was an open ground, where women could step in without the impediments of entrenched “old boys’ club” leadership. There were still very few women in the field, and the male-dominated environment led to some offensive and oppressive “locker room” behavior.
“There were times when I’d get caught in the middle of a shoving match or would get verbally abused,” she says. “And then I would run into these men at the airport with their wife and kids, and they would be really friendly and want me to meet their family, which was confusing to me. When money’s involved, you see a part of someone that isn’t their best quality; I even learned about a guy who got so frustrated over not getting a raise that he dumped a day’s worth of trades into the Chicago River. I’ve also learned about myself and my own battles and have tried to follow the rules while learning how far to push.”
By 1986, McGathey had learned the ins and outs of this world and found a way
“When I was a freshman in high school, Title IX was signed, and my mother told me that I could do anything now. I had the sense then that everything was going to be fair—but it's still not fair today.”
to take her next step with her integrity intact, opening a new trading pit in wheat options and continuing to succeed without crossing any lines or falling victim to the abuse.
Raised by a traditional Mexican mother, McGathey was taught that women could be strong and independent, but men were breadwinners—dominant and authoritative. She didn’t have a college education— something she now says every woman should pursue. “I taught myself by watching the masters at work and getting knocked around,” she says. “I finally realized that they mistook my kindness for weakness. I had to figure out my own way to be strong without losing confidence. I learned how to tear down the arguments and harassment while also keeping my integrity.”
She never expected to become a trader, but at just twenty-nine years old, she had not only shown an incredible ability to trade grain options, but McGathey had also decided she was ready to start her own company in 1986: McGathey Commodities Corporation. But here again, she needed
to go around to the powerful men in the industry and gauge interest in gaining their business. “I remember being told that many of them would never give business to a woman,” she recalls.
Rather than be deterred, McGathey knew she just had to find a different way. She recruited her brother Ron, who had also been trading at the time, and essentially installed him as a more palatable partner to gain the trust of the old boys’ club.
“When I was a freshman in high school, Title IX was signed, and my mother told me that I could do anything now,” McGathey recalls. “I had the sense then that everything was going to be fair— but it’s still not fair today.”
Now, having faced discrimination and abuse, McGathey was determined to help others and to make a more inclusive finance world. She had risen in the ranks, but when it came time to actually involve big business, McGathey had faced resistance. Even other women on the floor didn’t band together, instead often attempting to relish a position of advantage
from being the only woman in a particular arena. But McGathey dedicated herself to feminism and a drive for equality based on bringing the next person up—whether that meant an acquaintance who she learned had an interest in the field, a friend of a friend, or often times her own family. “I have a lot of nieces and nephews, so if I could bring them along and show them this career, I knew I could make a difference,” she says.
And while she saw the business decimate other lives, witnessing four separate deaths on the floor from heart attacks and aneurysms, McGathey has helped spread her own strong confidence and inclusive nature to others on the floor, mentoring and training brokers and other employees.
“I wake up every day knowing I can be, do, and have anything I can dream,” she says. “I am so fortunate that the CME Group trading floor allowed me the opportunity to go into this battle and find my way to win, knowing that the human condition is all about our own aspirations to find the best of who we are.” LL
PRESIDENT & FOUNDER
VILA & ASSOCIATES
BY JONAS WEIR
Over the past thirty-five years, Adis Vila has built a career on leading and developing diverse talent.
From federal and state government work to higher education positions to private sector leadership, Vila has always stressed the importance of diversity and helped to open doors for women and minorities.
“I’ve always felt strongly that men and women and people of all cultures, races, and ethnicities can do whatever they aspire to if they have the talent and are willing to work,” she says. “Helping people achieve their goals drives what I do.”
At the State of Florida’s Department of Administration, she helped implement flexible working hours to alleviate the stresses of working mothers. As assistant secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, she helped to secure a childcare center for employees. And as the first chief diversity officer at the US Air Force Academy, she designed a comprehensive diversity and inclusion program and created the Ambassadors of Inclusion program, which was recognized with the Innovation Award from the ProfileinDiversityJournal
Today, Vila continues her work championing diversity as the president and founder of Vila & Associates, where
she consults on organizational culture, leadership, and diversity. With an everchanging economy in mind, Vila believes Latinas will be instrumental in leading the future business opportunities.
“Having grown up in a multicultural and multilingual environment, I know that these attributes can help business manage uncertainty,” she says. “My aspiration for this next generation is that there will come a time when there will be an equal number of C-level men and women.”
Vila spoke with Hispanic Executive about her own career and her vision for the future.
How did you overcome obstacles early in your career?
There are three things. To achieve anything that is important to you, you have to be persistent. Secondly, you have to be resilient. And thirdly, you have to be willing to take risks. And this is sort of a threelegged stool. They support each other.
I developed resiliency very early because I came to the United States when I was eight years old with only my mother. My father had to stay behind in Cuba. And my mother, typical of the women of her age, had never worked, and so she had to go work. Of course, she didn’t speak English and she didn’t have formal education, so she had to do very difficult work. And
because difficult work of that type pays poorly, she had to have many of those difficult jobs. I just saw my mother being so persistent.
So very early on, I built this resiliency that if I worked hard enough and if I persisted, it would happen. And oftentimes, it did.
As I progressed in school, I also learned that sometimes you just have to take a risk. And if you don’t take a risk, then you could be very comfortable, but you’re not going to grow. And so, for example, in high school, I wanted to run for president of the student body. I was advised that I should run for vice president because a boy was running for president and he was on the JV football team. The girls would vote for him because he was cute, and the boys would vote for him because he was a football player. I was told I wouldn’t win. But I took the risk, and I ran. I did not win, but I learned again that exercising leadership was important to me and losing was not the end.
What sort of skills have you built over your career to help you succeed?
I think the most important had been courage. I think that courage and integrity go hand-in-hand. And a leader who is not courageous is not going to take the appropriate risk to not only do things right but more importantly to do the right things.
The second thing is that you have to have integrity. If you don’t have integrity, you might do things right, but oftentimes you will do the wrong things or you will do the right things for the wrong reasons. I’ve always aspired and worked toward leading whatever organization I was at with the courage and integrity that serves society.
I’ve been a strong proponent of a theory of power, not often applauded, that promotes sharing power. That is, as any one of us becomes more powerful, the more people that we bring along, the better. As a Latina and as a woman,
“My aspiration for this next generation is that there will come a time when there will be an equal number of C-level men and women.”
I have never felt that if I got selected for something that this would mean that another woman or that another Latina would not have a chance. I’ve always worked toward breaking glass ceilings or trying new things not so that I could be the only one, but so that I could open doors for other women and people of color.
What advice would you give to upand-coming Latina leaders?
I would say that among the most important things that I recommend Latina women do is study people, not in the positions that they are in now, but in the positions that they aspire to reach. If you aspire to be a CEO, study CEOs and see what it is about their careers that has propelled them to a CEO position. You can learn a significant amount by studying others’ paths to success.
I recommend reading biographies. It is amazing how much we can learn from reading about the lives of other people who have overcome challenges and reached great accomplishments.
In college, I read the biography of a lawyer named Algernon Sydney Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan is the same Sullivan of
Sullivan and Cromwell, the very large, well-respected law firm out of New York. The book is written by a woman named Anne Holmes, and she asked Mr. Sullivan for which of his many accomplishments he wished to be remembered. Mr. Sullivan responded: “Not for anything that I have done, but for the number of lives that I have touched.” As early as 1972, I learned from reading about Mr. Sullivan that I wished to “touch” people and have an impact on their lives.
I wish for my fellow Latinas that each identifies a path that excites them, people who have followed that path successfully, and take courageous risks that assure a life worth living.
Hispanic populations are still vastly under-represented on corporate boards. Why is changing that an important cause for you? It’s a very important topic to me because I believe that until Latinos—men and women—can see people like themselves in every position to which they aspire, they will not have that path that I spoke about previously. You have to see people doing the things—people that look like you—
doing the things that you want to do. We owe it to the next generation to break this glass ceiling.
From the societal perspective, however, the reason that more Latinas and Latinos need to be on corporate boards is that our society increasingly has Latino representation and Latino purchasing power. Shareholders have begun and will continue to demand that boards of directors of multi-national companies represent their customers, employees, and suppliers.
Getting appropriate Latino representation requires that present board members give up some of their power. In my experience, people are convinced to give up power only when it becomes obvious to them that it is in their best interest to do so. And so, CEOs and independent directors must convince colleagues that refreshing board membership is good for the firm. Boards populated with directors who bring different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds have been shown to be more profitable and to have greater impact on markets. I applaud the work large institutional investors like State Street Global Advisors and CalPERS are doing to hold boards accountable for placing more women on boards. Similar efforts must take hold to get more Latinos on boards.
The arguments that women and Latinos are not prepared for board service in 2018 is ludicrous. Latinos have large numbers of highly educated men and women. They are global citizens, multicultural and often multilingual, who bring as varied a set of functional expertise and leadership skills as their Caucasian counterparts. Policies that call for the refreshing of boards, time limits on board service to ensure that directors remain independent, and age limits for directors, would open opportunities for more Latinos to be considered. The consideration must go beyond making the “list” and must include interviews. Latinos must have the opportunity to come face to face with the nominating and governance committees to ensure their qualifications and emotional intelligence to serve is known to the decision-makers. LL
It’s no secret that the world is smaller than ever. It’s not enough to look across countries; we must look across continents and generations. True leaders think beyond boundaries to create a vision for global solutions to today’s global challenges.
—Anna Maria Chávez
VP OF BUSINESS AND LEGAL AFFAIRS, LATIN
BY SARAH BREEDEN
As an ambitious and talented young lawyer, Cristina Scarano set her sights on becoming one of the best attorneys in the entertainment industry. She was resilient, creative, and patient. There was just one problem: she didn’t see any women attorneys where she wanted to be.
Now, more than ten years after earning a law degree from the University of Miami, Scarano is now the kind of role model that she would have wanted as a young lawyer just out of law school. As a vice president of business and legal affairs at BBC Studios—the licensing, distribution, and production arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)—she is connecting with young women who want to go into her industry. Within that mission, she assists young women in charting their careers, and she especially wants to demonstrate the importance of being able to balance a fulfilling career and a family.
“I think it’s important for young women, in general, to see women in positions like mine,” she says. “I didn’t see that a lot.”
Scarano began her ascent into the entertainment industry in a nontraditional
way. Raised in Wisconsin in a Puerto Rican family, Scarano has always been fascinated by other cultures. As an undergraduate at the University Wisconsin-Madison, she majored in political science and studied abroad in Paris and Italy. Her cosmopolitan worldview drew her into a career that would allow her to work across countries and cultures. So, when she decided to pursue a law degree, she found the University of Miami to be a perfect fit because of its focus on international business in Latin America.
Early on in law school, Scarano interned at the Miami Herald, where she fell in love with the fast-paced environment of the newsroom. The experience, she says, also deepened her respect for journalism. From there, she continued to develop an interest in media and constitutional law, and another internship at NBC spurred an even deeper passion for the broader media industry.
In 2006, after she earned her JD, Scarano circumvented the conventional legal career arch and immediately started working at an in-house position at NBC Universal, rather than working for a traditional law firm. From there, she has continued to rise in the legal ranks
“I think it’s important for young women, in general, to see women in positions like mine. I didn’t see that a lot.”
at various media companies, including Telemundo, FremantleMedia, and now BBC Studios.
Today, Scarano’s appreciation for impartial, thoughtful news is a large part of why she loves being a part of the greater BBC organization, where she handles distribution rights and format licensing to the Latin American and US Hispanic markets. “It’s an institution,” she says. “It has this wonderful reputation with values I can really get behind.”
Additionally, she says that the BBC is flexible and open to change, both within the industry and when it comes to supporting the needs of its employees.
This fair, adaptive treatment of employees, Scarano says, enables women like her to excel while devoting time to their families.
Scarano’s role at the BBC also allows for a certain amount of autonomy in managing her own schedule. Sometimes, this means creatively managing her time. More than work/life balance, Scarano says it is a work/life merger. “I will get the job done whether that means I’m in the office at 9:00 a.m. or working at 9:00 p.m.,” she says.
In addition to working in an environment that is accommodating to families, Scarano brings personal qualities to her professional life that make it easier to handle stress. “The tenser it gets, the calmer I am—so I’ve been told,” she says. “That’s a quality that’s helped me in the negotiation aspect of my work.”
Scarano’s sense of humor also helps her keep things in perspective. “We’re not saving lives; we’re not performing surgery,” she reminds herself during stressful times. Her sense of humor also helps her to shrug off anyone who doubts her capability and to dismiss the traditional attitudes that make the corporate world challenging for women to navigate.
While Scarano observes that the tide is changing in the corporate world, she believes that it can still be hard for young women to envision themselves in senior executive positions or find female mentors who share common experiences. Scarano is happy, however, that at least she can use her position to help others find their way. As a member of the advisory board of the University of Miami’s LLM program in
entertainment, arts, and sports law, she works closely with the school to connect with young women who are interested in the entertainment field. In this capacity, she advises female law students on practical matters, such how to look for jobs and maximize social networks, and she also helps them see what life look will look like as they make their way through corporate executive positions in entertainment law.
Although Scarano’s path into the entertainment industry might have been unusual as most lawyers in her field have to start out at law firms, she tells young attorneys that she was lucky and that it’s important to be patient. “I see a lot of young people get frustrated with bosses that may put a lot of pressure on them,” she says. “It’s an opportunity you can learn from. You may be in a difficult corporate environment, but the experience is priceless.”
Admittedly, it can be a challenge for young women attorneys be their authentic selves at work. Her solution is to be yourself and to ignore the office gossip. Early on in her career, Scarano felt pressured to emulate the conservative style of those around her in order to get ahead. “I just realized that’s not my style,” she says. “You can bring your own personal flair and style to things.”
Valuing your own sense of authenticity and your own background can be your greatest strength, she says. In fact, it’s what led Scarano to forge her own career path to the top of her industry. Now, when other young women look up, they’ll see her. LL
New York • Los Angeles • Miami • Washington, DC
www.stroock.com
How Maria Fernandez rose to the top of Sony Music
BY LIOR PHILLIPS
Maria Fernandez has always had a burning passion for music, but she never dreamed she’d be able to turn that fire into a career. The industry is notoriously male-dominated and can be difficult to join, especially from a country outside of the United States or the United Kingdom. So, after attending college in her native Venezuela, Fernandez leapt at the first international opportunity she could find, always eager to learn and grow.
After escalating leadership roles at major international organizations such as The Walt Disney Company and DIRECTV, she has finally been able to pair her love of music with her powerful work ethic at Sony Music Entertainment. More than that, though, she’s now dedicated to ensuring others have opportunities to chase their dreams.
As is customary in Venezuela, she began looking for a place to work while finishing her bachelor’s degree in business administration. A position in finance management at Disney was the first prospect that caught her eye. “I could have done a lot of different things, but that was the job that was available,” she says. Although she might not have been training her whole life for a career in finance, Fernandez’s work ethic led her and the company to further success. Five years later, she was transferred to Disney’s Miami office and then to Argentina, where she continued to grow and diversify her skill set.
Around the turn of the century, the Argentinian economy faced a vast financial crisis, leading to a lot of massive changes. A former Disney regional CFO had just recently left for DIRECTV’s Latin America region, and Fernandez followed, looking for a new challenge. But an economic downturn hit there as well. While DIRECTV’s American revenues soared, the Latin American side wound up in Chapter 11.
Rather than bemoan the bad luck, Fernandez saw each struggle as an essential part of her résumé and a big part of her success once she joined Sony Music Entertainment in 2007. The international
VP OF OPERATIONS & CFO, LATAM REGION SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
“If we want to make sure that we get rid of an unconscious bias, we have to call it by its name every time we see it.”
experience at Disney prepared her to take on leadership roles across the Latin American region, and her experience in subscriber acquisition at DIRECTV built a strength that would be essential for the new streaming models in music.
Despite those advantages, the music industry wasn’t always the most welcoming. For one, it was—and still is—undergoing rapid and continuous change. “This is an industry where you cannot be complacent,” Fernandez says. “It changes every day.”
Although some of those changes relate to gender equality, the music world and the finance field in general still often lag behind. “Venezuela has historically been a very good territory in terms of equality in the workplace, but now, throughout my career, I haven’t seen many females in top-level finance positions,” Fernandez says.
Luckily, she and other leaders at Sony have helped the organization strive to do better in the diversity sphere. “The regional president, Afo Verde, is a big advocate for diversity and equality, and by now, we are near a fifty-fifty split in gender representation at higher-level roles,” Fernandez says.
Although the industry might not be the most welcoming to every individual, Fernandez prides herself on tailoring her approach and priorities to the specific needs and strengths of every individual she works with. “We care about our artists, but we also care about our employees. Those are our two main core values,” she says. “Whenever we face a challenge, we look to what’s best for the artist and what’s best for the employees, and from there, we have an answer.”
By making constant improvements and finding new solutions for Sony, Fernandez continues to boldly prove herself. Her responsibilities cover the US Hispanic market, Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. “Anything that has to do with music in Spanish or Portuguese, that’s us,” she says. Her work ties together finance and operations, essentially helping manage change at a massive scale—whether by reviewing organizational structures, ensuring that systems are up to date, or keeping IT at the cutting edge of business support.
Leading such a complex undertaking in the music industry adds a wrinkle to the work as well. “We have to have the right mix of creative people, from the artists to the A&R part of the
organization to optimizing the back-office functions,” Fernandez says. “We have to evolve the business, to change from an album mind-set to a track-by-track environment in some cases. We have to manage the business models through all of that and make sure we are providing the right level of service at all times.”
Having an understanding of what that level may be at any given time, of course, relies again on having a diverse team that can truly understand many different perspectives. Diversity in gender and race, she adds, is just the beginning. “Before, I had no idea what a hurricane was like, but to live through one, that experience totally changes your approach. Similarly, from a financial standpoint, I have experienced inflation and devaluation of currency,” Fernandez explains. “The more you have people from different backgrounds, it will give you a perspective that otherwise it would be impossible for you to have.”
The seemingly obvious case for diversity, though, has a major stumbling block: unconscious bias. Even those that may be theoretically in favor of inclusion may have harmful biases that they’re not even aware of. “Unconscious bias is our reality, and the issue is that nobody accepts they have it,” Fernandez says. But, she argues, that the fight needs to continue; people need to call out these biases and combat them whenever they arise. “We’re all talking a lot about it, but we need action,” she says. “If we want to make sure that we get rid of an unconscious bias, we have to call it by its name every time we see it.”
As someone who has fought the odds and risen from her home in Venezuela to a corporate leadership role at one of the largest music companies in the world, Fernandez knows what can happen when women speak up and push back against biases—unconscious and otherwise. That’s a lesson she’ll proudly impart on her daughter. “If you believe you deserve something, you go and ask for it,” she says. “The answer can be no, and that’s perfectly fine. Then, you just have to ask why and work hard toward a solution. But first, you have to have the conversation.” LL
BY JEFF SILVER
Ever since she started saving her money in high school to visit Paris and learn French, Gisella Mazzilli has been passionate about traveling and seeing the world. So, it was a dream come true when she was able to join the world’s largest leisure travel company, Carnival Corporation & plc.
A former auditor with KPMG, Mazzilli joined the company in corporate finance—now global accounting and reporting services—where she learned about external and internal reporting, planning, forecasting, and collaborating across departments and Carnival’s different brands.
Now, seventeen years later, she leads accounting and finance within the Global Port and Destination Development Group, where she is responsible for overall accounting and reporting, financial planning and analysis, tax, legal, risk management and treasury functions, and ensuring compliance with policies and procedures for ports in Mexico, Turks and Caicos, Honduras, Dominican Republic, and Spain, as well as ongoing developments in other regions.
“When I started with Carnival, I had to relearn how to do my job since it was very different from being an auditor,” Mazzilli says. “I wasn’t shy about asking for help when I needed it. No one can know everything—and if you think you do, you’re already in trouble, as that attitude hinders your growth.”
She learned how to navigate the company’s extensive financial system, how to build a network of collaborative relationships, and process a great deal of data. She says the latter is like peeling an onion, one layer at a time. She was also mentored by the world’s foremost expert in port development and operations: her manager, Giora Israel. He helped broaden her perspective to a horizon beyond accounting, enabling her to understand the importance of balancing the different aspects of Carnival’s business.
“Giora taught me to be more flexible and how to balance business priorities while still upholding our policies and procedures and maintaining full compliance across all disciplines in a very demanding environment,” Mazzilli says.
One of the most challenging parts of Mazzilli’s job is managing the complexities of port operations, which includes complying with different regulations and requirements in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean, as well as gathering information and reporting for sixteen entities that involve six different currencies. Her group also has to accommodate differences in cultural expectations and fully understand how business gets done from one jurisdiction to the next. For example, with Mexico’s electronic accounting regulations and electronic invoicing and payment requirements, every invoice and payment must be validated by software that is tied to the government, which adds an additional element that must be uniquely addressed.
To stay on top of such a wide range of requirements and a mix of dynamic tax and political environments that can change at the drop of a hat, Mazzilli works with local advisors in each jurisdiction as well as Carnival’s in-house global tax and legal departments. She also makes sure she sets realistic expectations with the local teams she oversees. That includes providing them with appropriate tools, such as timelines to highlight crucial deadlines well in advance. While these responsibilities require constant attention, she still dedicates herself to mentoring, a role she takes very seriously. “We yield great returns when we invest in our people,” she says.
Mazzilli believes in continuous improvement and has helped streamline much of her group’s accounting through automation. One of Mazzilli’s most significant upgrades was implementing the company’s global financial system at each of the ports she oversees. These locations service nine different Carnival brands; some within the company thought those ports were too small to handle the complex system. Her work has effectively aligned ports with Carnival’s global practices and has greatly improved controls, information accuracy, reliability, and timeliness.
“Implementing the Oracle system at each port and finding and developing the teams to use it were daunting tasks, but the results have been priceless,” Mazzilli says. She also helped implement a new planning and forecasting tool that provides real-time insight at the operational level, enables more efficient monitoring, and ensures proper expense tracking and classification.
Because finance and accounting touch so many different departments and require collaboration with various teams, Mazzilli stresses the importance of the network that she has carefully cultivated and meticulously maintains. She highlights reciprocity as an important element in that effort, and she responds to colleagues as quickly as possible when they need her assistance.
“You can push for what you need, but delivery is key in achieving your end result. You must always stay sensitive to the other person’s workload and priorities,” she says. “At the end of the day, we are one team navigating in one direction: the ongoing success of Carnival.”
Communication is a foundational priority for Mazzilli, who moved from Colombia to the United States with her mother and two siblings when she was thirteen years old. Her multilingual capabilities prove essential when it comes to building trust among teams and getting everyone on the same page at all times.
When asked about advice for anyone who might like to follow in her footsteps, Mazzilli has two suggestions. First, never waiver on your integrity or compromise your principles Secondly, hold yourself to a high standard. “Aiming for good isn’t good enough,” she says. “Strive for perfection, and you’ll always achieve excellent results.” LL
VP OF FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING, GLOBAL PORT AND DESTINATION DEVELOPMENT
CORPORATION & PLC
Our values on diversity and inclusion are re ected in our people, our brands, our ports of call, and our customers. It is who we are and part of our DNA.
Diversity is a business imperative. With employees from more than 60 countries, their di erent backgrounds and cultural experiences help us remain united around a common objective— delivering memorable moments and exceeding our guests’ expectations around the world.
Gisella Mazzilli, CPA
Vice President, Finance & Accounting
Global Port & Destination Development
On board since 2001
STEM is where the future is happening today, and women need a prime seat at the table. Barriers are falling, but not nearly quickly enough given the incredible speed in the STEM world. We need to build a pipeline of women STEM leaders by investing in education for girls of all backgrounds to ensure everyone has the opportunity to lead.
—Anna Maria Chávez
EVP, CHIEF
COMPLIANCE OFFICER
ALEXION PHARMACEUTICALS
BY KELLI LAWRENCE
There are those who hear of an opportunity to work for a company going through tough transitions and pass it by, fearing they’ll get ensnared in the challenges themselves. Then, there are those who embrace said opportunity, eager to have a hand in setting a company up for great success. Consider Indrani Franchini firmly rooted in the latter camp.
Franchini had nearly fourteen years of corporate compliance leadership under her belt—including an extended stay with pharma giant Pfizer—when biotech Alexion Pharmaceuticals tapped her for the executive vice president and chief compliance officer role midway through 2017 as the company was in the midst of a senior management overhaul.
“I love untangling things, and we had the opportunity to gain alignment on a new, exciting chapter for the company,” she says. “It could be daunting to others, but to me, it’s an invigorating time to be in a compliance role. I like being in the hot seat, managing through all that. This was
an opportunity to take a tremendous business and start to write chapter two.”
Alexion’s first chapter began in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1992. In addition to becoming known for medication for rare disorders like Soliris, it developed a commitment to research related to autoimmune diseases. With about 2,500 employees worldwide today, Alexion is merely a sliver the size of the industry’s biggest names. But its output, Franchini says, is something much bigger and more important than its size might suggest. That impressed her. “Alexion has a passion for being a patient-driven company, dealing with rare diseases,” Franchini says. “In some cases, it’s about looking for a needle-in-a-haystack, and when you find it, it’s really a life-changing situation.”
Settling into her position at Alexion involved more than just rebuilding a compliance program. It meant understanding the business, its goals, and its objectives— and working a new compliance program amidst all those factors. Some of this involved skills that Franchini had already honed, such as the ability to move quickly
and exhibit an enormous amount of grace under pressure. But she holds a healthy respect for the risks involved too. “You can come in as a compliance person and, quite possibly, paralyze the organization,” she cautions. “Mine has always been a very balanced and measured approach.”
To Franchini, that meant three key actions: enhancing what Alexion had, making sure its new culture aligned with the new plan for compliance, and dealing with external regulators. “How we understand our history and heritage, internalize that, and bring the best parts forward from there . . . that’s really what I came to do,” Franchini says. “Yes, we had challenges, but what we achieved was ultimately really positive. So, you want to keep that part of the culture, taking the core of what was really good with you.”
With a third of her compliance representatives located in places such as Latin America, Japan, Germany, and Russia, Franchini gets a fair sense of what’s being said and felt abroad as Alexion continues to regroup. And she’s the first to admit that transformation doesn’t happen easily or
Franchini
quickly. “Even internally, we’re still trying to redefine ourselves,” she says. “It’d be naive for us to think, ‘Oh, new management came in, everything’s different.’ It takes a lot more than that. It comes from alignment; it comes from how we move forward together.”
And she’s quite pleased with the action she’s witnessed thus far. “I’ve seen it happening. People on my team getting called into meetings that they historically that hadn’t been; people thinking about things differently,” Franchini notes. “So, I think, from a practical perspective, our next chapter is already happening.”
Strong leadership does wonders for pointing a team in the right direction, and in Franchini’s case, much of her success is fueled by lessons in engagement. Listening to business partners, keeping an open mind, and understanding someone’s objectives to come up with the best risk mitigation solutions are all part of her tool kit.
She also looks for continued growth in her role at Alexion, both in terms of the compliance space and the company in general. But what starts with her own team has incredible potential elsewhere at Alexion. That’s the benefit of being at both a smaller biotech company and one that doesn’t expect each leader to already have all the answers.
“I tell people all the time, ‘Understand when you need to ask for help and when you need to bring in the experts,’” Franchini says. “Those are the resultsoriented people who really thrive in these situations. It’s knowing and being comfortable with that. That’s where you turn a point in your leadership.” LL
How Raquel Rivera was inspired to pursue STEM and how she continues to inspire that passion in others
BY JONAS WEIR
Raquel Rivera has always loved science and math. After moving from Puerto Rico to New York while she was still in high school, she had the opportunity to pick her own focus area at a vocational school. Inspired by her mother’s work at defense contractor Raytheon, she chose electronics.
“My mother worked on the development side of the business,” Rivera says. “She would often talk about how much she enjoyed her work and her experience working with engineers.”
From there, Rivera had no doubt that she wanted to pursue a career in science and math, and she went further down the engineering path, inspecting computer boards during an internship in high school and studying mechanical engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Then, one day at a recruiting event during college, she happened to stop by a table sponsored by aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney (P&W), a division of United Technologies (UTC). The company’s work building jet engines fascinated her, so she applied for an internship and was accepted. The rest, you might say, is history.
“During my internship, I fell in love with the product, the company, and the people right away,” she says. “Honestly, it was love at first sight. Upon graduation, P&W was the only company I applied to. I knew that P&W is where I wanted to be.”
Out of college, she joined the company’s Manufacturing Engineering Development Program and discovered she loved working on the shop floor. She began quickly taking on more and more prominent leadership roles within P&W. Today, she is the vice president of P&W’s product delivery centers. And she couldn’t be happier to be where she is.
She spoke with HispanicExecutive about P&W’s culture, how she leads her team, and what can be done to get more women into STEM fields.
How do you connect with the work at P&W?
Working in the aerospace industry actually results in real-world effects. We have eighty-nine thousand engines in service that transport people all over the world. Building engines means we get to connect people and grow economies. It’s so rewarding to be able to see the results of our work, and what we do has a long life. Compared to other, newer industries like web and app design, there’s something tangible in aerospace. We don’t just make jet engines. Working at P&W is a higher calling, and we consider that each and every day that we come into work.
What do you think has fueled your success as you’ve taken on more and more leadership roles?
None of P&W’s success—or my success for that matter—would be possible without teamwork and the talented employees that make up our company. The overall P&W team and the product delivery team that I manage are amazing. They have been able to accomplish amazing things. In the past year, we’ve doubled our production output. None of what we accomplish as an organization can
be done without working together with a common purpose towards a common goal. At P&W, we have a saying, “Go beyond.” We go beyond for each other and work as a team because we love what we do.
In addition to our team here, UTC and P&W have developed something called ACE: Achieving Competitive Excellence. ACE is our operating system that focuses on continuous improvement and puts the customer at the center of everything. I learned, early on, that it’s one of the secrets to success. It’s about continuous improvement and embracing and engaging our people; it works.
Speaking of your team, how do you engage and empower them?
One of the key ways I empower and engage my teams is through trust. It’s about trusting that my employees can work together to determine the best path forward as long as they clearly understand what we need to do and why we need to do it. I work hard to focus on driving flexibility and a team-based approach. I really do believe that good leadership transcends gender, race, etc. It all comes down to listening to your employees, understanding what makes them tick, and doing it in the most authentic and humble way possible.
What is the culture like at P&W, and how do you connect with it?
P&W has strong values and a culture that promotes empowerment, diversity, and innovation. In fact, UTC and P&W have committed to ensuring that half of the executive leadership team will be women by 2030.
But that culture also means providing an environment where employees from all backgrounds are valued, respected, and rewarded. One of the key ways we do this is through our employee resource groups (ERGs). I am lucky to be an executive sponsor of one of these groups: the Hispanic Leadership Forum in our West Palm Beach, Florida, facility. I am also the executive sponsor of the UTC 4 Vets, our veteran-focused ERG, in our Middletown, Connecticut, facility.
I believe it’s important to participate and support our ERGs. I participate in
those ERGs that I may not necessarily sponsor, like the Women’s Leadership Council in West Palm Beach, because we need more women in engineering, manufacturing, and operations. To me, it’s really about walking the walk and being a role model for the company. It’s about sharing my experience and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. Although it’s important to share these experiences with larger groups, I also believe it’s important to take the time to sponsor and mentor employees one-on-one.
What do you think can be done to bring more women and people from the Hispanic community into STEM career fields?
About a year ago, I had the opportunity to speak at an aerospace high school in Windsor, Connecticut. I spoke to a group of high school students and shared my passion for engineering, manufacturing, and aerospace. For me, it’s about getting out there as much as I can to inspire the next generation of talent. Showing women and people in the Hispanic community what opportunities are out there is critical. It’s not just about women or about people from the Hispanic community. It includes our veterans. All I can say is share, share, share!
I’m also proud to work for a company that takes an active interest in supporting STEM in various ways—through partnerships with community colleges and universities and by sponsoring primary school initiatives that spark students’ interest. LL
How Karina Castro overcame the overwhelming challenge of updating the IT infrastructure and building sustainable IT processes for a global food corporation
BY JOAN LIVINGSTON
Karina Castro’s first two weeks as director of IT operations for Danone North America made her doubt all her years of experience in technology. Setting higher standards in a fast-paced environment while designing state-of-the-art IT services and infrastructure was overpowering. Then, there was the resistance she encountered when she sought to change the way things had been done for years. And coming onboard during the last quarter of 2015, Castro felt pressure to deliver results fast.
She likens those two weeks to drinking water out of a fire hose.
In her third week at the company, Castro found herself in a precarious situation, having to set realistic expectations with her boss even if that meant challenging time lines and shifting priorities. “Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a magic wand in IT,” she says.
Instead, Castro presented a two-year strategy to upgrade her company’s technology while saving the health-focused food company more than $1 million each year. Now that this plan is in place, she is leading a similar upgrade for a recently acquired company.
Castro grew up in a middle-class family in a small town in Northwest Mexico. Her mother, Adelaida, had a business selling school supplies, and her father, Julio, was a top sales rep for Yellow Pages in their region. Her close-knit family included her grandmother and sister.
Castro studied computer science at Monterrey Technical Institute, where she also attended high school. With scholarships and her parents’ support, she didn’t have to work, but her father gave her sound advice: students work on fake projects as part of their class work, but she should experience real ones.
So, she took an internship with PepsiCo, and after three months, she was hired. It was a valuable experience that exposed her to the corporate environment. She worked two hours as a website designer at PepsiCo before heading to class on the opposite end of the city at 9:30 a.m. At 1:30 p.m., she was back at PepsiCo until her next class at 4 p.m. Balancing school and work took an impressive amount of energy and effort, but she couldn’t be more grateful to have had the opportunity to learn and be recognized for the first time in the IT field.
Six months before graduation, Castro faced a personal challenge when her beloved grandmother died. Then again, three weeks before the ceremony, her father died. “My graduation was to honor him and to give him the satisfaction wherever he was that I had accomplished what he so hoped for,” she says.
When her sister died seven months later, Castro wanted a clean break. Although she hadn’t thought of working in the United States, she seized the opportunity when Softtek Integrations Systems offered her a position in 2005.
As a twenty-one-year-old Mexican woman moving to Connecticut, Castro encountered huge hurdles, such as the high cost of living, language, and the culture of a maledominated industry. In fact, she was the only woman in a fiftytwo-person department.
“You have to exceed twice the expectations so you can be noticed,” Castro says. “You have to be relentlessly determined to succeed.”
After her time at Softtek, Castro took a job at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, which specializes in a rare blood diseases and helping physicians with its detection. During her five years at the company, Castro grew exponentially—from executive support technician to global manager.
Under the guidance of Aaron Parent, Alexion’s director of infrastructure services, she learned how to manage a team. He stressed that a diverse makeup is better than having members who think alike, and he pushed her to be proud of her accomplishments and to make a difference experiencing a new country.
Now, Castro considers her management style to be honest to a fault as well as fair. “You need to lead by example,” she says. “Although there might be many ways to achieve good results, the best ones are achieved when people follow your lead, not your orders.”
“You have to exceed twice the expectations so you can be noticed. You have to be relentlessly determined to succeed.”
Castro has had other mentors who offered career advice, but her role model is someone more personal: her mother. “I am who I am because of her,” she says of her mother. “The only reason to be here is the pursuit of happiness. I fortunately found a job and profession that I love.”
At Danone, Castro says she is pleased to be part of a company whose focus is on “one planet, one health.” Likewise, she says she’s proud of Danone’s commitment to a diverse workforce and its empowerment of women. Of the seven directors on the IT team, three are women at her level, and there are more than seventeen nationalities represented among the seventy-two members on the complete team.
While facts like this are encouraging, Castro admits work needs to be done to attract women to the tech field. “Things are now changing, and I hope for generations to come to embrace their abilities in whatever field they desire,” she says. “There should be no more gender-dominated careers.” LL
Forging a career in STEM for Latinas, women, and immigrants requires building your own tool kit
BY LORI FREDRICKSON
Vanessa Diaz knows how difficult it can be to be left out. She chose to pursue a career in a STEM field when she had relatively few female peers, and she immigrated to the United States from Bolivia to pursue that career in her mid-twenties, which also set her apart. So, she developed a tool kit to deal with being excluded.
“When people don’t know how to relate to you, you can get shut off from the learning that comes through interacting,” says Diaz, who is now the senior director of marketing automation at insurance, investments, and retirement services company Transamerica. “But when you’re going into a new place or venture, you have to empower yourself through the tools you’ve had growing up or from the people around you.”
Luckily, Diaz developed her skills early enough to build a successful career, in part because of the strong female role
SENIOR DIRECTOR OF MARKETING
TRANSAMERICA
models in her own family. Today, she is committed to sharing her skills with others to make sure that all individuals, Latinas and otherwise, have the confidence to pursue their careers while building the necessary skills. In fact in 2015, she became a role model for Couragion—a STEM career literacy and workforce development app. As a role model, she has helped to motivate and inspire students to pursue STEM pathways. Through her involvement in this and other organizations, she has spoken at schools throughout the Denver area to guide those looking to go into STEM fields, particularly young women and students from immigrant communities.
Last year, her commitment to seeing others succeed prompted her to start the Women’s Impact Network at Transamerica’s Denver office. “WIN provides a forum that encourages diversity and fosters conversations to make our workplace more inclusive,” Diaz says. “It is my goal to encourage others to find and develop the tools to allow them to become the best versions of themselves.”
To make sure that the network was fully employee-led, Diaz sent out surveys and compiled data to define its focus. She then
created three pillars as WIN’s basis: Leading, Achieving, and Advancing; Community Outreach; and Wealth + Health. “I wanted it to focus on personal development,” Diaz says. “We spend so much time in the workplace, and that should be something enjoyable that enables us to develop in the process.”
After that, she recruited employees to support the program, which now includes three chairs for each pillar and four ambassadors across all WIN who share its message across the company.
The first pillar—Leading, Achieving, and Advancing—focuses on developing female leaders while learning from and mentoring one another. The second pillar, Community Outreach, involves volunteer efforts to help empower local
Salesforce congratulates Vanessa Diaz of TransAmerica for being recognized as a 2018 Leading Latina for her innovation and leadership.
“I try to be a positive voice that says that this is something that you can do, as long as you do the hard work and are committed. I try to be one more resource in their tool kit.”
women in their careers, such as the Denver Dress for Success program, which connects women who are starting out with clothing and other resources for job interviews. And the third, Wealth + Health, focuses on personal health initiatives in the workplace and education on how it impacts your wealth goals.
Within the first month of kicking off the network, membership exceeded one hundred, and it has since gone up to 170. And all of the events WIN has hosted have had good turnouts from both women and men.
Throughout launching WIN, Diaz has also remained committed to her outside volunteer efforts with local students. As a female in STEM who volunteers in different education and women-centric organizations, she is often invited to participate at events to inspire others to continue exploring their passions in STEM or elsewhere, despite the roadblocks. “I try to be conscious of anyone who has been in the same position I was once in,” Diaz explains. “By sharing my experiences of how it feels to be powerless—to start something from zero—you can take something that could be negative and make it into a positive.”
And Diaz has a wealth of experience to draw from. Early in her career, she applied a tech background to business intelligence at organizations like Liquidnet, Reed Group, and others, and now at Transamerica, she deploys and operates technologies and other tools to strategize across campaigns and creative and digital experiences. In that role, Diaz takes satisfaction in making an impact on the experience the company provides for its financial professionals, employers, and customers. “By having a deeper understanding, we’re able to learn more, transform ourselves closer to what their needs are, and understand where there is more opportunity for improvement,” Diaz says.
And that is something she believes can be applied to all experiences: taking the bad and transforming it into a positive. By doing so, she has helped create a greater culture of learning and understanding and communities that foster both. Diaz often credits the women in her life for inspiring her to do this and overcome challenges in the process. “Having watched strong female role models in my family,” she says, “gave me the tools to keep trying.”
This is what she hopes to do for others, both her colleagues and the students she works with. “I try to be a positive voice that says that this is something that you can do, as long as you do the hard work and are committed,” Diaz says. “I try to be one more resource in their tool kit.” LL
Leading by example.
Congratulations, Vanessa Diaz, on being named one of Hispanic Executive’s Leading Latinas.
Thousands of baby boomers reach retirement age every day, but American Latino workers have stepped up and kept the economy growing.
• Between 2010 and 2015, 70% of the US labor force increase was due to Latinos.1
• Latinos account for close to half of the employment growth in that same period. 2
• The median age of a Latino worker is 12 years younger than that of the non-Latino population. 3
For even more eye-opening facts about this extraordinary group of American taxpayers, neighbors, soldiers, churchgoers and job creators, visit www.thepowerofall.us.
Brought to you by the Latino Donor Collaborative. LDC is a group of Latino business leaders committed to a bigger, more prosperous US economy that includes and benefits everyone.
My mantra is, “When you have your team, you have your dream.”
That’s why HR leadership is so critical. Finding the right talent, putting them in right seats in the organization, and then giving them the support—and the autonomy—they need to succeed turns today’s employees into tomorrow’s leaders.
—Anna Maria Chávez
BY JOSEPH KAY
PORTRAITS BY GILLIAN FRY
When Roxanne Martinez was on maternity leave in 2005, career moves weren’t a personal priority. So when a recruiter called to invite her to interview with Liberty Mutual Insurance, she wasn’t interested.
But the recruiter, who also happened to be a friend, suggested she give it at least some consideration. “It’s a really hard interview to get, and even if you don’t pursue the job, you’ll have the conversation,” they said. Her conversation with the team at Liberty Mutual won her over, and she came on as an HR manager.
Throughout her HR career, Martinez has realized her lifelong passion for teaching. She’d always thrived at school, and as a teenager, she concluded that she wanted to make a career in academia. The first in her family to attend four-year university, she studied political economy at Brandeis and began to envision herself as a history teacher. But she also came to realize that there were many ways to teach outside of the academic world. She proceeded to go to law school and intern as a law clerk in Denver.
When she joined Liberty Mutual, she was surprised at the organization’s agility. There was a clear growth trajectory ahead, across multiple countries and many years. But more impressive to her was the company’s commitment to principle.
“It never ceases to amaze me what our people do to make sure they do the right thing,” she says. “It’s in every decision that they make: how they treat employees and how they give consideration to customers. Dignity and respect are true themes in our culture.”
As senior vice president and talent officer at the company’s Boston headquarters, Martinez’s team pilots cultural and organizational projects that influence the entire operation. She and four direct reports coordinate across departments to aggregate problems, identify opportunities, and pilot solutions to keep Liberty Mutual healthy as well as competitive.
One of the team’s ongoing tasks is to develop intentional workspaces that support collaboration. Close collaboration supports alignment, Martinez says, and alignment supports global competitiveness.
The position often casts her as a coach. Martinez works hard to protect
“We know when people are able to bring their best selves to work. We know when people have distractions, and we support each other. Coaching starts with context, being available, and being present.”
her team’s culture of healthy learning and collaboration, an environment where they have the freedom to learn and teach beyond the organizational chart.
“We have a good time while we do some very serious work in human resources,” Martinez says, laughing. “We’ve created an environment where we feel comfortable, where we feel safe, where we can express the good, the bad, the ugly, and where we work through problems and not be afraid to say, ‘I don’t know.’”
That demands a precise balance. Openness and transparency are valuable practices in and of themselves; they’re also tools that support a healthier, more effective workplace. Team members know they can ask for space if an issue is preventing them from their best work.
“It’s an environment that is very open; we believe in being open and transparent at Liberty,” Martinez explains. “We know when people are able to bring their best selves to work. We know when people have distractions, and we support each other.
Coaching starts with context, being available, and being present.”
Martinez is fond of saying that coaching is a two-way street. For her part, she’s is making discoveries from a global and synergistic perspective. As perspectives on talent and culture continue to evolve, the team is taking ideas from colleagues around the world and sharing improvements in Boston. It’s an ongoing process of accountability and incremental solutions, rooted in Liberty Mutual’s identity and shared values.
“I’ve worked globally before, and it’s important to stay open to the possibility that you don’t have all the answers here,” she explains. “My team and I really encourage our colleagues to share things with us that give us opportunities to think about how we can do something differently. So, for example, how do you drive higher levels of employee engagement? We learned from our Spanish colleagues on how to address that.”
The team also sets the company’s course on diversity and inclusion. Although Martinez is proud to call her company a leader in the space, she notes that it’s an ongoing practice. Any organization has the opportunity and the responsibility to advance. One such effort at Liberty Mutual is the Inclusion in Action program, which trains leaders to more fully consider the intents and impacts of their behavior.
“It’s about making sure that that is infused into everything we do: how we develop leaders, how we develop ourselves, and how we engage everyone in conversations to create more innovative products and solutions,” Martinez explains. “I’m spending a lot of time, personally, to think about how I can be a better leader and make sure that everybody feels that they belong on my team and at our company. “ LL
Lorraine Vargas Townsend’s unique employee value proposition is the growth catalyst that athenahealth has been searching for
BY JENNY DRAPER PORTRAITS BY GILLIAN FRY
When Lorraine Vargas Townsend arrived at athenahealth last year, she didn’t find what she expected: for the first time in its twenty-year history, the leading healthcare IT company was in turmoil. She faced dwindling teams not hitting their numbers while an activist investor started buying company stock.
After five months of high HR turnover, she found herself in charge of the entire HR function with the seemingly impossible task of simultaneously revitalizing the culture, meeting business objectives and, ultimately, shepherding athenahealth through their first reduction-in-force. Luckily, Vargas Townsend was already a repeat champion over adversity.
The newly minted HR head possessed the ideal leadership philosophy for athenahealth’s metamorphosis because of her own personal experiences. From dropping out of high school to coming out as gay to getting cancer at age eighteen, her early life shaped the way she is
reinventing the HR function to elevate athenahealth to get back to growth and prioritize an inclusive culture. “Given what I’ve lived through, there’s no business challenge that scares me,” she says. “I know I can always win.”
The daughter of an immigrant single mother, Vargas Townsend observed the disparity in opportunity based on appearances firsthand. After moving from Panama to the United States, her Colombian mother was left alone with her three American children who could easily pass for white. She cleaned hotel rooms and worked at grocery stores to make ends meet, while raising Vargas Townsend in an environment rich with strong female Latina role models. Yet, Vargas Townsend knew she had advantages that her darkerskinned family did not.
“I felt like an impostor on both sides,” she says. “Inside, I felt like a first-generation American, but I was treated with a lot of privilege that was not extended to my mom or to my darker-skinned cousins who lived down the road but didn’t have the privilege
of having a white father.” The first chapters of Vargas Townsend’s life, however, didn’t lack its share of obstacles.
At age fifteen, she came out as gay to her conservative family in a small town in Texas. She says that her environment at the time was not exactly supportive, which compelled her to leave high school and instead work to support herself. She earned her GED and began taking college classes. Two years later, she was diagnosed with bone cancer. The prognosis was dire, but Vargas Townsend describes it as the best thing that could have ever happened. It reunited her with her family who came to terms with her sexual orientation. That experience made their bonds stronger than ever. “I was dying,” she says. “That finally made all of us realize what was really important: family.”
Once healthy, she returned to college at the University of Texas to earn a bachelor’s degree and then start her HR career at Dell. She spent the following twenty years cultivating a track record of helping big industrial companies navigate
SVP, HEAD OF GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCES
their often stagnant industry. Those are the skills she’s been putting to use to help athenahealth recover from staff reductions and to renew their legacy of double digit growth.
Although she admits that, at first, she wasn’t totally sure her HR team would be able to get through the company’s difficulties with her. “They didn’t have a ton of experience, but they challenged me to see that raw potential counts for a hell of a lot,” she says. “When people care and are aligned to their purpose, they almost always rise to the occasion.”
First she integrated HR operations and services to achieve a “One HR” service-delivery model and created an Employee Relations team. Then she scaled the cross-functional department to a global team that’s still hungry to see the company succeed.
Those initial obstacles at athenahealth resulted in an HR team built on personal and deeply trusting relationships, which Vargas Townsend considers a hallmark of her leadership style. The next step was extending that authentic care and collaboration to the entire employee population. Now, Vargas Townsend is rallying project leaders around a talent-management strategy that she refers to as “putting human back in human resources.” Her “Give, Get, Grow” initiative targets the employee life cycle by creating opportunities to invest in each individual on a more personal level.
“Every person is like an iceberg,” she says. “The more we help people let down their guard and bring their entire selves to work, we will have a better work environment and better results at the end of the day. Assumptions about people and which category they fit in no longer belong in the world we live in today. We must acknowledge and respect our differences.” For example, Vargas Townsend admits she still comes out every day when correcting others inquiring about her husband (“Actually, my wife”).
By attracting and empowering the best, diverse pool of talent, she adds, companies like athenahealth can have an impact on fixing the healthcare problems in the United States.
“As an HR leader, as a lesbian, and as an light-skinned Latina, I know that diversity is more than first impressions,” Vargas Townsend says. “I try to create a work environment that honors inclusion as an invitation—inviting people based on what makes each person uniquely them rather than how they fit into a category. ”
The following quarter, the HR team launched a class called “Your Career” and certified frontline HR employees as career coaches. It is a promising beginning for the new mutually beneficial culture—between employee happiness and
the bottom line—that Vargas Townsend envisions at athenahealth and eventually workplaces everywhere. Looking ahead, Vargas Townsend hopes to initiate that positive ripple effect through athenahealth’s inclusive, people-first strategy.
“I hope by the time my daughter gets a job, she knows what she wants out of life and a community of friends, mentors, and leaders help her along the way to make a difference in the world,” she says. “It sounds like utopia, but that’s what I want for her and for athenahealth, and I know I can build it.” LL
Let’s open up healthcare networks so innovation can thrive. Let’s combine our knowledge to make care delivery more efficient. Let’s free everyone—from providers and patients to administrators and payers—to perform at our highest purpose. That’s what matters most. At athenahealth, it’s what we do every day. Join us.
athenahealth.com/careers
BY WILL GRANT
PORTRAITS BY GILLIAN FRY
In today’s fast-changing world, the role of a chief human resources officer to strategically align the people strategy with the business strategy is critical to spurring innovation, driving growth, and sustaining a competitive advantage. This has led to organizations investing more in programs to create an environment of continuous learning that will expand skill sets, deepen expertise, and prepare its talent for the future. At global risk and reinsurance company Guy Carpenter, a new learning and development curriculum including mentorship and reverse-mentorship programs are keys to fostering a continuous learning culture.
Carmen Fernandez, Guy Carpenter’s chief human resource officer, says mentorship programs aim to not only provide colleagues with access to senior leadership, but they also give executives the opportunity to learn from colleagues at various levels of the organization. Ideally, mentorship promotes diversity in thought and cultivates a more inclusive work environment by opening up employees at varying levels to new voices and ideas, something that Fernandez is personally connected to.
Although the mentoring and reverse-mentoring programs are new pilot programs, Fernandez sees significant potential in their promise and ability to be expanded further. “One of Guy Carpenter’s strengths is its collaborative culture,” Fernandez says. “In some ways, we’ve been co-mentoring each other for years given our strong apprenticeship model. The formal mentoring programs are meant to open up conversations further. There are things millennials can teach us around new technology or ways of thinking differently. Mentors also play a critical role to help accelerate a colleague’s career by providing guidance and sponsorship.”
Fernandez credits her former mentor the late David Nadler— Marsh & McLennan Companies former vice chairman who was considered a titan of leadership and corporate governance—for
underlining the impact that a good mentor can have on someone. “You get stretched with a good mentor because they bring you to points in your thought process that you might not have imagined,” Fernandez says. “They help you find the wisdom inside yourself and resourcefulness to get to where you want to go.”
If Fernandez seems passionate about mentorship, it’s because she had amazing mentors since her childhood. Her parents came to the United States from the Dominican Republic and Spain and did not speak English. They raised five children, while working endlessly, and they still found time to salsa dance and live in the moment. They encouraged Fernandez not only to excel in school but also to develop as a whole person.
“Their hard work, commitment, and passion inspired not just our family but everyone they interacted with,” Fernandez says. “They inspired me to commit myself to lifelong learning. They also showed me the joy that comes from connecting to people from all walks of life.”
Fernandez’s parents valued the diversity of people they encountered, which modeled for Fernandez the power of inclusion when building teams and organizations.
Fernandez says that Guy Carpenter’s client-focused culture works in tandem with the company’s efforts in diversity and
CHIEF HUMAN
OFFICER GUY CARPENTER
inclusion. “Guy Carpenter has a ninety-seven-year history of being an innovation leader in our industry,” Fernandez says. “Our culture is dedicated to addressing our clients’ needs and the work of our talented colleagues to meet those needs has been the driver of innovation. As the reinsurance industry evolves, we are also committed to evolving our organization by incorporating diverse experiences and perspectives to enhance the solutions we provide to our clients in addition to more closely mirroring those who we serve.”
As Fernandez looks ahead in a role she’s only been in since late 2017, she says HR is focused on three key priorities to strengthen Guy Carpenter’s leadership position in its industry. “Our first priority is to strengthen Guy Carpenter’s workforce capabilities to prepare for the future,” Fernandez says. “This includes working with our leaders, colleagues, and clients to map future talent needs and put programs in place to prepare our colleagues for the evolving market landscape and digital world.”
The second priority is aimed at advancing colleague development and growth. This includes a learning and development curriculum for all colleagues as well as targeted programs such as mentorship, college graduate programs, and other development programs. “Developing our colleagues is the most critical element of our strategic plan,” Fernandez says. “We are committed to ensuring that our colleagues have the right guidance, tools, and support structures at every career level to help them grow. We also want to align performance, learning, career development, and rewards so that our colleagues have more transparency on how to achieve professional, personal, and financial growth at our firm.”
Finally, building a more diverse and inclusive organization is the third priority for Fernandez. Her focus is on providing access to opportunities to succeed for all colleagues. Guy Carpenter also aims to expand its talent pool to diversify the skills, experiences, and backgrounds they can bring to bear for their clients. “The reinsurance industry is a pretty unique field with sophisticated clients,” Fernandez says. “I’m excited to get the word out to a more expansive set of prospective employees about the rewarding career opportunities available at Guy Carpenter.”
Fernandez credits Guy Carpenter’s leadership for creating an environment where her passion can also be her job. “I feel fortunate to be working with our CEO Peter Hearn and the executive leadership team who are really tuned into what it takes from a talent perspective to drive success,” says Fernandez.
In particular, she says that leadership has helped her and her HR team make an impact with its colleagues. “I am proud of the work we’re doing, hand-in-hand with the leadership team, to roll out talent strategies that will help grow our colleagues and cultivate a more inclusive organization,” she says. “This will help perpetuate Guy Carpenter’s success into its next century of serving clients and ensure that our colleagues are thriving in their careers with us.” LL
WWorldview Cruzando fronteras: Strategies driving business across borders
By Jeff Silver
Portraits by Cass Davis
Dedicated to serving his community, Ariel Rodriguez Mercado is now determined to help his team at New York Life Insurance Company succeed
a partner at New York Life Insurance Company (NYL), has always been motivated by challenges. Whether on the court during his sixteen years as a professional volleyball player in Puerto Rico or working as a mediator for the Puerto Rico Department of Education, he was helping develop successful strategies and solutions.
It wasn’t until eight years ago, though, that he discovered his calling. That was when he moved to the continental United States and interviewed with an insurance company where a friend worked. When he started at the company, Rodriguez Mercado found what he was meant to do: help individuals in the Latino community and their families plan for the challenges that may arise in their own lives.
“The work that we do helps protect families,” Rodriguez Mercado says. “The Latin community traditionally focuses on hard work, but we want to make sure they also understand how financial services can provide benefits in many areas.”
When he eventually joined NYL, he was immediately struck by the organization’s commitment to working with the Latino community.
“Other companies might have a brochure in Spanish so they say they’re working with the market,” Rodriguez Mercado points out. “At New York Life, I met people who are involved in the community and are very successful—and there are many Latinos on the company leadership team. That clearly demonstrated to me that the company does much more than just pay lip service to the markets it serves.”
In addition to the Latino community, NYL’s cultural markets include nine other markets: South Asian, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, African American, women, young professionals, and LGBT. This broad range is very different from
what Rodriguez Mercado experienced at a previous company. Whenever he requested additional resources to help reach his market, he was told that it was too much of a risk. To this day, he believes that that response represented a tremendous missed opportunity for the company to have helped many people.
The diversity of NYL’s markets is reflected in Rodriguez Mercado’s own team. In addition to Latino members, it also includes Indian, Korean, African American, and Caucasian financial services professionals.
“Empowering individuals from different backgrounds and cultures provides a wealth of different ideas,” Rodriguez Mercado says. “We embrace that as a competitive advantage and make sure that we have an environment where it doesn’t matter where you’re from or what language you speak. Part of my mission is to develop the unique value each individual provides so they can reach their full potential.”
Before moving permanently to the continental United States, Rodriguez Mercado attended Rutgers University on a volleyball scholarship. Although it was the most time he had been away from Puerto Rico and he spoke little English, the team environment helped him feel like he belonged. Now, he’s worked hard to create similar bonds and a feeling of family among his team at NYL.
He stresses a collaborative approach, where agents are measured on their own efforts and accomplishments, but he also continually emphasizes the overall success of the entire team. To help facilitate a cohesive culture, Rodriguez Mercado is quick to let others lead if they have more knowledge or experience than he does on a particular subject. He also provides ample opportunities for everyone to contribute so they are engaged and feel that their contributions are valued. Additionally, the
team frequently participates in shared events, such as meals, celebrations, and other social activities.
“A mentor once told me that people leave jobs, but they don’t leave families,” he says. “My goal is to create that kind of connection within my team.”
Each new agent goes through thirtysix months of mandatory training through New York Life University, an accredited school that also provides continuing professional education. Additionally, Rodriguez Mercado mentors his team through weekly one-on-one performance review and planning sessions and twice weekly group meetings, where they exchange marketing ideas and best practices. He and a colleague also teach a Spanish class for agents in the Latino market.
One resulting success story is Rosani Hernandez, who has become the Greater Washington office’s first Latina partner in less than twelve months after joining NYL.
“To accomplish what Rosani has done in her first year is both outstanding and very unusual,” Rodriguez Mercado says. “She makes me so proud, and I feel honored to have had her as part of my team. I want to see more like her reaching those kinds of goals.”
He attributes his own success to being motivated by his wife, Anissa, and their daughters, Leyla, Skyla, and Aria. Without a moment’s hesitation, he says that everything he does is so he can ensure that they will have a secure and better future.
With that in mind, he is driven to help other financial services professionals so they can to do the same for their families.
“This career changed my life, and my mission is to help provide the same opportunity to others,” Rodriguez Mercado says. “If I can give the tools and resources to someone else who wants to realize their own dreams, that’s where I get my professional satisfaction.”
As the KFC’s Latin American region ventures into delivery, COO Agustin Dominguez-Larrea explains why it’s important to honor the brand’s future and its past
By Dan Caffrey
Many people have played the Colonel.
Norm Macdonald, Jim Gaffigan, Rob Lowe, Ray Liotta, and—as of January 2018—even Reba McEntire. Age, profession, and gender aside, all of these entertainers have donned the crisp white suit, string tie, and snowy hair and goatee of the late KFC founder, Harland David Sanders.
It’s a marketing campaign that blends the past with the present. Although the imagery dates all the way back to 1950— when Colonel Sanders first donned his iconic wardrobe—the metafictional humor and constant switching of performers is very much in line with today’s comedic sensibilities.
When it comes to his role as chief operating officer at KFC, Agustin Dominguez-Larrea takes a similar approach to the company’s expansion.
“We need to stay nimble and understand what our consumers want,” he says from KFC’s Latin American and Caribbean business offices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He’s specifically talking about a massive foray into home delivery.
As COO, Dominguez-Larrea is in charge of operations for all of KFC’s countries south of the US border, which means his work spans from Mexico all the way down to Argentina and the Caribbean islands. Of the forty-two countries that currently make up the brand’s Latin America business, sixteen of them currently have delivery at their stores. The goal is for every possible store to offer the service, including any brandnew establishments.
According to Dominguez-Larrea, the increased need for delivery—both within his region and the United States—comes from the fact that, in 2016, consumers began spending more at restaurants than grocery stores.
“When you look at the industry as a whole for many years, dating back to the 1960s, grocery-store purchases were always higher than prepared food purchases,” he says. “That includes restaurants, deliveries, everything. In 2016, that changed. For the first time in many years, it was the prepared-foods industry that grossed a higher profit in the United States. That tells you that consumers want prepared foods in their homes as well as outside of their homes.”
He’s right. As Time reported in June 2016, Americans now purchase nearly 55 percent of their meals from restaurants.
“At the end of the day, if you want to be successful as a company, you need to understand what it is that consumers want,” Dominguez-Larrea continues. “It’s not what you think is best internally. Really, it’s a matter of ‘What are consumers asking for?’ Right now, in the United States and elsewhere, people are asking products to be delivered to their homes.”
So how does Larrea ensure that KFC—a chain whose success has leaned so heavily on a history of brick-and-mortar dine-in and carry-out restaurants— seamlessly make such a shift? The most
crucial element comes from the brand’s franchise owners.
“In the Latin American region, we do not own any corporate stores” Dominguez-Larrea says. “They’re all operated by our franchisees.”
Whenever a store is ready to take the leap and start offering delivery, KFC has a dedicated delivery team at the Latin American/Caribbean office that pairs the franchisee with all of the necessary technology, including the appropriate aggregator (such as Grubhub), e-commerce platform, and delivery management platform.
“It’s the franchise team on the ground in each country that’s making deliveries happen,” Dominguez-Larrea says. “It’s a well-orchestrated partnership: global brand know-how on our end and the capabilities to execute and local knowledge on their end.” For transportation of the food, some stores hire brand-new drivers while others connect with drivers from their third-party aggregator.
But implementing delivery isn’t just about new technology, additional employees, and a gaze toward the future. It goes back to that idea of also preserving some of KFC’s heritage.
“It goes all the way back to Colonel Sanders,” Dominguez-Larrea says of KFC’s patented method of pressure-frying its chicken. “There is a pride in our product. It has to be absolutely great. Sometimes people forget or they never knew in the first place that we hand-bread every piece of chicken every day in our stores. We don’t want to compromise that. We want to make sure that the same quality product we serve in our stores is the same quality product that gets to our consumers at home.”
The stakes are obviously a lot higher with delivery. Dominguez-Larrea points out that KFC is now in charge of managing
its product all the way from the moment it leaves the store to the moment it arrives on the customer’s doorstep.
“You have to keep quality control very focused,” he says. “If you don’t package correctly and mix up an order, a customer at a restaurant can tell you right away. But if it happens on a delivery, it’s going to be very difficult to tackle that problem.”
Dominguez-Larrea firmly believes that this delicate balance of technology and a human touch is a recipe for success at KFC. Once delivery fully encompasses all stores in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, who knows what the future holds?
going to be an even different way for cus tomers to engage,” he says. “There’s a very interesting thing I saw in China with our delivery business. There, you can be gam ing, and inside the game, you basically press a button and get your KFC delivered. You can get it delivered on the train while you’re moving from one city to another. It’s amazing. If consumers start asking for those sorts of accommodations in our countries, we need to be responsive.”
lose its identity. “There are some core principles we can’t compromise,” he says. “People love us for our product. We need to make sure we’re preparing our fried chicken the same way we’ve done it every time.”
ing him in the media, the Colonel would be proud.
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By Sarah Breeden
José H. David, Global Head of Assessment & Selection, Merck
According to The Wall Street Journal, the average US employee spends onethird of their waking lives at work. And despite the amount of time people dedicate to their jobs, many face a daily struggle to feel valued, respected, and seen at the workplace. José H. David, the global head of assessment and selection at Merck, wanted to change that.
The desire to help others motivated David from an early age, though. “I grew up in Honduras and saw a lot of poverty and need,” he says. His altruistic nature drew him to psychology; he intended to become a clinical psychologist. However, upon taking a course in industrial/organizational psychology, David became fascinated by how he might help people increase their chances of happiness and well-being within their work environments.
In 2010, David took a position at Merck, a global pharmaceutical company dedicated to saving and improving lives. At Merck, David found an opportunity to work in a company whose mission was aligned with his own values, creating an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives are respected and where all opinions matter. “What drew me to pharma was the impact on people’s lives,” he says.
Merck’s vaccines and medicines combat some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including Hepatitis C, cancer, and HIV. David first worked as the director of organizational effectiveness in Merck’s Puerto Rico manufacturing sites before moving to the continental United States in 2014.
As the director of organizational effectiveness, David oversaw the culture strategy at various sites in Puerto Rico. “My goal was to create a place where you felt respected and where you could come and give your complete self and feel good about it,” he says.
Some of the strategies David used to build inclusiveness are habits that any organization could apply, such as encouraging staff to greet each other when they enter a room and ensuring the right team members are present during important meetings. Although these strategies might sound simple, they had a profound impact on creating a feeling of security among employees. The acknowledgment of coworkers’
contributions also plays into what David calls “a 360 degree vision,” where all perspectives are considered and included in decision making. The 360 vision cultivates a safe work environment for team members and enables teams to make more deliberate, more comprehensive decisions with everyone’s point of view in mind.
To create this cultural shift, David and his team first disseminated information on inclusive norms to managers. But managers weren’t the only ones educated on how to build an inclusive culture. David identified team members who could act as change agents and natural leaders who could influence their colleagues to shift behavior and thinking.
This culture of inclusion not only makes employees more engaged, but it also makes workplaces more flexible to shifting priorities. David relates the story of one pharmaceutical production site, which was at risk of being sold. At this particular site, management and team members faced the challenge of becoming more competitive among the many manufacturing global sites, both inside and outside Merck. The site not only had to meet competing priorities regarding efficiency, quality, and supply, but it also had to keep employees engaged in the midst of all these pressures.
The production site was eventually sold, but the transition for employees was easier because of the communication and cultural groundwork they had created. “We built such a strong culture that people were prepared,” David says. “We were leaning into the discomfort we were feeling, and we were able to be there for each other.”
After successfully creating workplace environments that were diverse and inclusive, David moved to the continental United States and continued to work for Merck in executive talent management, where he helped to develop a unified vision of talent across the company. Creating benchmarks for talent allowed the company to deepen its focus and identify elite talent within its own ranks. Through comprehensive talent assessments, David’s team discovered people who had the potential to become future executives. Once identified, Merck was able to prime
We join Hispanic Executive in recognizing José David’s remarkable leadership. Select International is proud to work with José and the entire Merck team.
leaders for the future by pairing them with resources, such as executive coaching, exposure to the board, and more job assignments and responsibilities.
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Having a culture of inclusion, combined with multidimensional talent strategy, is part of what makes Merck such a diverse workplace. “Diversity is woven throughout our business and is part of our way of working,” David, who’s now Merck’s global head of selection and assessment, says. “Our leaders are accountable for specific objectives related to diversity and inclusion. Where managers weren’t making progress, they needed to put a plan of action.”
Giving managers specific metrics and targets for promoting underrepresented
“We built such a strong culture that people were prepared. We were leaning into the discomfort we were feeling, and we were able to be there for each other.”
groups ensures that no one is left overlooked, David says. As a result, Merck has been commended by external organizations for its inclusion of women, underrepresented ethnic groups, and veterans.
From the beginning of his career, David has acted on the belief that talent rises to the top. With strategies to create safe working environments where all perspectives are valued, he has helped to ensure that Merck will be great place for employees, a company that is more nimble and flexible to the needs of its stakeholders, and a place where the best talent will indeed rise to the top.
By Kelli Lawrence
Born to a Cuban father and a mother with roots in the Canary Islands, you could say Maritza Diaz was dealing with diverse cultures from the get-go. Throw the United States into the mix—the family immigrated to the States from Cuba when Diaz was just five years old—and her cultural map had grown exponentially before she even started elementary school.
“I was the town interpreter for everything that happened,” says Diaz, who spoke Spanish at home and English everywhere else. “So I grew up with a sense of providing some sort of service to others. And that instilled in me a need to provide service in my career.”
The Diaz family settled in Tarrytown, New York, which was about twenty-five miles north of Manhattan and a popular destination at the time for Cubans who wanted to leave the bustling boroughs of New York City. She recalls living in a boarding house, where she says the only bathroom was down the hall and her mother cooked for other Cuban men whose wives had not immigrated, before the family got a place of their own. These kinds of experiences in Diaz’s formative years gave her an unforgettable understanding of her heritage. “From my perspective, the Cuban population that came to Tarrytown
was very strong,” she says. “We kept our identity, our language, our sense of culture, but at the same time, we wanted to fit in, so we became accepting of other cultures and other peoples.”
Motivated by her father’s desire to live closer to their homeland, the family relocated to the Miami area when Diaz was sixteen. This led to her earning all three of her college degrees, including an MBA, in Florida. It’s also where she worked as a compensation consultant until she got an opportunity with Bank of America’s San Francisco office. The next two decades found her either at Bank of America, Spanish banking giant BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentina), or working independently. “I’ve done a lot of international business travel, dealing with different cultures, people, brokers, and vendors and designing different programs,” Diaz notes. “I enjoy really feeling like I’m making a difference.”
Eventually her independent work became less challenging that Diaz preferred, and that’s when she got word of the Tokyo-based Sojitz Corporation. Made up of businesses in a wide variety of industries including automobiles, energy, chemicals, agriculture/forestry resources, and industrial parks, Sojitz has 440 affiliates and subsidiaries worldwide—including Sojitz Corporation of America. The company persuaded Diaz to join the New York offices in 2013. As general manager and VP of human resources/general affairs, her duties extend not only to Canada and Latin America but also to areas of business completely new to Diaz.
“They were looking for change,” she says of Sojitz. “It felt like a place where I could make a difference—a challenge I was ready for at this phase in my career.”
With a staff of ten—three in general affairs, seven in human resources—Diaz manages all of Sojitz’s HR disciplines, including payroll, benefits, human resource information systems, staffing, recruitment, performance management, and employee relations.
Working for a corporation that’s based in Japan presents its own challenges when dealing with cultural differences.
However, Diaz is no stranger to overcoming gaps in culture. In addition to growing up in a vibrant bilingual household, Diaz worked independent consultant for about three years on projects in Turkey, Thailand, and Venezuela to help organizations transform their HR departments from traditional operational units to strategic partners. One way she has done this is by advocating for HR to have a seat at the table, so to speak, and reminding companies to be open to change.
“If companies want to be global, then they must be open to change,” she says. “I think I have been able to overcome this to a large extent because I am assertive and I have always made that clear.”
In addition to advocating for HR to have a seat at the table, Diaz has developed skills over her career that have helped her be a better a leader and problem-solver. And her ability to critically think has been one of her most important assets.
As she’s grown as an HR leader, Diaz has found that mentoring has been essential to her success. “It is critical to the success of your career to have a mentor,” she says.
And now after three decades in human resources, Diaz has fine-tuned her approach to HR, acting as both an advocate for employees and leadership.
“Throughout my career, my philosophy about HR’s role may be a bit different than what I hear from other colleagues,” she says. “Although HR is a management role, I feel that we must act as the liaison between employees and management. I advocate for equality in HR.”
Corporate Synergies is a national provider of employee benefits and business insurance consultation and management services. Our in-house experts drive comprehensive services that help employers manage people, compensation and benefit programs in the face of mounting costs, regulatory pressures and ongoing changes in the healthcare and insurance industries.
UBS Financial Services Inc. celebrates the achievement and success of Maritza Diaz. We are honored to work with industry leaders and forward-thinking individuals like Maritza and congratulate her on this well-deserved acknowledgment of her leadership in human resources.
By Jeff Silver
When Javier Enrile first came to the United States from Spain, it was supposed to be a six-month stay to study English. But when he took an opportunity to audit business classes, which he says blew his mind, he convinced his parents to let him enroll at the University of Texas–Austin as a full-time math and economics major.
It wasn’t until his junior year in an mergers and acquisitions class, however, that Enrile truly found his place. In the class, he was awestruck by the professor’s discussion about intrinsic value, complex forecasting and valuation tools, and how M&A is an aggressive change agent in the business economy. From there, he wanted to learn more about what factors create a successful deal; what elements are key for a company to become as sustainable, profitable business; and how M&A can be a powerful tool to create value.
“I was immediately hooked by the idea that M&A is a multidisciplinary field that requires practitioners to master creative, interpersonal, analytical, investigative, and communications skills,” Enrile says. “The fact that every deal is unique and demands something different made it even more fascinating.”
After earning an MBA at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, Enrile went to work for Citi in New York, where handled corporate lending and M&A. As his career progressed, he realized he wanted to go beyond transactional work and use M&A as a tool to achieve strategic growth objectives for his clients.
“I feel that my efforts in M&A ultimately play a role in providing Principal’s customers with the financial help they need to get through some of the most challenging times of their lives.”
He eventually began working for Principal Global Investors, a subsidiary of Principal Financial Group, where he was managing director of strategic M&A. In that role for the past eleven years, he developed a cohesive investment process that has transformed deal activity into a strategic capability for growth.
Enrile says that a consistent, disciplined investment process drives good outcomes and enables good judgment in investing. In particular, it helps to avoid deal frenzy and ensures consistent, analytical rigor.
In achieving his M&A objectives, Enrile was able to address an element he felt had previously been missing from
his professional life. His career was challenging, he was doing what he liked, and he was learning new things. Meaning in his professional life, however, was missing. He wanted to know that he was making a positive impact in the lives of others and that his work went beyond himself.
Principal’s ethos of bringing the voice of the customer to everything it does enabled Enrile to find that missing piece. “At Principal, I found the meaning I was looking for,” he says. “I feel that my efforts in M&A ultimately play a role in providing Principal’s customers with the financial help they need to get through some of the most challenging times of
their lives, whether that’s dealing with disability, loss of a loved one, or moving into retirement.”
Ten years ago, a friend of Enrile’s introduced him to meditation. He was stunned when the practice’s quiet and contemplation helped him realize how many thoughts were constantly racing through his mind.
“Learning to have a more balanced, quieter mind has been extraordinarily helpful in M&A, which is intense and, very often, confrontational,” he says. “It’s also helped me recognize when negative emotions are driving my behavior.”
He uses the power of contemplation in very practical ways. If a disagreement with a colleague is creating anger or frustration, he finds a quiet place, thinks of the colleague, and wishes them happiness and to be safe and at ease. “Letting go of negative emotions can be incredibly hard,” he says, “but they end up being replaced by empathy and understanding, which leads to progress, compromise, and better results.”
Striving for empathy and treating others with respect are also part of Enrile’s core belief system and have made him a better leader.
Focusing on empathy and caring for those who follow him have helped to create an environment in which employees feel empowered. He says that they know that he understands what it means to be in their situations and that their efforts
for you,” he says, “nurturing these relationships is a key element of having an effective, well-functioning team.”
Looking back on his career to date, Enrile expresses a combination of confidence, pride, and humility. He feels he has gained a great deal of M&A expertise, which has led to helping many firms reach their strategic objectives. That, in turn, has helped them improve the lives of their employees, shareholders, and clients.
As he has evolved as a leader, he has had a positive impact on those who work for him by creating a safe environment in which they can develop professionally, discover their strengths, and, as he puts it, “try the impossible.”
“I have a long way to go, but I have become a better human being who is less focused on self-promotion or being first in my profession,” Enrile says. “I would much rather be recognized for improving other people’s lives.”
Editor’s note: At the time of publication, Javier Enrile was no longer with Principal Financial Group.
Teva Pharmaceuticals’ Jose Nicot is doing his part to help patients live better days
By Jeff Silver
oldest and largest companies, Teva Pharmaceuticals maintains a tremendous sense of corporate responsibility to provide high quality, affordable medicines that help patients live better lives. It is also committed to balancing business strategies with its global partners and the communities in which it operates.
Following through on those promises is a key part of Jose Nicot’s duties as global category lead for the company’s legal and real estate procurement organization. He and his team are continually focused on helping Teva optimize its international real estate portfolio to ensure it is in line with business goals.
“We’re developing a strategic, multiyear plan that supports our business and financial objectives while staying true to our values,” Nicot says. “Our focus is on making better days for patients by enabling the development, production, and distribution of effective and affordable medicines.”
Nicot, however, didn’t build the skills needed to achieve these goals by working strictly in corporate real estate. He began his career in the nonprofit sector at the Association of Puerto Rican Executive Directors (APRED), which advocated for human service programs in New York State. He later became deputy general manager for community operations at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). In 1996, he became associate chief of staff for New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani before moving to procurement in the private sector in 2003.
His varied experience and responsibilities taught him the importance of motivating, elevating, and activating an organization’s core message. While at NYCHA, he found ways to reinforce its mission that motivated his team to better serve the residents.
“I realized early on that any one of the kids who used our facilities could grow up to find a cure for cancer,” he says. “Our community operations department had nearly nine-hundred employees. It was critical for me to learn to modulate my message so it could resonate in one-on-one conversations and with large audiences. That’s what it means to motivate, elevate, and activate the mission—one opportunity at a time.”
Nicot also learned the value of a holistic perspective when he transitioned from advocating for APRED to developing funding policies in Mayor Giuliani’s office. Because of his experience, he understood the concerns on both sides of various issues. By integrating their priorities, he was able to help influence decisions that served the interests of both policymakers and community residents.
Nicot applied this type of holistic thinking when he first came to Teva. One of his first major projects involved purchasing office furniture. He began working with the Moscow procurement team, which was busy renovating Teva’s new downtown offices there. At the time, the company didn’t have a global program to oversee procuring office furnishings. From New Jersey, Nicot began working with Teva’s global real estate team based in Israel; architects, designers, and local purchasing agents in Moscow; and furniture dealers and manufacturers in Europe and around the world. After nearly six months, he was able to utilize the Moscow project as the basis for a global office furniture purchasing program, which leveraged Teva’s clout as a global enterprise and saved nearly 10 percent on furniture and furnishings for the Moscow facility.
“By understanding the nature of global scale, we can deliver value at the local level,” Nicot says.
He also helps develop his team’s capabilities in a collaborative and supportive environment. He encourages team members to be proactive in their personal development by seeking advice from more experienced colleagues.
“We teach people to trust themselves and to build confidence in their abilities and judgment through iterative, consultative, and supportive processes,” Nicot says.
He also makes a point of harnessing individuals’ existing strengths to help them become comfortable taking on unfamiliar tasks. “I was inspired by my
Jose Nicot’s father, Carlos, emigrated to the United States from Puerto Rico in 1911. Although the social norms were very different from the 1960s, when Jose and his brothers were born, he believes he learned very valuable lessons from his father.
A master machinist, Carlos purchased property in the Bronx, which was unusual at the time for a person of color. He indulged his love of learning by getting up at 6:30 a.m. every day, including Sundays, to read The New York Times and Spanish-language newspapers. After he retired, he operated a machine shop out of his garage until he was eighty-four years old.
“My father worked with many different races and nationalities and taught us the value of diversity,” Nicot says. “He also instilled in us a great work ethic along with devotion to family and country. Those lessons have had a tremendous impact on who I am today.”
mentor at APRED, who encouraged me to leverage my writing abilities to take charge of presenting the group’s agenda to the governor’s executive staff,” Nicot says.
As a mentor himself, he advises others to not be afraid to be different. He uses examples like Uber and Airbnb to illustrate how important it is to take calculated risks to stand out in one’s career.
Nicot follows his own advice. He collaborated with internal stakeholders at Teva to establish new enterprise-wide global purchasing programs in its legal and real estate departments. The resulting eDiscovery initiative is expected to save up to 25 percent
“By understanding the nature of global scale, we can deliver value at the local level.”
in annual operating expenses and reduce the number of providers by approximately 85 percent. And his success at Teva hasn’t gone unnoticed by his peers.
“Jose’s extensive background in both the public and private sectors has helped Teva maintain its commitment to its business and financial objectives,” says Robert Zwengler, executive vice president at CBRE, a commercial real estate and investment firm. “Having worked with Jose for the past five years, I can’t think of anyone who is worthier of being recognized for his contributions to the company.”
When asked about the near future, Nicot takes on the tone of the elder statesman.
“I used to be the youngest person in the room, but soon I will need to make way for the next generation, and I’m excited about that,” he says. “Until then, staying relevant and youthful in how I look at the world is key.”
Plotting the path to Hispanic leadership
By Tricia Despres
Davis
Jorge Frausto mentors the next generation of Hispanic executives
president and chief information officer of digital enterprises at GE Power, Jorge Frausto is proud to be a pivotal piece of a company that powers more than a third of the world. In fact, GE technology has equipped 90 percent of the world’s power transmission utilities, and 40 percent of the world’s energy is managed by GE software. Yet, it’s the homegrown values and morals that he learned as a child growing up in Mexico that continue to drive him.
“I was one of four children in a household, and I loved sports,” Frausto says. “I was the kind of kid that always wanted to learn something new. I didn’t know much about technology because there was none. These were the days of three television channels.”
From there, Frausto went to college at the Institute of Technology in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science engineering, with minors in telecommunications and mathematics. Shortly after graduation, he took a job as a project engineer at GE Mexico in 1998.
“I feel real lucky that I have been with GE ever since,” says Frausto, who has worked in various businesses under the GE Power umbrella, including enterprise systems and architecture, automation, and process excellence. He has also held leadership roles with GE corporate, transportation, aviation, and oil & gas over the past twenty years. “To work for the same company for twenty years has given me quite a foundation,” he says.
Frausto is currently driving GE Power’s digital transformation journey. After successful deployment, the single largest enterprise-resource system in GE Power—PowerMax—is now enabling GE Power’s digital industrial transformation along with strong industry expertise from SAP and Accenture.
Frausto is also involved with large-scale digital transformation projects that need meticulous planning and
a robust change-management program, ensuring successful implementation across functional and business teams.
“Jorge is a passionate leader aggressively pursuing both delivery excellence and innovation,” says David A. Sauter, managing director at Accenture. “His presence is among the best I’ve seen at commanding tremendous respect and engagement from his leadership team, GE employees, and business partners.”
Jorge is now embarking on the next step of the digital transformation journey, and he is keen to incorporate nextgeneration ERP architecture and the latest innovations to make user experiences more tailored and rewarding. He is keen to introduce customer and supplier B2B platforms and an integrated business-planning suite along with machine learning and robotic process automation, which will drive millions of dollars in business productivity and other benefits. This business transformation initiative is the foundation and will enable to position GE Power as a digital industrial company in the twenty-first century.
He leads a team of more than five hundred professionals from forty different countries who speak ten different languages. He is a keen believer in the “Team of Teams” concept and drives collaboration across several communities “One of the things I love the most about my job is knowing that regardless of where you are coming from, we all want the same thing,” says Frausto, who has lived and worked in the United States for the past fifteen years. “We want respect. We want people to treat us the way we want to be treated. We want people to help make us all successful, and we want to be able to balance our personal and professional activities as much as possible.”
It’s these personal activities that truly round out the life of the father of three. “I think one of my biggest accomplishments is being able to merge my personal and professional goals,” says
Frausto, who has found that technological advances, such as video conference calls, help balance his time between work and home. “My biggest job is taking care of my kids. I want them to learn by my example. It’s extremely important to me to make sure that they are responsible and accountable and humble. I also want them to be confident and exposed to different countries and languages and learn to appreciate people’s differences.”
He wishes these differences could be more appreciated not only within the technology industry but also by the very company in which he works in. “I love identifying that kind of talent at GE,” says Frausto, who is a graduate of the GE Experience Information Management Program and an active sponsor of GE’s Hispanic Forum. “Through exposure, coaching, feedback, and encouragement, there are so many opportunities to have Hispanics take a bigger role here. In 2030, Hispanics will make up the largest minority in the United States, so for me, it’s a passion.”
Yet, no matter how driven he might be to make things different, he says he knows there are many challenges to be met.
Although Frausto admits that working in the fast-paced industry of technology can be a challenging, he can’t keep from being excited about all that lies ahead.
“I think artificial intelligence is going to fundamentally change certain business models and practices,” he says. “I love to apply these state-of-the-art technologies that help drive business outcomes.”
Frausto admittedly is looking to his own future and what personally still lies ahead for this kid from Mexico “It is a pleasure and a privilege to do what I get to do every day,” he says. “It’s very different and very unique that someone can sit back at this point of one’s career and know that you worked for the same company for so many years. Sure, you can get overwhelmed very quickly and lose track about what really matters sometimes. But with this company, I have been able to surround myself with good people that have become my friends. I can’t imagine having it any other way.”
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“For the Hispanic community, I think the access to higher education is the first challenge we face,” he explains. “It’s definitely the beginning of the problem: the fact is that there is not enough Hispanic leadership, especially within the technology sector. To me, there needs to be high school level internships that could help them organically. That engagement early on is going to be crucial.”
This is exactly why Frausto says that he hopes to continue focusing on encouraging mentorship within the Hispanic community as much as possible. “I had a mentor early in my career, who was a past professor of mine, that helped me through challenges by doing things as simple as calling me to ask me how I was doing,” he recalls. “The idea of mentors is something we don’t use nearly enough. Even with years of experience, a mentor is a tool that everyone could use more often.”
Accenture congratulates Jorge for his outstanding achievements at GE Power. Jorge’s drive and exceptional leadership have had a significant positive impact on the GE Power business. Accenture has enjoyed our partnership with Jorge on the multiyear business driven ERP technology journey that GE Power has embarked on. GE Power’s relationship with Accenture to support its ongoing global digital transformation reflects GE’s commitment to technology innovation. Jorge’s vision and determination are leading GE Power towards new technology solutions making GE Power a more focused, more efficient and more profitable digital industrial business. Accenture is proud to celebrate Jorge’s success.
Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. With approximately 442,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. www.accenture.com
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By Rhiannon Root
Ilike accounting a lot; it worked out well,” says Chris Guzman, chief financial officer of Inktel Holdings Corporation.
Although she grew up in a family of accountants, Guzman dreamed of becoming a singer-songwriter. “I felt inspired by the messages,” she says. “Music has the ability to alter people’s moods and inspire them.” She remembers connecting deeply to inspirational messages in music and wanting to do the same for others.
Her love of music has never waned, but after having her daughter at age nineteen, Guzman knew she needed a stable career. She followed in her family’s footsteps and decided to study accounting at Florida International University. “College was something I needed to do for both of us,” she says. She later continued with graduate studies in forensic accounting at Southern New Hampshire University.
In the world of finance, she brought that same enthusiasm for inspiring people, which gives her a unique perspective and ability to solve workplace problems.
As CFO of Inktel, Guzman directs and manages the accounting, payroll, finance, and human resources teams. One of her biggest goals for running these teams is to
empower employees and make back-office operations more efficient and effective.
Founded in 1997, Inktel specializes in world-class, outsourced customer service, innovative product fulfillment, enterprise solutions, and digital marketing. Guzman met CEO Ricky Arriola through a mutual friend in 2014, and the more Guzman spoke with Arriola, the more she was intrigued by Inktel and its company culture, which is centered on helping its employees develop.
“I went for it,” she says. “And here I am.”
Having joined the company in 2014, she makes it a point to always ask herself, “What does empowering employees look like, and how do I go about doing this?” In pursuit of this, Guzman advocates for practical, effective methods in the workplace that involve everyone’s ideas.
The first step is hiring the right person for the right role. During her twenty years in the industry, Guzman has found that a potential hire’s positive mental attitude outweighs any set of skills listed on a résumé. She looks for learn-it-alls over know-it-alls. “Most skills can be taught to individuals with the right mental attitude, but it doesn’t exactly work the other way around,” Guzman says. “The right mental attitude means someone’s
open to learning and trying new things, and without it, learning capacity starts to hit a ceiling.”
After selecting the right person for the job, Guzman works to make sure the new hire can thrive in their new role and environment by emphasizing how each member of its team is important and valuable to the company.
“If there’s a disconnect, 99 percent of the time there’s a communication gap,” Guzman says. So she works with her teams to create action plans for new hires and reference guides regarding company procedures and workflow, but she won’t give any answers per se. Guides will provide pre-established, step-by-step instructions and actionable items that can be measured, but they are intentionally structured to lead to open forums and discussions that set the stage for innovation.
“My objective is always to prepare them to make their own decisions in the future, especially when there isn’t someone to tell them what to do,” Guzman says. “That’s what makes a leader, and that’s what I’m training for. Decision-making comes with a high level of accountability, which is scary and where people tend to hesitate the most. My training and development style is structured around asking so many questions that, during the process, they’re actually finding they already have most of the answers. If I’m always telling people what to do, then the only thing they’ve learned is to come to me for answers. There isn’t any growth or confidence-building in that.”
Guzman then takes it a step further, though, and has those on her teams shadow other teams.
“Not only does this increase my team’s empathy and appreciation for the other person’s contributions to the businesses”, she says, “but it also helps everyone identify areas of opportunity.”
The back office needs a lot of information and documentation from a lot of different people, so having more information can help streamline those operations. Guzman is focused on alleviating administrative burdens at Inktel to free up employees who need to take care of client needs and drive operations and sales. Valuing each employee’s contributions as part of the
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“We can do so much to help employees feel empowered just by reminding them that what they’re doing is part of a really big thing.”
processes does a lot to empower them, which is important for workplace morale and vital to the health of the company.
“The more employees feel a connection to the company, the harder they work for it,” Guzman says. “People want to feel like part of the tribe. We can do so much to help employees feel empowered just by reminding them that what they’re doing is part of a really big thing.”
Empowered employees bring insight and creativity to their jobs, and they can lead innovative efforts at companies, but there has to be a platform where ideas are welcomed. Guzman says that everyone is guaranteed to have at least one.
“It’s okay if an idea isn’t accepted or doesn’t work out; you just need to try again in a different way if it’s that important to you,” Guzman says. Growth can only happen if people try new things, she says, and companies need to be innovative if they want to be competitive.
Companies also have a duty to connect with their surrounding communities and serve others. Inktel has worked with
charities, such as Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Susan G. Komen, and Best Buddies to name a few. In fact, Guzman led the efforts to coordinate an annual sponsorship of events last year with Best Buddies, an organization dedicated to integrating individuals with intellectual disabilities into the workforce.
“It’s a beautiful organization,” Guzman says. She and employees at Inktel volunteered to work with Buddies to create LinkedIn profiles, help them build their résumés, polish interviewing skills, and give them advice on how to navigate the workplace. They also sponsored a cook-out and “parents tent” at the annual Best Buddies Friendship Walk that year.
It’s establishing relationships like this and connecting with former colleagues that drives Guzman. “The fact that we part ways in the workplace and people still want to connect means a lot,” she says. “We’re capable of anything with an optimistic mind-set.”
Garcia’s two decades as an HR leader in the oil and gas industry taught her to use times of change as times to build talent
By Lori Fredrickson
Throughout Cindy Garcia’s twentyone years in the oil and gas industry, she’s learned it is important to be agile in times of change. “The industry is very fluid,” the vice president of global human resources and talent acquisition at Noble Energy explains. “The rate of change has definitely accelerated over the past several years, particularly with recent technological advances that have spurred the US shale boom.”
So, when it comes to talent management and adapting to different cycles of growth, the work that Garcia does is even more valuable. “Being adaptable and being able to respond to growth cycles is a big part of what we do in HR,” Garcia says.
Garcia’s connection with the energy industry predates her professional career. Growing up in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, her father worked for Amoco. Garcia’s interests in business and psychology led her to pursue a master’s degree in human resources, and Amoco was a natural place to start her career in 1998.
When BP acquired the company a few years later, she gained a much deeper understanding of how to make a difference when change occur in the industry. As the HR incident response officer following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, Garcia worked closely with the crisismanagement team and was dedicated to ensuring employees had the support and resources they needed.
When she joined Noble Energy in 2014, she sought a new challenge. After working for nearly two decades with BP’s large global workforce, she was eager to apply her expertise to make a difference at an independent operator with global reach. Noble’s motto also resonated with her deeply: “Energizing the World, Bettering People’s Lives.” At that point in time, the price of oil was $102 per barrel, the company was in growth mode, and Garcia was hoping to use her passion for Noble’s mission to bring something new to the business plan. “The intent was to
Since joining the company in 2014, Cindy Garcia had led the entire human resources department at Noble Energy.
come in and help further enhance HR processes and help support that growth,” Garcia says.
When the decline in oil prices forced the company to take a closer look at company strategy and organizational needs, Garcia shifted her desire to make a difference into leading the organization through that transition. This, she says, was a very people-oriented process. “Through all cycles of change, we’ve focused on our people and worked to manage talent and organizational capability to ensure we have the best outcomes for the company,” Garcia says. That meant looking at where the staff could be redeployed to apply their talent in new areas to best support the organization.
Leading that transition also meant managing teams through integration the of two new smaller, independent companies that Noble acquired in 2015 and 2016. “Change can create uncertainty,” Garcia says. “So, we focused on communication
to existing and incoming employees through every step of the process.” Her team developed processes to understand new talent and their skill sets as well as possible and smoothly integrate them into the Noble Energy culture.
Throughout all of these changes, she’s found that having a broad team of HR experts that can collaborate with business leaders and other functions is vital. Agility and open communication are essential. “With information, employees are confident and focused on moving forward,” Garcia says. Making a new team feel secure with their roles, she adds, helps them use their individual talents and makes the integration more effective.
As Garcia and her team learned which processes worked best during the company’s first acquisition in 2015, they were able to apply those processes more effectively during the second integration. Now, Garcia and her team can focus on creating more holistic workforce plans and enhancing employee engagement.
“We have some great new talent-review and succession-planning processes to gather and analyze information at the organizational and individual level,” Garcia says. “We’ve been able to look at ways to be more strategic.” The HR team is now focused on workforce planning, leadership development, and enhancing team effectiveness and inclusion.
All of this work helps Noble Energy stay committed to its core values: integrity, caring creativity, wisdom, agility, excellence, and alignment. “We always consider how changes will affect our people,” Garcia says. “We develop communications and activity plans to best manage the impact.”
No matter what changes might come next, Garcia remains committed to making sure that broad HR considerations are integrated into the strategy. That means looking at Noble’s business goals to make sure that the work her HR team is doing is aligned with the business plan and is
“We always consider how changes will affect our people. We develop communications and activity plans to best manage the impact.”
looking at what employees need on an individual level. After all, Garcia says, what makes Noble so successful is its people.
“When we collaborate,” she says, “we continue to do what is best for our people.
“We have a great team of HR professionals here who are very dedicated, highly motivated, and very business driven; they are part of the business because they want to make a difference for the company. And we’ve got some really great leaders here who recognize and value that.”
With leadership lessons from the military and the yoga studio, Carlos Sotero learns to stand on his head and see another perspective
By Joseph Kay
In 2017, Carlos Sotero was looking for a job, but only out of habit. Early in his tech career, a mentor told him that professionals need to interview twice a year to stay marketable. Interviewing is a skill, and it responds to regular practice, he said.
Sotero was already seated in a prestigious leadership role at a major tech manufacturer, yet he found himself working his way through eight rounds of interviews with Tivity Health, the last of which was with CEO Donato Tramuto. In that conversation, Tramuto asked Sotero, “What’s your why?”
“That was the first time anyone had asked me in quite a while,” he says. “For me, my family feeds my soul.” Sotero’s position at Motorola was challenging and lucrative. But it was seriously demanding, too. He spent about half of his time
traveling, which had costs for his family life as well as his physical health.
“Flying 100,000 miles a year sounds great until you’re actually doing it,” Sotero says. “It’s hard to keep a disciplined approach. Your work/life balance skews because you go back to the hotel and just continue to work.”
The Tivity Health position was an opportunity to bring himself back into balance. More than that, he would be contributing to a meaningful wellness mission across the country.
Tivity Health Inc. provides fitness and health improvement solutions by partnering with providers, employers, and government agencies. The organization’s flagship program, SilverSneakers, offers free fitness training and advisement to more than fifteen million American seniors.
One of Sotero’s major projects is to transform the organization’s data capabilities to differentiate Tivity Health as a business partner and further improve the application of data to enhance the member experience. In today’s customer-centric digital world, real-time data—which is available at any time and from any location and any device—is essential to success. To keep his team effective and forwardlooking as they collaborate to make these enhancements, Sotero makes himself an understanding leader who always listens first. That’s part of a greater effort to build what he calls a high-trust culture.
“It’s important to empower your team and make sure they’re coming forward with problems, opportunities, and ideas. You should be encouraging those things,” he says. “A lot of people talk
about empowerment, but I see managers and leaders that are trying to get people to adhere to their leadership model. I make sure I’m adapting.”
Sotero spent six years in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. He continues to apply some of the leadership principles he learned in his time there: on a mission, the objective comes first; in peacetime, the troops come first; and leaders always eat last.
Of course, not every motivational tactic in the military is effective or appropriate in the private sector. His transition into healthcare technology has provided opportunities to expand his approach.
“At Tivity Health, our leadership model for workplace dignity and inclusion is trust, tenacity, and tenderness,” he says.
“Yoga has also had an influence on my style because it’s made me more patient.”
“It’s about having that balance—and it doesn’t mean that you’re ‘soft’ if you’re tender. You can deliver a pretty tough message and still do it thoughtfully.”
In keeping with those tenets, Tivity Health is also making strides to enable healthy work/life balance for its entire workforce. Sotero makes sure his team members own their evenings and weekends—not a cheap promise for an IT leader whose business services need to operate around the clock. When necessary, that means that he fields calls and gives level-one support himself. Leaders still eat last.
Again, his understanding of strong family supports his definition of good business. The kind of leader he wants to be, he says, is the same kind of leader he’d like his sons to work for. That means putting people in positions of challenge, not of struggle, and eventually identifying a great successor and working yourself out of a job.
He hasn’t found himself in that position just yet at Tivity Health yet. He’s still building up the team as the organization moves toward new dataforward products and services. Today’s connectivity will mean that the company can engage more directly with members, providing motivation and balance across the process. Looking forward,
it’s all about bringing more focus to the members. But that’s an ongoing practice, not a singular destination—something he’s learned in yoga.
“Yoga has also had an influence on my style because it’s made me more patient,” Sotero says. He was on the CrossFit bandwagon for a while, but repeated injuries became too frustrating. Yoga, he found, challenged both his body and his state of mind in ways that supported his working life.
Like leadership, yoga is about discovering comfort and balance inside uncomfortable positions. Each practice supports the other, and opportunities for growth are more important than the competitive instinct. Sotero’s next goal is the unsupported handstand. It’s demanding and elusive, but he’s seeing increments of growth.
“The longest hold I’ve had is five seconds,” he says with a laugh. “My goal is that, by the end of the year, I’ll have a thirty-second hold. We’ll see if I get there.”
And the attitude he brings to yoga shines through in his leadership at Tivity Health.
“When it comes to things you’re good at, that’s the easy part,” he says. “For things you’re still trying to get, it’s a matter of patience and developing a plan to get there.”
Gloria Caceda, director of global administration for World Fuel Services, describes her duties as swim lanes, and she keeps her team united, lest they all sink
By Olivia Castañeda
Gloria Caceda says. “What is it that I’m trying to accomplish, and how can I get there in the leanest possible way?”
This successful mind-set—seasoned with more than thirty years of experience in the industry of facilities management and administration, including three years in corporate travel management—had Caceda promoted within the past year to be the first director of global administration for World Fuel Services, a Miami-based international energy, logistics, and technology solutions provider for aviation, marine, and land customers and suppliers. The company ranks 103 on the Fortune 500.
Her experience and extensive network made her the best candidate for the job. “This role was created; there is no predecessor in the company,” Caceda says, as she explains how management identified a gap that needed to be filled. “We didn’t have a connector to our offices and since managing global travel is one lane, managing corporate offices and the day-to-day operative was totally different.”
As director, Caceda has seventeen direct reports and wears many hats, leading many teams within four work streams: travel and expense, office administration, office support, and facilities management. She is directly responsible for travel and expense management, works closely with the director of security for all the global offices, manages and oversees all integrations for the company’s acquisitions, and assists with real estate initiatives, such as relocations, downsizes or upgrades, and the workspace environment. “I put them into swim lanes, and then they cross paths,” she says. “Instead of having five different people managing five different work streams, with my network, I’m able to streamline that and make that a much leaner process.”
Her most recent successful two-year long project was the drafting, publishing, and endorsing of the company’s first-ever extended global travel policy that went into full-effect this past year and was signed by World Fuel Services executive vice president and CFO Ira M. Birns. The company’s budget shows a current savings trend of 50 percent for the same routes, compared to last year’s figures. The new policy is also demonstrating a 78 percent global compliance. She is grateful for having worked alongside the great partners that make up the company’s C-Suite.
The company was originally founded in 1984 under the name of Trans-Tec and was later acquired in 1995 and given its current name. The company’s next step of evolution is Caceda’s current
project of implementing a global administrative network. Her objective is to have one point of contact at major offices to distribute corporate information regarding the standards of administrative procedures and practices, compliance matters, and local insight into the needs and requirements of all employees, including employee morale, wellness, and retention. This playbook will ensure the smooth transition of office relocations and have the daily operational activities accounted for prior to opening of any new major office.
Staying flexible, agile, and adaptable helps Caceda get the job done, as daily challenges arise in the fast-paced and ever-changing corporate landscape of the fuel industry. She remains positive, never taking feedback as a negative, always willing to listen, working as a team unit, and being honest, rather than political.
The company’s mantra is “One Team, One Dream,” and that’s exactly what she promotes. One dream translates to Caceda affording the time to listen and discuss every individual’s ideas on how to accomplish the same goal. “A, I treat everyone the same and with respect. I make sure that everyone’s thought process is in alignment with the core values of the company,” she says. “B, they understand that we all sink or we all swim. It’s not I or you. It’s a we.”
She chooses the right decision regardless of the challenges and whether she will be liked or disliked for those choices. Because she manages a lot of the company’s money and assets, if she cannot defend her decisions, she does not spend. “My motivation is that I can go home at night and be at peace knowing the decisions I made for the company are the right ones,” she says.
Caceda became the strong Latina she is today because of motherhood and her mentors, who are her life-long friends. “My children molded me into who I am,” she says. When her twin boys were five years old, Caceda became a single parent. “That forced me to make sure that I was able to think outside the box of who I am and who I needed to be,” she says. Her boys, who are now successful on their own, are the guiding principle of her life, both professionally and personally.
Over the course of her career, her logical thinking and hardworking attitude has brought her success. Her first mentor from one of her first jobs was the CEO of a global shipping company, who never allowed her to just “sit on the sidelines.” He made Caceda aware of her smarts and strength. After that job, she landed a position with a large advertising agency and worked for the CFO who was the first powerhouse Latina executive she had ever witnessed. “I am proud to call her the sister the universe sent me,” she says. Today, she mentors within her team and instills in them what she learned—to be strong, independent, and knowledgeable.
Alameda County, California, is 22.7 percent Hispanic.
According to the American Egg Board, More than 90 percent of American households have eggs.
Americans now purchase nearly 55 percent of their meals from restaurants, such as KFC
The 2011 tsunami in Japan disrupted the television and film industry. Before the disaster, content had been distributed via videotape, but the process was disrupted when Sony, the chief tape supplier, could no longer produce.
The average US employee spends one-third of their waking lives at work, which inspires José H. David to create the best work environment possible at Merck.
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