Mover and Shaker: Virgen Tracey, Senior Team Leader, WEX

Virgen TraceyBy Cathie Ericson

Knowing and understanding that it’s ok to take risks because that’s how you will grow and learn has helped forge a successful career path for WEX’ Virgen Tracey.

She is quick to point out that there’s never a dumb or perfect idea, and just because you’ve been somewhere longer, it doesn’t mean you have all the answers. In fact, the best ideas often come from fresh thinking.

“I always tell my team that you can’t learn if you don’t make mistakes, and it’s true for me, too. Realizing that the next time I’ll better know what to do has allowed me to grow in my career and as a person,” she says.

For Tracey that 20 years of growth has brought a thriving career at WEX as a leader, taking on diverse roles within the contact center that have allowed her to conquer a new challenge every day.

“Being able to take risks in my role has been a huge learning point for me. We think outside the box every day, not only from a professional standpoint, but as a rapid-growth company, we must be able to embrace change,” she says. Tracey credits her ability to lead by example, to “walk the walk,” as a key force for building credibility and trust and having a followership that has made her a successful team leader.

Leading the Contact Center To Success

Joining WEX fresh out of college, Tracey knew she would have to work hard, but also learn to be open to change to make the most of the startup environment. And, at the forefront of her mind was the realization that the company had earned a great deal of respect and customer trust that they would deliver excellent service, and her role was to stand by those ideals. She appreciates that she has been there throughout the growth of the company, fulfilling her belief that her hard work would pay off.
Right now, she’s excited to be working on supporting with implementation of the Salesforce service cloud application into the contact center. They are currently piloting it with 50+ employees across the organization, and she says it has been a game changer for how it’s going to increase efficiencies and gives insight into how to better support the customer to provide a better agent and customer experience. “Using this tool allows us to increase the information we have at our fingertips, directing us to what we need to change and enhance for better employee customer satisfaction and efficiency.”

After the full roll-out to more than 130 employees in the South Portland contact center, she will then support with spearheading the roll-out in the contact center in Ogden, focusing on ensuring the impact is minimal.

Mentors Lead the Way

To Tracey, a role model is someone she can look up to, but is also a mentor who can provide support and feedback to help her grow based on what they’ve seen in their interactions.

Over the years she says she has been honored to work with many successful individuals who have helped show her the ropes, in both IT and leadership roles. “If I wanted to know how others got to where they are today, I had to seek out the opportunities to network and find mentors,” she says. She credits a willingness to being open to listening to their stories about the best practices that worked for them and how they got on the path that led them to their end result of success.

And now she is focused on being a role model to others, taking what she’s learned by seeking out opportunities to learn from others and sharing that knowledge. “I can’t wait for the moment that I report to many of my team members whom I have helped nurture to a place of leadership,” she says.

Currently she is part of the pilot of WEX’ mentoring program where she is paired with a mentee, which has helped give her confidence and also will expose her entire team tåo the many benefits of formal mentorship to encourage new styles and ways of thinking.

Melding a Busy Professional and Personal Life

With three kids, ages 6, 15 and 19, there is never a dull moment, particularly when travel softball is part of the picture. “I love watching my 15 year old daughter play, and notice her development and how she gives 100 percent on and off the field. It’s such an inspiration as a work ethic,” Tracey says, noting that watching her hard work and openness to coaching is a lesson she herself can bring back to work.

Aside from giving “200 percent” to work, which has paid off in being tapped for her fifth upcoming President’s Club, Tracey always takes time to be present in her family life…but admits with a laugh that she also will never turn down a trip for shoe shopping. Most importantly she loves spending time with her husband and kids and enjoying any free time they have together.

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Mover and Shaker: Yin Seo, Technical Product Manager, Laserfiche

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Yin Seo

By Cathie Ericson

Work is much different than school, Yin Seo realized early on.

“At school, everything is laid out and you know the success metric you are working toward, but in the professional world, there’s no answer key,” she says. “Everything you are doing is brand new and something that no one else has done, so what separates good employees from exceptional employees is that the exceptional ones are able to decide for themselves what is best for the team and the organization. You will never be given an assignment where someone else knows the answers.”

Advancing New Ways of Working

Seo started as a software automation engineer right out of UCLA but transitioned from coding to a subject matter expert role, where she worked more closely with clients. Soon she was overseeing an entire development team as well as the designers for a software division, which she found to be her true calling — managing the project development life cycle. There she made several impactful changes, including transitioning the development process to a “scrum” format, which she found to be superior as a way to emphasize the team mentality while implementing quicker turnarounds.

She remains passionate about project and product management and has since become certified as a Scrum Master and Project Management Professional. While the “agile” way of doing things has been successful for some time with software companies, it is moving into other industries as a best practice, validating that the technique will work for any type of project management.

She then moved to Laserfiche, a leading global provider of enterprise content management software, where she has spent the past seven months as a technical product manager, learning a new industry and new software.

Currently Seo oversees two teams working on advancing the company’s business process automation product suite. “My teams have been working really hard, and it’s exciting to see the fruits of their labor,” she says, adding that as a product manager, the most important aspect is making sure that what they’re building delivers value to customers.

One major accomplishment she has already achieved was being asked to give the keynote address at the annual Laserfiche Empower Conference, attended by more than 3,000 people. She had only been with the company for less than three months when she was invited to speak, which was a huge vote of confidence, but the other reason the accomplishment feels so significant is because previously she had been terrified to speak in public. “This was validation that I had moved out of my comfort zone to where I could handle it,” she says.

Using Strengths to Navigate Challenges

While there is a well-known dearth of women in software development, Seo sees that a major barrier for women to succeed lies in confidence. She believes that when young women see those numbers, they start to create a narrative about why there is a lack of women, which can create doubts: Are we not good enough? Is it too hard?

She urges young women to look past the statistics. “We want to be judged by our work, based on merit, and so we need to do the same for ourselves. We need to help the numbers grow, but not let them define us.”

And, she also reminds professionals at every level that they have to keep growing their skills. “If you are not improving, then you are technically losing ground since everyone else is focused on getting better.” As she points out, these skills might not always tie directly to your career; for example, for her it was improving her public speaking acumen.

An avid rock climber, Seo sees the sport as a perfect metaphor for the tech industry and pursuing goals. In rock climbing, climbers refer to every route as a “problem,” each with a grade, and as you get more experienced and stronger you can conquer higher grades – just as in business. “I’ve been learning that a lot of success comes from technique, and every problem has different solutions that you can solve in different ways,” she says.

Rock climbing also comes with its own set of stereotypes; for example that you have to be tall and have significant upper body strength, but Seo has found that you don’t have to be a certain body type to climb well. “My husband and I climb together, and he’s a little better, but there are some problems I can solve that he can’t. I am shorter but have less weight to pull up and am more flexible so you always have to use your strengths to your advantage.”
Just like in the business world.

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Mover and Shaker: Heather Andrews, Vice President of Strategic Accounts, WEX Corporate Payments

Heather Andrews smEveryone finds success in different ways, says WEX’s Heather Andrews, but in her case, it has come in part from the drive to learn, no matter what career path you are on.

That philosophy, along with her willingness to step through open doors – even the scary ones – has fueled her career trajectory.

Capitalizing on New Opportunities Brings Success

Although Andrews studied psychology, she didn’t see a clear path for a career without attending grad school, but was ready to enter the working world. She accepted an offer doing retirement plan education, which opened up an exciting world as she became increasingly interested in the role that employee communications play in benefits and helping employees engage in their future.

It was an especially pivotal time in the industry as 401(k)s were increasingly usurping defined benefit plans, creating new choices for employees and new roles for organizations to manage around this reality. She returned to school to earn her master’s degree in leadership and change management in organizations, which meshed well with her psychology background, and then branched off to do some independent consulting where she could assist organizations confronting major system changes.

Along the way she engaged with a startup tech firm that was building a new benefits platform to consult on their business and communications planning. It ended up being a major opportunity as the company grew rapidly as the first online benefits platform to hit the market. Andrews wore all the customer-facing hats and stayed with the company as it was acquired to become Evolution1and eventually WEX Health.

Helping grow that business from being the fifth person to its success today is the professional achievement she is most proud of so far. “Being part of that groundbreaking team as the business grew from something so small and new to influencing an entire industry and becoming something of such incredible value was so exciting,” she says.

Moving from healthcare to the corporate payments executive leadership team offers a new world for Andrews to explore. “It’s a huge change that really allows me to stretch my brain,” she says. “I realize that a lot of faith has been put into me in this role at a critical time of growth, change and risk, and that’s motivating. It inspires me to make a difference.”

Growing Along the Way Through Personal Lessons and Mentors

When she first entered the corporate world, Andrews held a common perception, that she wasn’t sure how much of an impact one individual can make. That was part of what she loved about consulting: Seeing that people can make a major impact from the start, particularly if they can confidently work with professionals at all levels, unafraid to let their opinions and ideas be heard even if they get shot down.

And she knows that much of her success has come from leveraging personal and professional relationships. “Ethics and hard work have been important factors in my career, but I know that doors were opened for me because people had faith in what I can do, and then I was not afraid to step through them,” she says, adding that success comes when you lean forward and take chances, especially when you’re part of an entrepreneurial organization.

One role model who stands out is a female attorney at WEX Health who shared insights on why female business leaders have to be true to themselves, never compromising what they believe in and exuding confidence that you can accomplish it.

In addition, she cites WEX’s Integrated Leadership Development Program as having been crucial to her success at WEX for the networking and coaching it provided. “I have this fantastic coach who is also a woman who has been through a diverse and rich career,” she says. “This perspective as a successful woman in business helps me navigate what I need to do next as I continue to grow my career.”

But you don’t need a formal program to grow: Andrews finds life lessons all around her, from leaders on any stage, whether professional or political, who are able to balance assertiveness with having the grace to hear and respect people around them. “They are able to use that professional fire to be successful but maintain high ethical standards that they aren’t afraid to share vocally. I admire people who are unafraid to step out and say ‘I don’t care what others think; this is what I believe is right.’”

And sometimes we experience a hard-earned lesson, says Andrews, as she recalls a time early in her career when she was still working on retirement plans. She made a bold promise about how easy a migration would be, without fully thinking through how a failure to deliver might affect her equally young client. When the project ended up being more complex than expected, this client was taking the heat internally. “I didn’t embrace her vulnerability, and I lost her trust. This incident has always stood out to me as a reminder that you have to understand your counterparts and the position you’re putting them in by what you’re promising.”

Of course, inspiration also comes from home, as Andrews finds through her husband and four boys, who range in age from 15 to five. “I see myself through their eyes and want to be an example because every single day will impact their lives.”

Treasured family time includes an annual summer trek to a new national park, and winters spent skiing and snowboarding. This activity has an ulterior motive, she laughs. “Hopefully if they have a winter sport they like, they will stay in Minnesota close to me.”

Day-to-day, whatever they do, they do it together, whether it’s sports, music or academics. “We also take the time to volunteer together, as a family, which I believe is important to provide a positive influence that will affect how they are as adults.”

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Mover & Shaker: Lisa Goldkamp, Vice President of Partner Development & Sales Solutions at WEX Health

Lisa Goldkamp

By Cathie Ericson

Hard work indeed pays off – and you can’t shirk that part – but hard work alone doesn’t mean doors will automatically open for you, says Lisa Goldkamp.

The key, she says, is to work smarter and draw on your own emotional intelligence.

“You can’t quietly sit there and expect everyone to recognize your role,” says Goldkamp. “You have to build relationships and be aware of your own personal brand, making sure that people know who you are, and that others are not getting credit for your hard work.”

Advancing Her Career Through Seizing Opportunities and Embracing Change

Goldkamp’s career path has been built on a successful tenure at two organizations. She began as an intern at a company that provided IT training to corporate employees, where she says she quickly learned that effective use of technology can impact your productivity and success.

It wasn’t long until the owner of the franchise saw her potential, and she advanced to managing a team of 15 in operations.

After honing her management skills, he subsequently asked her to step into an account executive role — although she had never considered sales, she took the chance and soon realized how much she loved consulting with clients.

Soon she decided she wanted to relocate to her hometown of St. Louis and leveraged relationships she had built to attain a job with a predecessor of her current company, WEX, which she ultimately joined through a series of mergers and acquisitions.

In fact, she credits her ability to thrive in the face of constant change as a key to her success. “I find that lots of people choose the path of fear during change, but I consider it an opportunity to grow my impact,” Goldkamp notes. “ I look at every change as a challenge to figure out what I can do to embrace new people and situations instead of being paralyzed. Disruption has brought my best breaks.”

Her first role at WEX was in consultative sales using technology to help prospective clients find solutions to complex problems, and over time she grew into a pre-Sales leadership role.

A recent promotion has opened the door to new opportunities, including extending her consultative sales leadership to an expanded team that is focused on bringing sales excellence to prospective and current partners. As a result, she has welcomed new talent to her team whom she can help develop and mentor. “I’m excited to have the chance to build an expanded managerial infrastructure and promote additional leaders.”

Goldkamp knows that she has been fortunate to have people who believed in her, who were willing to go to bat and champion her, and she looks forward to doing the same.

Emulating the Best Qualities Around Her

While she has worked with many individuals she considers to be role models, Goldkamp says she can’t help but look up to WEX CEO Melissa Smith for being both successful and down to earth. The first time they met, when WEX was acquiring her former company, Smith was pregnant with her first child and Goldkamp was pregnant with her second.

Over the years, Goldkamp has had more opportunities to interact with her at company events, and is always struck by how accessible she is. “As we all know, tech firms tend to be male dominated, and I really respect both her career path and who she is as a person.”

Among the qualities that Goldkamp herself aims to portray to others are a positive attitude, a strong work ethic and strong professional and personal relationships, all of which she believes have been crucial to her success. And she notes that you have to trust your coworkers and leaders in order to achieve a strong work/life balance.

Having had three kids in less than four years, that balance currently entails spending time with them whenever she can. She credits her husband, who has been home with the kids for the past five years, as greatly simplifying their life, given their busy schedule and her own travel needs.

Having a support system at work and at home is the key to achieving balance, she finds. “Over the years I have recognized that you can’t control everything or do it all yourself. Becoming a mother highlighted the need to prioritize and empower others since you can’t do it all alone.”

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Mover and Shaker: Amelie Jeangeorges, Senior Manager, Chief of Staff to the Global Human Capital Leader, PwC

Amelie JeangeorgesBy Cathie Ericson

“Be authentic, passionate and energized. Never give up as you work hard to get what you want to achieve.”

That’s the advice that Amelie Jeangeorges has for other women who want to succeed.

When Amelie first began her corporate career, she feared she might lose her personal brand and just become a ‘number’. But, at PwC, she’s found she’s only ever been encouraged to build her own personal career path and differentiate herself to create the experience she really wants.

Embracing the Challenge of an International Career

In 2009, having graduated from the French business school ICN with a Master’s degree in Finance and Business, and having completed two internships in London and Luxembourg, Amelie started a career in audit, taking on a role in the Banking Capital Markets (BCM) in Assurance at PwC France in the Paris office. After five years in France, she applied for a tour of duty in PwC’s New York office in BCM audit, where she had the opportunity to serve one of the firm’s largest global clients.

At the end of her audit tour, Amelie realized she wasn’t quite ready to return to France, and chose to pursue an additional international learning experience: supporting the Global Human Capital Partner as Chief of Staff, and helping to deliver the global human capital strategy to empower PwC people in their own careers.

Amelie’s current role is one of her proudest professional achievements to date — having the opportunity to grow personally and professionally despite living in a different cultural and working environment. “I’ve now lived in four different countries, and need to keep challenging myself to forge my path outside of my comfort zone,” she says.

“It’s not always been easy, but I’m proud of what I’ve achieved and where I am today within PwC,” she says, acknowledging that taking on this position after almost 10 years in audit has been one of the most important learning experiences and one her best decisions.

Amelie describes her current role as that of a ‘conductor,’ supporting the team to deliver the strategy and coordinate and even lead the projects.

“This experience adds another arrow to my professional quiver because I am gaining additional soft skills,” she says, noting that these are more important than ever given the rate at which technology is disrupting how we work. She believes that the future workplace will not be ‘machines versus humans’ but rather ‘humans enhanced by machines.’ Human skills such as creativity, agility, relationships and leadership will matter more than ever.

Promoting Wellbeing Throughout the Organization

Amelie sees this as an exciting time to be in human capital, as her team focuses on delivering transformational projects in a complex organizational structure.

Recently, Amelie helped launch ‘Be well, work well,’ PwC’s global initiative underscoring the business necessity of addressing wellbeing at work.

“Poor physical and mental health and a lack of personal and organizational purpose, are among the world’s most important societal problems, threatening individual resilience and business sustainability,” she says.

She believes that part of the success of ‘“Be well, work well’” is that it promotes flexibility, which increases the overall diversity, advancement and retention for all employees. The initiative looks at wellbeing not only as a physical component, but across three other dimensions — spiritual, emotional and mental.

“The right energy balance has to be a priority for women, men, parents, non-parents, different generations – everyone. I see that successful people prioritize wellbeing, making it relevant for all profiles and all geographies. It is very important that we all role model wellbeing in our respective private and professional spheres to make our life better and healthier and to appreciate each day,” Amelie says.

In pursuing her own wellbeing, Amelie has seen the importance of balance and spending time with friends and family as it allows her to disconnect from her often-intense working life.

Emulating Women Who Have It All – Success + Balance

Throughout her career, Amelie has been accompanied by key mentors who’ve helped guide her in making the right decisions and analyzing obstacles from all different angles.

“It has been critical for me to leverage their experiences and get their coaching and advice as I am building my own career,” she says, adding that being open-minded to other opportunities and keeping her relationships with her network has helped her earn sponsors who have helped her navigate her way.

There have been a number of career models who have inspired her — most notably women in senior positions, such as her current boss, Agnes Hussherr.

“The women who impress me have earned key positions with numerous responsibilities and yet continue to strive for bigger and better objectives while maintaining work-life balance.”

Initially apprehensive about gender equality and the risk of women not having the same opportunities as men, Amelie sees there have been advances, but still feels there is a lot of work to be done, and it will take time to change the culture and old principles.

“I am very passionate about this diversity topic, and I think we — women and men — should all be feminists to change our world and allow women access to the same level of responsibility with the support they need as a female, a spouse or a mother.”

She embraces diversity on the cultural level as well, given her experience of traveling around the world, which has helped her to develop her global acumen and promoted the importance of being open-minded to different cultures and diverse perspectives.

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Mover & Shaker: Irina Hossu, Vice President Finance, Corporate Payments, WEX

Irina HossuBy Cathie Ericson

Trust yourself and your gut, says WEX’ Irina Hossu.

“It’s ok to make mistakes, but you have to realize that a failure is only a failure if you don’t learn from it,” she says, adding that she realizes she has been overly hard on herself at different phases in her career.

“You tend to work to a level where you are trying to be a perfectionist, but you’ll learn more when you own your decisions and mistakes — correct them, learn from them and move on. If you’re not making any mistakes, you’re probably not working hard enough.”

She takes to heart the words of Richard Branson, who once said, “If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later.” She says that’s the one piece of advice she would give: To take chances on yourself because if someone offers you this perfect experience, it’s because they see something in you, even if you don’t yet see it yourself.

A Realization of the Many Facets Her Career Path Offered

Hossu says that in her 20s, her answer to what career path she wanted to pursue would have been anything but finance and accounting, but that’s only because at the time she didn’t understand the many facets of that industry.

She started in the technology and services department of Xerox straight out of university, which she says set the trajectory for her career. She spent nine years there in six different roles that gave her ample opportunity to see all sides of the business. Although they were all under the finance umbrella, the diverse functions included promotions, product launches, sales finance, customer-facing tasks, negotiations and legal write-ups, culminating in owning her own P&L.

She followed that with a stint at a multinational beer company and then went to consumer packaged goods, where she spent five years in the professional hair and cosmetics industry. While she was responsible for finance, she also oversaw human resources, legal and supply chain. “I learned so much on the HR side, including understanding the ambiguities you will experience when managing people, which has helped me be able to look at issues and problems through a different lens and made me a better leader.”

While she was there, the company was acquired by Revlon, and she says that her greatest professional achievement was integrating the teams. “There was a genuine respect and camaraderie among the team, coupled with strong skill sets,” Hossu says. “Teams are only as strong as the weakest link, and each member went out of their way to support the others.”

It also helped her learn the valuable lesson to always hire people with different skill sets than hers, and let them run, with the outcome of a smart, cohesive team. “Along the way it has quickly become clear how important it is to have a loose general knowledge of all facets of the business, but realize that you don’t have to be the expert at everything – that the best ideas come from collaboration.”

Fifteen months ago, she joined WEX and the corporate payments industry, where she is currently focused on the travel segment and recent consolidation of key customers. She sees one important emerging trend as the need to differentiate their technology against key competitors, including looking at blockchain and how WEX can be first to market to utilize that new technology and better support customers.

While there is currently indication of competitive pressure across product offerings, pricing and technology, she feels confident that WEX will continue to hold onto its historical success as the first to offer emerging payment technologies, even as other organizations see their successes and emulate their learnings. “We have to remain nimble and listen to customers to make sure we’re offering what they want,” she says.

Believing in Yourself

In many ways, Hossu believes that women tend to be their own worst critics, both at work and home as they try to manage work/life balance.

“We need to do a better job of asking for help when we need it and giving ourselves a break,” she says. That realization came to her starkly when one leader with whom she was working made an off-the-cuff remark that he typically likes to employ women because he had recognized that they traditionally feel they have more to prove and will work harder.

She believes that increased pressure on women to be able to manage it all can sometimes be a detriment to their careers. However, Hossu believes that the current social/political climate, including the MeToo movement, will help shift focus and appreciation for the value women bring.

To help create bonds among other women at WEX, she participates in an informal quarterly Women of WEX group that meets for dinner and networking to bounce ideas off each other. In prior organizations, she has benefited from various courses directed at women in leadership.

“Female leadership tends to be different than male, as women are traditionally more emotional leaders,” which she defines as the benefit of understanding the ability to see situations as “gray,” rather than just black and white. “Women must learn how to use that skill set to their advantage,” she says.

In her own life, Hossu is currently focused on her family, as she and her husband welcomed their first child in October. “I spent the majority of my adult life focusing on my career, but to become a mom has completed me and given me a new perspective on what’s important, which will make me a better professional as well,” she says.

Even with a baby, Hossu believes that travel is still vital. Part of it is her heritage:
Her husband is Australian and she is Romanian/Canadian, and they met on a small island in Thailand. “We hope to instill in our son the importance of embracing other societies and learning to communicate with people who don’t look like you. Having a simple conversation in a culture you’re not familiar with can offer a very powerful lesson you can bring back.”

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Mover and Shaker: Jessica Roy, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications, WEX

By Cathie Ericson

Any successful professional will tell you that sometimes you need to rely on intuition to manage the multiple types of interpersonal situations that can arise. For WEX’s Jessica Roy, it boils down to trusting your gut the moment you identify that something is a bit off—whether it’s a feeling about how a project is being received or the sense during a conversation with a colleague that you’re just not getting your point across.

“It’s almost always intangible, because if you knew what was wrong you’d fix it,” she says. But at those times, she believes it’s more important than ever to take an extra moment to revisit the situation, candidly inviting the other party to speak up so the two of you can fix the situation rather than letting it fester.

“When you experience that nagging piece, you have to take the time to dig in to understand what may not be working well and solve it”, she says, or even agree to disagree after having the conversation. But she’s found that it’s always worth it to clarify a position rather than taking the easier way out and letting it go.

Reveling in a Career That Could Never Be Called Boring

Committing to following that intuition when needed has helped Roy progress throughout her career. Her first corporate job as the regional marketing director for outlet malls in the Northeast prepared her for anything, she says.

Among the tasks she deftly handled over the years were rescuing a nun from a locked bathroom on the Fourth of July weekend in Cape Cod; answering a call about a man who had fallen into a retaining pond in the North Conway location during the holiday season; and single-handedly emptying a luxury-brand shoe store after the bankrupt tenant fled under cover of darkness.

What did the mayhem teach her? That even though all the above incidents seemed to have nothing to do with her title of “marketing director,” they actually had everything to do with it, because each mishap offers an opportunity to create a positive customer touch point.

Her next position was what she calls “a delightful stint” in tourism marketing for her beloved home state of Maine, promoting the New England region to overseas tourists.

And now, although she’s been with WEX for 15 years, the company has experienced such rapid growth that it feels like a different job every five years, she says, adding that as WEX continues to acquire new companies and move into new verticals, her corporate position will continue to evolve and grow.

Roy is particularly excited about the rebranding she helped to oversee, with the charge to modernize the corporate brand (Wright Express), rationalize the product brands, integrate acquisition brands and complete a brand launch. During the process, she and her colleagues also renamed the company to WEX and redesigned the logo—both of which were key components in changing its positioning from a domestic fuel card business to a global payments company. “Our brand is a living, breathing, evolving entity,” Roy says.

A highlight was standing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange when WEX went public. “There I was, in the middle of managed chaos, watching the then-CEO ringing the bell, and then our ticker symbol went live,” she recalls. “This was an amazing American moment, and I felt that I was not only witnessing but participating in the American dream. What I realized in that moment was that a small group of talented, driven people can accomplish amazing things.”

That’s the vision she continues to drive forward—currently finding incredible pleasure and challenge in integrating the products and services of two recently acquired companies into the broader WEX offerings. “It’s like a challenging jigsaw puzzle, and it is exciting to put the pieces into the right places,” she says.

Finding Meaning Outside the 9-to-5

Roy is part of WEX’s recently introduced “Women at WEX” mentorship program, which has garnered enormous interest in the company. “Obviously the need is there,” she says, based on the positive response it has received. In addition, she has benefitted from numerous other leadership programs over the years.

As a native of the tiny mill town of Madawaska, Maine—as far north as you can go without hitting Canada—Roy has taken every opportunity she can to travel the world. Among the amazing sights she’s had the pleasure of seeing are giant tortoises in the Galapagos Islands, Buddhist temples in Japan and 800-year-old hill villages in southwest France. The best part? “I’m just getting started,” she says.

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Mover and Shaker: Michelle Pokrzywinski, Vice President of IT, WEX

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 By Cathie EricsonMichelle

Mentors and sponsors are the glue that holds a career together, says WEX’s Michelle Pokrzywinski. “Throughout my career, my needs have been different and I find role models and mentors all over – within my team, in the company and outside in the general professional world,” she says. “Whatever qualities or skills you are looking for at any given time can be found if you look around.”

Expanding From Technical Skills to Managerial Activities

At the time Pokrzywinski started her career in technology, she understood very little about what career paths could look like with a computer science major. Her education had been focused on technical topics, rather than how to use that knowledge to drive business, but after starting in software development, she immediately knew her interest extended to the management arena. At that point, she proactively broadened her experience with assignments in project management, IT service management and quality management. For close to 15 years she’s been a part of companies that were precursors to WEX, where she currently serves as vice president of IT.

“I now know a career has to be managed, and you have to know how your efforts create value in the business,” she says. “There are many fulfilling paths to success so you have to continuously define what that means to you.” And her role, where she can try new technology and tools and help the company be more efficient with its resources, is a perfect fit.

Teamwork Makes the Difference

Along the way she has benefitted from sponsors who advocated for her, some behind the scenes so she wasn’t even aware. One who had a meaningful impact was a manager who recommended her for the masters of science program in the Management of Technology (MOT) early in her career. The company only sponsored one applicant every two years, and when she expressed interest, he went to bat for her and assisted throughout the application process. “I was so grateful he invested in me as I benefitted so much,” she says, adding that while that was a visible example, she knows there are many others who have helped create the opportunities she has had.

While Pokrzywinski is proud of her many technical achievements, one of her most noteworthy moments was when she was able to take a disparate group of individuals and quickly create a team atmosphere that allowed them to function cohesively and consistently for a large software development project she was operating.

“When you have the right team, it has a ripple effect as they all come together,” she says, noting that managers should focus their efforts on determining what each member needs, so that all those smaller components will coalesce. “You’ll gain collaboration, efficiency and unlimited success when you do the right thing by your team members by putting them in roles where they can succeed.”

And that is a key ingredient in what she considers her recipe for success: Surrounding yourself with good people, who feel they can be honest because you are attuned to listening to them and helping them deliver results.

Pokrzywinski believes in the importance of mentoring, and early in her career was part of the Menttium 100 program, which is focused on helping women gain the strategies needed for success.  About five years ago she also participated in an IT mentoring program through Think IT, a service of York Solutions.

An active community volunteer, Pokrzywinski enjoys her time working in a local non-profit resale shop that serves both the general public with high-quality, low-cost merchandise, and local families in need with free clothing, household goods and furniture. She especially loves her role working directly with families and matching their specific needs with the appropriate donated items.

“Everyone should give back when they can,” she says. “It broadens your perspective and is an enriching way to get out of your day-to-day routine by helping others.”

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Mover and Shaker: Katherine Ferguson, Vice President, Marketing, WEX

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By Cathie EricsonKatherine Ferguson

When considering the path of your career, one factor that WEX’s Katherine Ferguson always suggests younger women focus on is sponsorship. She says it’s vital not only to have someone who is supportive of your path, but is willing to take risks to advocate for you and pull you up. “Find that person and build a relationship, and it will serve you well throughout your career,” she says.

For her part, she says she has been fortunate to have had experience working with amazing leaders who have served as models as she attempts to emulate the qualities she admires, including a calm presence, authenticity and supportive leadership.

“I have learned how important relationships are, and how you have to take the time to nurture them, whether they are colleagues, peers, team members or those in senior roles,” she says. “Often when you enter your career, you are focused on getting the work done, but you have to remember to take the time to network and develop relationships that will be instrumental in your path for years to come.”

Searching For and Finding Her Passion

After completing degrees in art history and accounting, Ferguson began a career in accounting, including a stint at the Smithsonian that tied her two interests together. She soon decided that she wanted to move out of accounting and realized marketing appealed to her, with the balance of creativity, data and analytics.

Ferguson joined American Express out of graduate school and spent 14 years there serving different customer and geographic segments. She then decided she wanted to take her experience to a company that was smaller, but growing fast, where she would have an impactful role transforming the brand and customer experiences.

WEX was a perfect fit, particularly due to its culture. Having grown up with a father who was an executive, she had some sense of what the corporate world would be like, but over her career she has grown to appreciate the fact that each company has a different culture that impacts your career and working environment. That has helped inform her path along the way, as she assesses the culture of various roles and then strives to build a great culture among her team.

Right now, she is enjoying challenging her team as they elevate marketing into a best-in-class organization, including launching new products, new partnerships and new customer journeys.

One of her secrets to success is to hire people who are smarter than you, set them up for success, then get out of their way, she says.

A Focus on Mentoring Women

Currently, Ferguson is working with two senior executives on a recently launched women’s network. “I’ve been so impressed by WEX in general and the importance it places on supporting women, from our female CEO, cascading down to numerous senior female executives and beyond. This emphasis really speaks to our community and culture,” she says.

The network is designed to help build a community of women throughout the organization who will support each other and collaborate through common challenges. “It’s a concept that’s near and dear to my heart,” Ferguson says.

Aside from the many hats she wears at work, Ferguson makes time to find balance in her life — from spending time with her family to nurturing friendships and giving back to the community.

A recent newcomer to the Portland area, she has jumped right in, joining the boards of the Portland Museum of Art and United Way. She is also very proud of the time she spent mentoring a refugee student from Somalia at Portland High School last year. Although the woman spoke four languages, English was not one of them until she arrived in the United States, so Ferguson helped her with her school work and the college application process, celebrating the fact that she is now a student at the University of Southern Maine.

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Mover and Shaker: Noelia Torres, Market Development Lead, WEX Europe Limited

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By Cathie Ericson

Although WEX’s Noelia Torres began her career as a journalist, then as a public relations practitioner for  large consumer brands, her career has been linked to the payments industry for the past 16 years.

She made the move when she realized that although she enjoyed advising clients on strategy, she yearned to see how it all played out and decided to try the client side. She began her finance career at Barclaycard, an independent division of Barclays, in Dublin and then entered what she calls “the exciting world of payments,” where she enjoys contributing to the constant evolution and progress in the payments world.

Over the years she has worked in a wide variety of different markets and geographies, starting in a local market in Spain and then moving on to WEX initially with responsibilities throughout Europe and now she embraces her new challenge of working in global strategy.

Right now Torres is focusing on new ways to innovate and simplify the ways that companies make and receive payments, using a design thinking approach that employs a creative process to solve business problems. . She describes herself as passionate about the methodology because it always begins by looking at people and their unmet needs.. “We have to remember we are always designing for people: You have to understand what each customer wants and needs and how they behave and think when they’re interacting with products or services.”

Teamwork is Goal Number One

When she first entered the corporate world, she expected it to be full of uncertainty and overly competitive, organized in silos where everyone had their own specialization as a sole focus. While her expectation of embracing uncertainty came true, she has since seen that over the years much of the corporate world has evolved, particularly the team orientation. “It’s not about just my sales volume or my meeting,” she says, but doing the best for everyone.

In fact, she considers her ability to build teams as the professional achievement she is most proud of so far — bringing disparate teams together to work toward the same goal. “No matter what department we are in, we want to discover our customers’ problems and solve them,” she points out.

Over the years that has been one of Torres’ biggest learning moments, that the most relevant asset a company has, no matter the size, is their team. She learned that early on when she worked for a Spanish savings bank, Caixa Galicia, with a team composed of only eight people who covered the entire spectrum, from consumer to business to government accounts.

While other, larger companies might have devoted at least 100 people to covering that breadth, her firm wanted to play in the big leagues and strove to provide supreme experience even with a smaller team. “I learned early on and have taken this lesson with me that if you want to achieve a goal, it’s all about the team that surrounds you,” she says.

In fact, that is the first “ingredient” in her professional recipe for success – knowing that working in silos or isolation is ineffective. Secondly she encourages others to listen a lot and then go outside the company to listen more. “Don’t get trapped inside your company; when you go to your customer and ask ‘why,’ you can gain insight that will help you improve.” And finally, she  adds “Never give up. I know that we can get better;” as another touchpoint : A leader’s function should be to transform the team to improve.

Opportunities to Learn Are Everywhere

Torres says that both sponsorship and mentorship have been crucial to her success, helping guide her professional career, but also providing direction in her personal domain. “My sponsor in Europe believed in me from the very first day and was key in opening the doors to my most recent move to the United States,” she says.

She names Carina Szpilka, former CEO of ING Direct, as her role model. “She is not only a super charismatic and authentic woman, but she was foundational in revolutionizing banking culture by putting the customer at the heart of  business decisions,” Torres notes. But mentorship doesn’t have to just come from the top; she notes that it’s important to remember that you can always learn from everyone you are working with, by finding people on your team who are great leaders or motivators.

WEX, in particular, has been empowering because of the many example of women in key strategic positions throughout the company, which has been inspiring to Torres throughout her career there.

And finally, Torres knows that you can learn from the world around you. She and her husband have a motto that “the world is a book and those who don’t travel read only one page.” They are eager to read the whole book,  lived in different countries in Europe and now moving to the United States , learning about people and culture.

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