Tag Archive for: Prudential Financial

Claudia Vazquez: Founder, elevink

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Claudia Vazquez“What I saw as a disadvantage at the beginning, I turned it around to make my secret weapon, because I realized this is what makes me unique and able to see things from a different perspective,” says Claudia Vazquez. “I turned my disadvantage into my differentiator.”

As part of celebrating Hispanic Heritage, we open our Latina Leader series with inspired sharing from Claudia Vazquez: her vision for Hispanic inclusion and lifting others up with her!

A Vision For Service

If you only read her official business roles across the years, you’ll know at best half of what Vazquez has truly been up to in the workplace.

Originally from Mexico, Vazquez came to the U.S. in her twenties, teaching English as a second language and volunteering as a citizenship instructor. When she began her career 22 years ago in disability claims at Unum, she immediately saw how she could leverage her bicultural/ bilingual assets to better serve the company and the Hispanic community.

Rather than going with the status quo process of using a third party translator, she began to field all calls from Spanish-speaking clients around disability claims. She then led the implementation of the Hispanic Initiative to create end-to-end bilingual services, eliminating cost and time inefficiencies of outsourcing. Within seven years, she went from claims specialist to heading up the Short Term Disability and Administrative operations in her field office in California.

“I didn’t approach with a diversity mindset. I approached with a service perspective,” reflects Vazquez. “I realized we could improve the service, have more loyal and satisfied customers, and use it as a selling point with clients. It also gave Spanish-speaking employees an opportunity to go above and beyond, support their community and receive recognition for speaking another language.”

When she moved to her next role at Cigna, she replicated this thinking and was asked to find more people with an intrapreneurial mindset like hers. She began to support the recruiting team in Hispanic outreach, emphasizing the importance of representation: “Nobody grows up thinking I want to work at an insurance company,” she argued. “So if we don’t personally represent what we’re trying to attract them to do, this is not a natural fit.”

Moving to the East Cost for a role in Prudential’s head offices, Vazquez enrolled into the Hispanic BRG on her second day. Within six months, she was co-leading the BRG and soon increased membership from 400 to 1000 – while creating best practices, relationship with hiring teams, and outreach to external partners.

“As my passion for supporting the Hispanic community at work evolved, I realized we have to start grassroots and then let things organically develop, so that a ripple effect is created,” says Vazquez. She began to focus on seeding the momentum that allowed partnerships to prove their value as they grew. With this approach, the Red Shoe movement proved so successful that it caught leadership attention and she traveled to Mexico and Brazil to highlight and expand the partnership.

An Advocate for Hispanic Inclusion

As a Hispanic Initiative officer, Vazquez saw the impact of bringing in change-agent partners. She began to shift to building those external relationships such as with We Are All Human and became a Hispanic Star Ambassador. As such, Vazquez has attended the United Nations as part of the delegation to roll out the Hispanic Star unifying symbol and platform to advance Hispanics in the US.

Despite a strong track record of following her mission towards inclusion, only in March did Vazquez formally move from senior business roles to take on a VP of Diversity and Inclusion role. In the role, she developed a strategic roadmap for inclusion on hiring, retaining, developing and celebrating Hispanic talent, laying out both fundamentals and execution strategies.

“I have a passion towards supporting the Hispanic community, but I also see it as a business imperative in the US. Anyone that’s not attuning to Hispanics is going to lose market share,” says Vazquez, pointing out Hispanics make up one of every five people and growing.

Vazquez also iterates that attracting early loyalty among the Hispanic community is critical, because word of mouth and following the family or neighbor recommendations are huge influences on decision-making.

Lifting Others Up With Her

As a Hispanic BRG leader, Vazquez also leveraged the opportunity to mentor and sponsor others in the workplace. She brought more visibility to group members by creating project management opportunities – with clear job descriptions and weekly time investment required – and then by updating their managers about the impacts they were delivering.

“This gave their managers an opportunity to see their employees from a completely different angle of perspective that they had not necessarily experienced directly with them,” says Vazquez. “I wanted to make sure people saw they had everything it took. They just sometimes needed to be able to sell or position themselves differently.”

Vazquez emphasizes staying connected to your own essence and North Star. “I’ve promised myself that regardless of how fast or how far I’m going, I’m still going to be me and not forget where I came from. And I’m not going to forget that there are many individuals still looking to find their path.”

This is what drives Vazquez in her personal mission that co-exists with the day job. It’s why she shares her story to inspire students through HISPA. It’s why she’s available if someone reaches to her on Linked In. It’s why she founded elevink to mentor younger generations on mindfulness, creating a personal brand, and challenging them to envision their future so they begin to steer their choices and energies in that direction.

Owning Her Voice

“Sometimes we question ourselves and protect ourselves because we’ve been through so much. In my case, I’ve been working since I was 14 in Mexico to help my mom, I paid for my education, I left my family to come to the US with English as my second language, I began working with an associates degree and studied full-time while working, so there are sacrifices,” says Vazquez. “But if I had the confidence in my 20s I have now, I don’t know how much larger the impact could be.”

She continues, “We need to trust our gut. We know exactly where we see ourselves, but sometimes we’re afraid to share that vision,” she says. “We just need to move confidently in the pursuit of our dreams. From every setback, we can learn.”

Often the only Hispanic at the table, Vazquez never gives up the vision. Instead, she allows time to pass and looks for new opportunities and angles to pursue: “After many years of navigating Fortune 500 companies, I have learned how I need to approach certain things, and I also understand that change is difficult. Companies will be ready at a certain time, and when they are, things will happen.”

Reflecting on her own journey: “After 25 years of revalidating, I have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. I’ve become more of an unapologetic Latina who stays optimistic about our future possibilities, but it took me 22 years of going through this journey to realize that it’s my life, it’s my vision, it’s my calling.”

Vazquez has learned to take herself a little less seriously. She recently returned from a self-care trip to California with her mother and sister, leaving her husband and three children back at home. She recommends taking the time to celebrate your achievements.

As for her vision: “I’m still getting closer to where I ultimately see myself: as a CEO of a nonprofit organization that caters to Hispanics. That’s what I’m aiming and preparing myself for in the long run. My goal is to leave a mark in the evolution of Hispanics in the US.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Voice of Experience: Terry Albarella, Vice President, Enterprise Architecture, Prudential Financial

Terry AlbarellaBy Cathie Ericson

Being out is something that Terry Albarella feels is essential to her success in the workplace.

That’s because being authentic allows you to build a level of trust with your team and peers; if you don’t share, people might wonder if you are hiding something or assume that you don’t care enough to share. The more you can share, the better relationships you create, and the better work everyone can do together, she says.

“Sharing our personal lives helps us be a more cohesive team. When pressure and deadlines come, you can get through those rough times better when you have established a high level of trust,” she says.

On that note, Albarella says she’s been able to meet a broad range of people who feel open to share their stories because they know hers, which has allowed her to get to know people with whom her path might not otherwise have crossed. She has also found that working with executives who might not know someone in the LGBTQ+ community has given them a comfortable opportunity to learn and imparted a broader knowledge they can take to their team and their customers.

Alexa, Please Check My Balance

Albarella began on a technical path right out of college as a developer providing PC support. She joined Prudential in 1995 where they were consolidating from a distributed support model, and over time as they centralized, she gravitated toward the server and application support side, focusing on developing efficiency in the system and responding to problems before they could impact customers. Over the last few years she has moved into the architectural space, helping with upgrades right from the start when they bring tech in the door.

While she has been involved in many large, impactful problems over her tenure, most recently she led a team that rolled out the Alexa voice assistant to Prudential’s customers. While Alexa is known for its skills on the consumer side, there are now more opportunities for business applications, and Prudential was proud to be the first to market with a retirement skill on the platform. “It was an interesting project that allowed us to collaborate on something that was brand new, and we had to put a structure in place to support it with all the rigor that our systems demand.”

The product was made public in the beginning of April, and now anyone who has a Prudential retirement account can use Alexa to look at their account balances. “It gave us a great opportunity to take some new talent we had hired and give them the opportunity to come straight out of school and play a critical role in a project that would interest them right away,” she notes. The test was so successful that they are looking into other voice assistants and emerging technologies to see how they can be creative on all platforms and offer innovative ways for customers to access information in the way they prefer.

Pride in Her Role in PRIDE

Equally important to Albarella as her tech role is her leadership position in the PRIDE Business Resource Group, of which she has been a member since 2010 and president for the past four years. “It has offered a great opportunity to serve customers in the LGBT community better while also allowing me to get more involved in the business components of supporting employees.”

And, she adds, this “side job” in PRIDE has helped her develop relationships she can use in her day job, as she now has a strong network across the organization with people she otherwise wouldn’t have been in contact with on a day-to-day basis.
Albarella has been instrumental in helping create and roll out the PruALLY program, which started in 2013 as the larger equality conversation was just kicking up and people didn’t have a broad understanding of why they should care. The program offered information on the issues surrounding marriage equality and addressed some of the misunderstandings people might have if they didn’t realize firsthand what people were facing.

“This awareness was very impactful even beyond Prudential’s doors into the greater community,” she says, while also assuring LGBQT employees that they had a supportive organization around them. In 2014, she received the Trailblazer Award from Re:Gender for thiswork.

The program has expanded over the years and now gives people a diversity and inclusion pledge they can keep top of mind to remind them that what they say can impact people. The program is being rolled out internationally; Albarella says it’s almost overwhelming when she goes to another location and sees PruAlly desk tents.

They just did a refresh of the campaign to keep the materials relevant, and when they asked executives to participate in a photo shoot and say why they are an Ally, they had hoped to get eight to 10 interested responses, but received more than 75. “We were overwhelmed by the welcoming support,” she says.

Albarella is particularly proud that PRIDE is the most tenured BRG at Prudential, celebrating its 25th anniversary. “The company has always been supportive in using the BRG almost as a focus group and made many changes over the years,” she says. And it has been a big asset in recruiting, which has helped Prudential benefit from a diverse workforce that allows the firm to bring broader experiences to apply to business problems and helps them better reach all their customers.

Helping Others Achieve a Bright Future

Albarella urges young women to be confident in their skills and not shy away from high-profile projects. “Even if you are not as successful as you want to be, it will be a tremendous learning opportunity and also showcase you to others on the team for future roles.”

And don’t be satisfied with a support role or be afraid to ask for something bigger, she says. “Sometimes people wait to be asked, but if someone steps up and offers, we find a way to bring those people onto the project.”

She encourages her peers to go beyond mentoring and use their voices to advocate for younger women coming up and ensure they have the training that will prepare them for more senior roles. “Create time to sponsor and champion those in the pipeline to make space for them to take the next step,” she says. It’s important for those in senior positions to help engage others and seek their opinions, asking to hear their voice if they are quiet in a meeting, for example, as a way for them to build their skills and everyone to benefit from diverse perspectives.

Experiencing The Positive Side of Video Games

An avid video gamer, she is proud this is a passion she shares with her wife and daughter and son, who have been gaming since they were young. She finds it brings them together on a common platform; for example, although her daughter is away at graduate school in Kansas, they can log on at night and catch up, which she says has been a wonderful opportunity to connect.

Other positives she sees in gaming are that it has taught her children to be very detail-oriented and has also given them the chance to lead. And most importantly, it has provided different experiences and enabled them to put themselves in other people’s shoes.

She knows firsthand how valuable that is: Albarella herself had been in a straight marriage for 19 years and never realized she was a lesbian until she played a video game that put her in the shoes of a same-sex relationship where she realized that’s what she’d been missing. “Video games hold a special place in my heart because they helped me come out,” she says.

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