Forging Her Own Path

 

For a long time, Valerie Francis said, she was rather shy about telling her backstory, especially the part about how she didn’t go to college.

When asked why, she said she was concerned about how elements of that story — the lack of a college education and 10 years spent working on the floor at a distribution center — might reflect negatively upon her and perhaps sow doubt about whether she was really qualified for some of the jobs that have appeared on her business card over the years, including her current one — vice president of Employee Benefits for HUB International New England.

Meanwhile, she was concerned that, with her lack of a college degree, she wouldn’t be a good mentor to young people.

“Everyone goes through a little bit of impostor syndrome or not wanting anyone to question your capabilities, especially in my field,” she explained. “I’m in insurance — this had been a male-dominated industry for a very long time, with women kind of breaking through; you don’t want your ability to be questioned. But I see the bigger picture now.”

Indeed, these days, she’s far less shy about sharing that story. She’s done so in many ways and with different audiences, especially women facing the myriad challenges she did growing up and as a young adult (more on that later).

As for how that story is received, Francis believes the confidence she’s always exuded, coupled with her proven aptitude, strong work history, and track record of strong customer service, should override any doubts. And they have.

“Everyone goes through a little bit of impostor syndrome or not wanting anyone to question your capabilities, especially in my field.”

So much so, she said, that when she was being considered for her current job, the latest of many roles she’s filled with various organizations, no one asked her about whether she went to college.

In fact, after she gave a presentation recently, a colleague remarked that she read the audience so well, she must have excelled in a psychology course while in college.

“I said, ‘you, know, Bill, I probably would have, but I never had the opportunity to go to college,’” she recalled, adding that this revelation blew his mind.

To be clear, Francis is a strong advocate of higher education and understands its importance to entering and then advancing within many sectors. But she also acknowledges that a college education is just one of many ingredients to career success, and if one possesses those other ingredients, as she does, then one can advance while also finding work that is fulfilling and promotes work/life balance.

“I’ve been very fortunate throughout my career, especially as a female, a woman of color,” she explained, “in that people have recognized my skill set, my experience, and my capabilities without questioning my background and my education.”

As for that backstory … where to start? Maybe when she was 19, when, after the unexpected death of her mother, a nurse, she was on her own, working in the Springfield Public Library, living with a friend, getting by without a car, and … well, managing. Later, she would work for a decade as an order selector at a Hallmark Cards distribution facility in Enfield, Conn., before deciding she needed to make a change.

Fast-forwarding a little (we’ll go back and fill in the details later), she would take a long, winding road to her current station, starting at a call center, then advancing in the ranks in the broad insurance sector, working for Aetna, Health New England, the Insurance Center of New England (ICNE), and now HUB (which acquired ICNE), and taking titles raging from member service representative to sales executive to vice president.

“I’ve been very fortunate throughout my career, especially as a female, a woman of color, in that people have recognized my skill set, my experience, and my capabilities without questioning my background and my education.”

Today, Francis manages a staff of nine, with another addition expected soon.

She said her work in employee benefits is important, and also rewarding on many levels, especially when it comes to making benefits, and especially healthcare, affordable for employers and employees alike.

“There are new strategies to truly help lower the cost; it’s all about education and comfort because change is not easy,” she said, adding that she works tirelessly with employers and employees alike at renewal time to find something that works.

For this issue and its focus on women in business, we tell a somewhat different story, one of hard work, perseverance, raising the career bar ever higher, and then clearing that bar.

 

Hard Work Pays Dividends

Francis said she would walk six to 10 miles a day at that job at Hallmark, where she would push a large cart and load it with the items — cards and other products made by the company — sought by individual stores.

“It was lifting, pulling, walking a lot … I was in great shape, but it was killing me; it was beating my body up,” she recalled, adding that the repetitive nature of the work led to various ailments, including carpal tunnel syndrome.

What she wanted was a one-way ticket out of manufacturing and distribution and to “a corporate job where I could dress nice to go to work and have office hours so that, when my kids got out of school, I could go pick them up.”

Problem was, in the 10 years she was at Hallmark (1997 to 2007), most office duties were handled via computer, and she had few, if any, computer skills.

She discussed this problem with her friend Nicole Polite, who would later launch the recruiting and staffing firm ManeHire (now the MH Group), and confided to her that it would likely be hard for her to pivot at this point, and she would probably have to go back to school to make it happen.

“Nicole said, ‘I don’t know about that,’” Francis recalled, adding that she advised her to sharpen what computer skills she had by taking classes at the workforce agency known then as FutureWorks (now MassHire Springfield). And she did, while also pulling a résumé together and sharpening the focus on what she wanted to do next.

Within a few months, she had an interview at Aetna.

“Even then, I didn’t think I was going to get the job because it was a completely different role from what I was doing,” she recalled, adding that, with some coaching from Polite, she made sure those interviewing her understood that she was reliable and had great work habits, a strong attention to detail, and a keen focus on customer service.

“She said, ‘focus on the skills they need,’” said Francis, adding that she not only got the job, one at a call center, but, before she was even out of training, was named a growth and development coach for other call-center workers.

She would spend several years at Aetna, learning the insurance business, acquiring new skills, and laying the groundwork for what would become a career in that sector.

But first, she would take “three steps backward,” as she put it, for reasons that had much more do with family than her career.

“By that time, my kids were a little older, and they needed me home earlier,” she explained. “I had a daughter who was just shy of six feet tall in middle school, and she did not feel good about her height at all. I said to my husband, ‘we have got to get her into basketball.’ And he said, ‘but Val, you don’t get home until after 7 — you would need a different job and a different role closer to home.’”

She applied to Health New England in 2010, taking a job on the phones as a member service representative. But over the next seven years, she would assume eight different titles and progress through the ranks to senior member service representative to supervisor of member services and provider claims; from sales account representative (after she made the switch from member services to sales) to senior sales account representative to sales executive, gaining experience working not only with employer groups but also brokers.

She joined ICNE in 2017 as an account executive and eventually advanced to sales manager and then vice president of Employee Benefits, a role she maintained after the firm was acquired by HUB in 2019.

 

Making Policy

As mentioned earlier, Francis’ mother died when she was young. She recalls that her mother, who passed at 52, had several chronic conditions and was often reluctant to seek out the care she knew she needed.

Francis suspects this is because she was unsure of — and apprehensive about — how much that care would ultimately cost her.

“She was in the medical field, and she was knowledgeable about things going on with her body, but at the same time, she didn’t truly understand what her cost was,” she recalled. “I can remember when I was younger, her saying, ‘I don’t how much this is going to cost me.’”

And this is one of many reasons why Francis is so diligent — and compassionate — about her work, especially when it comes to health insurance.

“That’s what rings in the back of my mind with my clients,” she went on. “Once I’m done sitting with the key decision makers, that’s when my fun begins; that’s when I get in front of employees, and I make sure that they’re the smartest consumers of their health plan, their dental plan, vision, disability … you name it.

“And I go into great detail,” she went on, “because, when you’re fully educated and understand your plan, you’re going to get more out of it.”

Francis’s current work involves not only maintaining existing client relationships, but bringing in new clients as well, she said, adding that, overall, she makes sure clients understand and maximize benefits and that they work for employers and employers alike.

That’s especially true when it comes to health insurance, a large expense for both constituencies.

“The cost of health insurance is huge right now, and we want to make sure that it’s affordable in both ways — affordable as far as the rates are concerned for the employer and the employees, because they’re both sharing the cost.

“And from there, we have to make sure that the benefits are equitable,” she went on. “We have to make sure that people can afford to use their plan.”

She counts a number of nonprofits in her client portfolio and admits to having leaned on several of those organizations when she was younger and in need of help. So she finds it rewarding to be able to help them now.

“I relied on them, and now they rely on me,” she went on. “It’s incredibly rewarding, and humbling, for me to be able to help businesses in Western Mass. and outside of Western Mass., but especially our nonprofits because of what they do for our communities and because this is a vulnerable time for all our nonprofits. They have employees at all pay grades, and we have to make sure that each employee will find the benefits equitable and affordable for them to utilize.”

As mentioned earlier, Francis is no longer shy about sharing her backstory. In fact, she’s rather proud to tell it.

“It’s a true testament to who you are as a person and having people recognize your capabilities,” she said, adding that hers has been a long and different journey compared to others with similar titles on their business cards, but she’s looking forward to writing some new chapters.

Indeed, in keeping with her track record for moving ever higher, she’s intent on adding new lines to the CV. What they might be, she’s not sure, but she is sure that her résumé and the confidence gained at each stop will speak volumes about what she can do.

More, perhaps, than a college education could.