Being a Learner About Wellbeing

Welcome to Wellbeing Matters and thanks for reading!

I’m going to share a little bit about me as a professional in this post so you get to know me and my path to working in corporate wellbeing. And yes, I prefer not to hyphenate wellbeing because it’s easier to type and we are all beings, after all. The TLDR for what you can expect from Wellbeing Matters is a weekly newsletter style post with different things I’m reading, learning and hearing about in the world of wellbeing, plus anything else I find interesting and think you might, too. The first one will be in your inbox soon.

Read on for more about me…

I’m coming up on 13 years of post-grad work experience this summer and while I’ve been in the same general field the entire time (benefits administration/management) I have always learned something along the way.

My educational background was not in Human Resources or Management and I always thought I would use my Finance degree from Providence College (#gofriars) to work at a bank or a hedge fund or somewhere else in the finance world. As the summer after college in 2010 started to get close to being over I just needed to get a job, so I took one in local government at the Nassau County Comptroller’s Office. The first several months I was actually working in the accounts payable section called Vendor Claims where I was comparing vendor invoices to existing contracts to pay the County’s bills ranging from departmental phone bills to multi-million dollar health plan premiums. It was only after an opening popped up down the hall on the Health Benefits team that my “career” in benefits got started. I do not miss having to take Civil Service exams!

I spent nearly 8 years at the Comptroller’s Office working mostly on medical, dental and vision benefits administration/management. I had some great mentors and colleagues that guided and taught me both the way things were always done (loved interpreting union contracts and those many, many “non-binding” grievance decisions), but also the why so I could carry that forward and look for ways to change or improve upon that. Along the way I got engaged, married and moved to Brooklyn, as one does. While we house hunted on Long Island, it was always going to be New Jersey where we landed with my wife growing up on that side of the Hudson. Given that was my likely future it was time to leave the County for somewhere more commutable from the Garden State.

In reaching out to my network and scouring job boards I came upon an opportunity at a large professional services company on their National Benefits team. There was only one issue: the role was mostly going to be supporting the Senior Manager on the Leave and Disability team and I didn’t have much experience in that area. The County didn’t have much beyond standard Sick, Vacation and Personal time off. For the first year or two there was Short-Term Disability available through one of the unions, but that was totally external and then was dropped due to low utilization. I interviewed first in person at the NYC office with the person who would be my direct report and another Senior Manager who might be giving some of his work to me. The second interview took place with the Managing Director and happened while I was on vacation in Ireland with my then-fiance. We happened to be in Galway that day.

During the final interview with the partner who ran National Benefits (from a hotel in Dublin, Ireland wearing shorts, a buttoned down shirt and blazer I borrowed from my future Father-in-Law and a tie I had bought for the interview that morning at the Book of Kells gift shop) he gave me a great compliment and taught me a valuable lesson by calling on his fandom of the Pittsburgh Steelers and their NFL Draft philosophy of taking the best player available regardless of position. He believed I had the necessary experience and skills to do the job, even if I needed some extra coaching on the front end. I just saw him recently at a retirement party and I thanked him again for taking the chance and believing in me.

I dove head first into the world of Absence, Leave and Disability and with the help and guidance of my first boss I became a relative expert and got my footing under me after several months. That job lived up to what that first boss said to me on my first day; leave isn’t boring! After almost four years in that role which included a new boss who worked remote out of state and a promotion I took an internal opportunity to slide over to a different role in National Benefits on the Health & Well-Being team.

Another big time inspiration and learning moment came from that new (now new old) boss when I was leaving her Leave team. I worked for her for about three years and we complemented each other very well with our background and skills and it was a very small team. Me leaving was going to be hard for her in the short term (luckily there was an internal person that wanted to slide in and she has hit the ground running!) but she couldn’t have been more honest and supportive that I should pursue the new role. She was thinking of my career first. That’s powerful and is a great way to maintain loyalty and respect.

So here I am a little over a year in my new role and trying to have the same curiosity to be a learner of all things wellbeing. As I read, listen, learn and discover I’ll share links, nuggets, quotes, podcasts, really anything that I think others might find interesting. Sometimes I’ll include some of my own thoughts or commentary on a topic, but I also think it’s important to draw your own conclusions.

Thanks for reading this far and getting to know me a little bit.