Her Story
About Athena
Athena Fleming serves as Vice President of Sales at Progeny. She joined the company in April to help launch Progeny Select, a fully insured product designed to extend the company's successful enterprise offerings to small and mid-sized business employers. With six and a half years in her field, Fleming has built a career in sales, starting with enterprise roles in the media and entertainment space in Los Angeles and leading teams focused on small to mid-sized businesses. She was brought on to run a UK-based tech company and build its brand across the country, later transitioning into the healthcare vertical through work with professional employer organizations. In this role, she connected sales teams to associations to benefit clients and became involved in the healthcare space. Fleming earned her degree from Indiana University Kelley School of Business, which provided a foundation for her expertise in building brands, developing market strategy, creating sales tools, and fostering partner relationships to drive revenue and impact organizations of all sizes. She is a member of the National Association of PEOs (NAPEO).
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Athena
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think I'm a very competitive person, and I really want to help accomplish goals. You know, also my family, and I think it's important for my kids to see me make an impact, not only in their lives, and in the charities I work with within their schools, but also as a career woman.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Building a network is extremely important, both internally and externally. And when going into your career, going into a new company, it's important to meet as many people within the organization as possible, even if they don't specifically do the work that you're going to do, because it helps you build those relationships, because it takes a team to accomplish big goals, and that for me is creating that network is just a key to success.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Women play a critical role in really fostering relationships and utilizing our skills at communication and connection to help bridge lines and help teams to communicate. Any woman going into the workforce especially today has the opportunity to make a difference. A lot of women before this time have worked very hard to break the glass ceilings and the sky truly is the limit as long as you maintain that work ethic.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
We have so much connection, meetings that can be remote, and those types of things. I think some of the challenges I see is a lot of people don't necessarily want to be in an office and connecting in person, and so those types of things I think are invaluable, and so we're starting to see a little bit of a shift to get people back in the office.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The three I's: intensity, integrity, and intelligence. And I live by those, both personally and throughout my career.
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