Her Story
About Emily
I've been in sales for almost eight years and in insurance for about two and a half years. I currently serve as a Strategic Accounts Director with Garner Health, where I help companies with their healthcare cost improvement strategy. In this role, I work with companies to create creative solutions to offer affordable healthcare to their employees while managing costs for the business itself. My career started in IT recruiting right out of college, which gave me the foundation of sales through making countless cold calls and meeting unique people. I then moved into my first traditional sales role with Paychex, a payroll and HR company, where I worked with small businesses in South Georgia. It was really fulfilling to help local family-owned businesses, especially navigating challenges like COVID and employee retention. After that, I transitioned to Paylocity to work with mid-market businesses, which sparked my love for that segment. I've been working with mid-market for the last five years. My transition into insurance came from a very personal place. When I was 28, I lost my dad and was his caretaker. Experiencing the healthcare system from a personal aspect and trying to navigate a very convoluted system to seek care for my dad really became my why behind going into insurance. It's very confusing, and if you don't have help, it's very tough to navigate and understand different resources and affordability. That experience led me to Garner Health, which really met me where I was at. Garner Health guides members to top providers based on real-time data that's not available through legacy systems, which means better health outcomes and fewer misdiagnoses. It's been really rewarding to help people like myself who are trying to understand their options and navigate the system.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Emily
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think I'm deeply grounded in my why, in my values, and when you align your values and your why each day, I think it's pretty easy to fulfill your purpose in that. We're not solving for cancer, I'm not solving world hunger, but there's a lot of fulfillment to just helping others, and that's what I find success in. If there's anything we can do to help anybody, for that sake, I feel successful and rich in life in that way.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received came from my mom, and it's going to sound corny, but it's just do it. The hard conversation you don't want to have, the phone call you don't want to make, the meeting that you're really anxious about, the mess up that you might have caused - be the first to step up, and you just face it. Just do it. Keep moving forward. It's always going to be okay, no matter what. Take accountability, be transparent and honest. This has really guided me through my entire career. At the end of the day, I think if you're authentic and genuine, we're all just people. I don't think anything is ever life or death, at least in my seat, so keep moving forward and being authentic has always carried me.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say have tough skin, but also understand your value and purpose first - why you're doing it. If it's pertaining to sales, sales has a lot of highs and a lot of lows, so you have to be tied to your purpose in order to stay in the middle and keep riding that wave. If it's insurance specifically, understand that it's an outdated system, and societally, it's a different ecosystem than a lot of workplaces, so it requires having tough skin. But I think in any industry, know your why first and what values you align with. In anything, you can be successful at.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think the biggest challenge is the affordability crisis in America. It's trying to work with companies navigating inflation based off of principle alone, and then you add a 10% medical inflation on top of that. A lot of companies I work with are really struggling to be able to provide affordable care to their employees. At the same time, you're hearing from the member experience, from the employee's experience, of how that affordability is affecting their day-to-day. So I would say that's the biggest challenge - understanding what the businesses and employees are experiencing, and how can we navigate this in order to make it easier for them.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I would say authenticity - being authentic and showing up as yourself in order to connect with others. Collaboration has always been key for myself. Showing up authentic in order to meet others where they're at and collaborating is essential. I think at the end of the day, we're all here to connect and collaborate. That's what I truly hold onto - just being genuine, authentic, and through collaboration. I'm always trying to make a difference in whatever that is, conversation by conversation.
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