Her Story
About Heather
Heather Kressin is a Member Engagement Coordinator with Big I Oregon | Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of Oregon, where she focuses on strengthening relationships, supporting member participation, and fostering engagement within Oregon’s independent insurance community. Based in Portland, Oregon, she brings a strong background in communication, operations, and people-centered coordination. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Communication and Media Studies, with additional academic focus in speech communication and open arts studies from Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Her early career began in administrative and customer-facing roles through staffing placements with organizations such as Wells Fargo and the Oregon Ballet Company, where she developed foundational skills in communication, service, and office coordination. After relocating to Oregon, she spent several years with Icebreaker Merino, a sustainability-focused apparel company, where she progressed from e-commerce customer service into office management and human resources support. She later expanded her HR and operations experience through roles at Mt. Hood Meadows Resort and Cooper Spur Mountain Resort, contributing to employee support, guest services, and organizational efficiency.
Across her career, Heather has consistently focused on building efficient systems and empowering people through clear communication and practical support. Her professional strengths include team building, employee empowerment, HR coordination, process improvement, and office management. In her current role in the insurance association sector, she applies this experience to strengthen member relationships and improve internal engagement, reflecting a consistent career theme of helping teams function more effectively and collaboratively.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Heather
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to growing up in Minnesota with a very strong work ethic that was instilled in me from a young age. I have a strong sense of self and an internal drive where I need to feel like I'm doing a good job at something - it doesn't really matter what other people think, I have to feel like I'm doing a good job. My foundational morals are simply to be a decent person. As the firstborn of 6 children, I grew up taking care of everyone else, so very early on I became a team player, the mediator, the peacemaker, and the connecting piece to help the team work better. That work ethic combined with those values of working hard and getting it done is what has driven my success.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is communication, because everybody is different and everybody understands things differently. In the business world, there is structure and hopefully standard operating procedures to help with clarity and processing and working together as a team, but the communication part is still the most frustrating thing. This is especially true between different generations - different generations say things differently and have different outlooks. Everybody wants to email, everybody wants to message, and you lose a lot of information when that's the only way you communicate. I understand it works best for some people, but the different types of communicating and people's personalities create challenges. The pushback of meeting halfway and having an open mind is probably one of the most frustrating things I encounter, because I just want to make things better and I'm trying to meet in the middle. The opportunity is in getting people to talk about things, figure out where the miscommunication happened, and discuss it in a respectful way. Everybody should have respect for everyone else and an open mind, because even identical twins are not the same, so how can you expect everybody else to be thinking the same as you? There's no way.
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