Marie Lackey Esparza

I attribute my success back to being 22 years in executive management prior to joining insurance. That foundation allowed me to escalate pretty quickly and make a lot of wins happen pretty fast in my career. I also believe in banking on myself and empowering myself with all the relationships and contacts I've built up over the years. The moment people found out I was no longer with USI, they were very willing to help and share support. I work by the SWAN method - sleep well at night - which means I lead with integrity and leave a positive imprint on the people I help. I'm very transparent with my clients about who I am, including being open about my autism and ADHD. When I tell clients upfront about my quirks and how I work, it wins me so much business because people start to see me as a human immediately. I also lean on other people - I have a lot of mentors out in the field and I believe in delegating and pulling energy from my support system. I ground myself daily through meditation, standing in first sunlight to rebalance my circadian rhythm, and yes, I'm a tree hugger. I do a lot of self-help work to keep myself emotionally level set so I can be great at what I do.

What we're finding on our end is that there's a lot more medical claims in the psychiatric side of things right now for women, and it's because we wear so many hats. That's why I created my quarterly women's clinic events - I want to be able to have women in the C-suite meet other like-minded women in the same division of responsibility that they have on a daily basis who also wear a thousand hats. Maybe they can find amongst those women some support, just a good peer to lean on. Inside their goodie bags, I include coping mechanisms on how to be supportive and what they can do to support themselves for mental health. I show them what burnout looks like and how to alleviate it. Most women don't know, and they work through the burnout for years until they have a nervous breakdown. I've gone through autistic burnout, which I want to say is the worst type of burnout because you just can't function. I'm a huge believer in being able to identify what that looks like and then how to fix it.

The most important value to me is integrity. I work by the SWAN method - sleep well at night. I wanted to be able to leave a positive imprint on those people that I was helping, and as long as I was providing them the education and the support that they needed, it didn't matter how many times I got in trouble at USI for doing pro bono work. I believe quitters are winners when you see something that just isn't a good fit for you and you're not able to develop yourself and grow within that institution because of that. You have to be able to call it and have enough courage to walk away. When it hit my breaking point at USI over helping a startup that needed support, I said this doesn't feel good anymore. I can hang my head on my integrity all day. Transparency is also crucial to me - I'm very transparent with my clients about being autistic and having ADHD. I tell them upfront, I'm not telling you to gain pity, I'm telling you for transparency. If that's going to be a problem, maybe we're not going to be the best fit for each other. Being of service is my goal - wherever I can be of service and hopefully be an inspiration to other women, that's what matters.