Roxy LaRoque

As a manager, the most important thing for me is being a people person - my team comes first regardless of anything else. I focus on supporting my team in work-life balance and utilizing our time efficiently so we can have that balance. Right now, my team is all women, some are family women and some are younger women who don't have families, but each has a concentration on what they want to achieve for their own professional goals and work-life balance with their family. The proudest thing I've been able to focus on as a manager is making sure that the work-life culture on our team is one that's very positive, and that's how we keep people around - we build these relationships and help them create this life that they want, both personally and professionally. We're very close, and I look forward to continuing that as our team gets larger. People First has always been my motto as a manager. That's something my manager taught me, and I really appreciated it. As I grew my own family, I was still able to cater to the needs of my family, but also what I want to accomplish on a professional stance. From a business perspective, I think really just being able to build and expand our client base on not just one business line but multiple product lines, and having one of those product lines where my husband and I are owners, is very satisfying to see where we started and how we've grown so much in the seven years. It's something that we work really hard at, because it helps us with our independence.

I've had quite a few amazing mentors, both personally and professionally. My sister Brandi Niklai, who is Chief Operating Finance Analyst at Alaska Permanent Capital Management, has been someone I've looked up to my whole life. From a professional standpoint, she has created such an amazing workplace and accomplished so many things in her industry and continues to do so. She has taught me a lot about work ethic, about asking questions all the time, seeing gaps and helping other people identify those gaps and create processes to close them, and to really just thrive every day - never give up and continue on your path. Every single day, because you're never going to stop growing in your entire life. My sister-in-law Alla LaRoque, who created Halo MD about 3 years ago and went from zero to like $2 billion in awards for her clients in that short period of time, is another person who has a fantastic work ethic and always wants to put people under her wing who are serious about trying to grow. The common thread I find with my mentors is don't give up when it's hard, you're going to lose sometimes, stay positive during it, and never stop growing, because when you stop growing and your mind stops growing, so does everything else in your life. Brandi Mulligan, my old Director of Client Success whose position I took when she left, has been a huge inspiration in seeing gaps, helping to identify fixes, and creating processes to close them. I try to create an environment or an ecosystem of women who are focused and who are smarter than I am. It sounds kind of silly, but I want to be the stupidest person in the room, because then I'm going to be learning something every day and I'm never going to stop growing. I try to surround myself with people who are really positive and who are go-getters, because everyone needs that influence in their life.

I would say that keeping focused on your core values in your life will help you professionally. As we look at integrity and honesty and the confidence that you have, just really focus on those things, because you'll see that throughout your life, in a professional way and a personal way as well, and that really builds trust. If you're going to be in a client success or client experience role, making sure that you're operating in a way, day-to-day, that is trustworthy will build huge rapport with your client base, and they will come to you for many other things in life than just one thing that you're there for. It's always trust. Trust is a huge thing. Transparency, making sure that you're building those relationships, because I want to be a resource for my clients in all facets of their life. Over the years, they've come to me with things that aren't even in my wheelhouse, experiencing things in their practice and asking how I think we can solve for this, what I'm seeing on the market, what other people are doing. You really obtain this sense of pride when you've built such great relationships over the years that for professional things that aren't related to my field, they come to me, and sometimes even with personal things, because we've been able to connect with one another in a very organic and authentic way.

The biggest challenges and opportunities in my field right now include addressing critical gaps in care and documentation for Indigenous populations, particularly related to missing and murdered Indigenous people, and expanding mental-health resources. On the clinical and operational side, there’s an ongoing focus on strengthening client relationships and resolving service concerns as both our team and client base continue to grow.

In my downtime, I love nature. I'm originally from Alaska and I live in Texas now - I've been here for 13 years, but I really connect with nature and love it. Growing up, we spent a lot of time outside, camping and fishing and hunting, doing all of the outdoorsy things, and so I really do love connecting with nature in any way that I can. I am a mom of a five and seven year old boy, and they're very active, so they're keeping me busy with sports, taekwondo, STEM activities, soccer, and baseball. We're heavy in the season of life of sports for the kids, and I absolutely love it. We're heavily involved in church, and we love going to church, so those are some of the key core things in my life that I really stick to - Jesus and outdoors. Being from Alaska, I'm Alaska Native Yupik, which is an Inuit tribe in South Central Southwest Alaska. For me, topics that are really important are missing and murdered Indigenous women and children (MMIWC). I had a brother who took his own life in his 20s, so for me, suicide awareness is something that is so important. My background as a nurse was mostly in mental health at a patient facility, and I was charge nurse of the adolescent females. Mental health is one cause that I really connect to very personally. Being a minority in the world today and looking at the gaps that we see with missing or murdered Indigenous people, when you look at the data, it's very astonishing to see how underserved and underdocumented that population is. I think we really do a great service to families if we can pour more into mental health, whether it's veterans or that population that is so underserved. It has a very special place in my heart because I have family members who've struggled with mental health issues, depression, or addiction. One reason why I concentrate so much on growing every day is because I know where I came from and the odds to be where I'm at today are fairly low when you look at the statistics. My sister and I are two living examples of coming from a home that had depression and alcoholism and mental health issues, and we were able to get out of that and be successful and create a better life for ourselves and a better life for our children. Things don't have to be the way that they are - you can change them.