September 8, 2020
What is your role with the Alliance of Women in Workers’ Compensation?
Aimee has been engaged with the Alliance since its inception, 6 years ago. Her initial role was as a Philadelphia ambassador, she was one of the first ambassadors in the program. Ambassadors bring Alliance content and programming to local areas around the country. Aimee and her co-ambassadors created a successful Alliance in Philadelphia through offering industry and leadership content with engaging speakers. They created a solid sponsor program and built a strong following. Later Aimee supported the development of ambassador programming and events in California and Texas.
Currently, Aimee is the marketing chair for the Alliance. In this role, she supports content development, marketing campaigns, and event planning for larger-scale events. She has responsibility for the event’s agenda, visual materials, logistics, and speaker coordination. Aimee has been actively involved with the Alliance’s national events for the past 2 years. At her previous job, Aimee was a director of marketing and it is that experience hosting events, parties, and leading communication campaigns that is now a win for the Alliance. Aimee is currently the Chief Marketing Officer for Alta Claims Services.
What are your current projects with the Alliance?
Since the pandemic, Aimee created Common Grounds. Common Grounds is the Alliance’s virtual meetup program hosted by ambassadors around the country. Each Common Ground theme Aimee designs is focused on attendee engagement and sharing, collaboration, and networking. Since the beginning of April, there have been 82 Common Grounds events.
Many people in the workers’ compensation industry have lost their job during this pandemic, Aimee being one of them. She realized that like herself, there are many people out there who are in need of assistance to get back on their feet, create a plan for the future, and begin their job search. This is how the idea for the current webinar series with life coach Liz M. Lopez came to life. Following the webinars, Common Ground discussions are geared towards content from the webinar. This allows followers to listen to the webinars and also engage with others in the Alliance. Following the career planning webinars with Liz M. Lopez, Aimee shared that content will shift to personal coaching and finding your power with Natalie Fikes.
“I’m really excited about our Alliance content”, says Aimee. During this time, everyone has been glued to their laptops since work has gone virtual. Aimee feared that people would be burned out with all the virtual meetings already going on. She did not want to water down the content anddecided to take a new approach. This new approach gives people a place to share their thoughts, discuss topics, and continue to stay engaged.
What is an aspirational goal for the Alliance?
During this pandemic, the rules for safety have been constantly changing. Prior to the pandemic, there were many in-person conferences that the Alliance hosted. In-person conferences are unlikely to occur in the next 6 months, if not longer. Instead, Aimee is hopeful that the Alliance will be able to provide a virtual conference later this year. It would include speakers from our top ambassadors, our employer advisory council, and other hosts. Viewers would be able to log on right from their couches or home offices and still have the networking opportunities they have grown to love with the Alliance. There will be multiple sessions that viewers can pick and choose from. Aimee says she wants to ensure there is still a place and a platform for people to come together to continue to foster mentoring relationships. This is a crazy time, but it nice that something great can come out of this virtual space.
Have you grown personally or professionally through the Alliance?
Aimee shares that her personal and professional growth constantly evolves because of her involvement with the Alliance. She has stepped out of her comfort zone on many occasions whether it is finding sponsors, inviting attendees to attend, or working with new professionals that she might not otherwise have an opportunity to meet. For the Alliance’s RIMS 2019 brunch Aimee created the theme Rise and Resilience. When the keynote speaker canceled at the last minute, Aimee was asked to be one of the panelists sharing personal resilience stories on stage. And while Aimee finds personal stories inspirational, she had never shared her story of abandonment, adoption, and ultimately finding her dear brother with whom she was separated as a young child. The Alliance has offered Aimee better access to a cross-sectional group of professionals and she is grateful for her experiences.