For the past four years, the BenefitsPRO Broker Expo has closed by showcasing the personal stories that have brought many into the benefits industry and motivated them work to fix the health care industry and to become true advocates for employees. This year's theme was a no-brainer: Resilience. The pandemic is teaching many of us just what it means to be resilient, but for this year's BEN Talk speakers, it's a lesson already learned. Related: 2020 Broker Expo BEN talks: Making a difference |

ABCs of resilience

Felipe Barganier of GAB International pumped up the crowd, playing DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win" as he took the stage. "All I do is win, win, win no matter what," he said, reciting the song's first line. Life is good when you're winning, he said, and he should know. Prior to 2018, that mantra defined his life. He had just been recognized as a Broker of the Year finalist and business was booming. But 2018 was about to teach him what it meant to lose. Over the course of a year, he lost 80% of his income, his marriage ended and he lost his mother. To get through it all, Barganier relied on the "ABCs" of resilience. "A stands for attitude," he explained. "During that time I had to have the proper attitude. I had children, I had employees, and I had a wife who I had to pay $10k a month to while going through a divorce. It was extremely important that any time I showed up I had a positive attitude." The B is for behavior, he continued. "When you show up as benefit advisors, when you come to work, you have to put on your superhero outfit. When you're going through a personal pandemic, you have to have the resolve within yourself to keep going no matter what." He realized that the way he acted during those difficult times needed to reflect not how he was truly feeling, but the person he was during better times--the person he wanted people to be as once he came out of his personal crisis. "Have you all ever had a situation where your behavior was tested?" he asked. "You had an irate customer, spouse, child? You knew that your behavior in that situation could impact that relationship for the long term." The C in Barganier's ABCs stands for consistency. "During 2018, it was highly important for me to be consistent," he said. Rather than withdrawing, he made a point of continuing to attend industry events and other activities, just as he always had. "Consistency is tested not on days that are going great, but on the days you're experiencing a 'no matter what' situation," he said. "The pattern you create in good times will dictate your survival during bad times." Indeed, 2018 tested Barganier's resolve and taught him what it meant to be resilient. And his challenges have continued since, including a period in the hospital earlier this year battling COVID. He told attendees he hopes his story will serve to strengthen others in the industry. "As I stand here on this stage, and as you all go back home, I want you all to think--whether you're struggling now in business, or with a personal situation--think about those times in your life when you were winning."

Rina Tikia forged ahead where others may have turned back, driven by strength and resilience.

Show no fear

No single example of resilience has defined the life of Rina Tikia. Rather, her life is the definition of resilience. It all started when she was just a little girl, a British citizen of Indian descent born in east Africa. Her parents moved her first to England and then to India, where she didn't speak a word of Hindi and had to quickly learn a new language and a new culture. It wouldn't be the last time. She met her husband--an American soldier--when she was working at a travel agency. He was having a problem with a ticket and promised to take her out for lunch if she could fix it. "He comes in the next day and it's fixed," Tikia said. "He takes me out to lunch and three days later he proposes. I said yes." Thus started the next leap into the unknown. Her husband went back to San Francisco, and she followed three months later. "My first reaction being an Indian girl, is I'm going to take care of my husband, follow two steps behind him," she said, relying on the cultural norms she had been raised with. But that's not how things worked in America. "He comes home and asks, 'have you looked for a job?'" New marriage, new country, new culture, even new technology--Tikia took it all in stride, quickly learning how to use an electric typewriter before seeking work through a temp agency and landing at an insurance company. Then, another move--this time to New Orleans, where she got a job at New England Life as an office manager and loved what she did. When the company closed, her old boss referred her to an opening at MassMutual, and then Johnson and Higgens. "I said, 'I don't want to sell,'" Tikia recalled. "I was happy to serve clients." But her new role came with a sales requirement, so Tikia pushed through and challenged herself. "I learned to be more assertive, more aggressive," she said. "More vocal, more confident, and after five years with J&H, I decided to open my own shop." As an immigrant in the South, the cards were stacked against her. "I did not go to Jesuit high school, I didn't go to LSU, I'm a female," she said. "So my husband sat me down and said, 'Try it. If worse comes to worst, you can go back to working for a consulting firm.'" Tikia did not go back to consulting, of course, instead building up a successful business over the past several decades--Tikia Consulting Group--before selling her book of business. She learned to navigate the "old boys' club" dominant in her area and play to her strengths as a woman. Each time life threw her a new challenge, Tikia has accepted, quelling her fears and her doubts and finding success where others may have backed down.

"Bounce forward, not back" was the message Chelsea Whalley shared with attendees.

Bounce forward

At a very young age, Chelsea Whalley's father affectionately gave her a NSFW nickname that would define her attitude throughout her formative years: "Determined little shit." Growing up in Canada, Whalley, now COO at J Donovan Financial, was a defiant and outgoing child who loved attention and loved to perform. "I learned a really important lesson: The more you can make people smile, the more attention you get, the more loved you feel," she said, admitting that it wasn't the best outlook to have on life. But still, it was what it was. "This is the start of a lifelong obsession with being the best," she continued. "I was obsessed with success: athletics, academics, theater. In junior high, we would do monthly awards ceremonies. It got to the point that every month, I was winning so many awards that the principal put a chair for me right up front." Her determination also led her to join her twin brother in Little League--the only girl among some 300 young athletes. Then someone put the idea into her head to get into softball. "You could get a scholarship to the states, or even play in the nationals for Team Canada," she recalls being told. And her reaction? "'Hell yeah, I'm going to do that.' Another obsession started." Whalley landed at Stetson University in the States, playing D1 softball, a standout athlete and student. "I was captain senior year," she recounted. "I was accepted to med school. I led the conference in home runs. I was having the best season of my life." Then, the unthinkable: She was hit in the head by a softball during practice, sustaining a serious concussion. "Within 48 hours, the symptoms worsened so badly that I couldn't remember what class to go to, couldn't get out of bed. The fog was unbearable. "I never played another game of softball in my life," she continued. "I had to wear sunglasses and earplugs to class. I barely graduated." The U.S.-based doctors she saw at the time brushed it off as a concussion and post-graduation anxiety. She returned home to live with her parents, still barely able to function. While she waited for her turn in the Canadian health care system, she spent 8 months living in a camper in her parent's backyard, unable to stand the noise and light in the house. When she did get an appointment with a neurologist, it only led to more frustration. "She refused to give me an MRI," Whalley said. "She said I was average." But those who knew Whalley knew that she wasn't average. For her, "average" still meant a significant impairment. She eventually found a 10-month brain injury rehab program and started the long road to recovery. All the while, doctors kept dismissing her symptoms, but Whalley persisted. And it wasn't until several years later that she got some form of vindication. "I was rear-ended in 2019 and had another concussion," she said. "This time they did an MRI, and it showed hyperintensities in my brain that were characteristic of someone three times my age. It was real." Eight years later, Whalley still struggles with the lasting repercussions of her injury. But she has also learned to adapt, and to slow down. "I had to learn to be less intense, more relaxed," she said. "I'm confident. If I can go through that, I'm pretty sure I can handle anything." For Whalley, resiliency hasn't just been about recovering from a difficult situation. "I was never going to be the same person; I couldn't bounce back." Instead, she views resiliency as "the ability to bounce forward into who you are becoming. You don't need to bounce back. You can bounce forward into the new version of yourself."

Esther Pipoly shared her experiences dealing with one of the most difficult situations anyone has to overcome in life: the loss of a loved one.

63 days

The death of a loved one is, for many, the ultimate test of resilience. Esther Pipoly knows this all too well and has made it her life's mission to be a support for others during their most difficult and dark times. She lost her own mother in 1999. "I thought at that time, wow, losing your mom is probably the worst thing you can go through." She was wrong. Fifteen years later, she would say goodbye to both her father and her husband within the span of 63 days. Pipoly's dad was sick with cancer in San Antonio when she accepted a job in Denver. As she pursued her "dream job" and found success in the self-funded market, her father was dying. "He moved out of ICU into a long-term care facility, never walked again," she recalled. When the call came in 2014 that he had taken a turn, she thought she was prepared. "We knew the call was going to come, but when it came, I knew it was really going to stink," Pipoly said. But things could have been worse. "My dad was a planner, so he had everything in place." Her husband was by her side as Pipoly laid her father to rest. Up until that point, he had always been healthy and Pipoly had been too consumed by her father's health to notice anything was amiss. "The day we buried my dad, my husband said, 'I don't feel good,'" Pipoly recalled. "He was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer 10 days to the day after my dad died." Pipoly's husband wanted to forgo traditional chemotherapy and try an experimental therapy treatment in Tijuana. But Pipoly had to get back to work, so her daughter accompanied her husband for his treatment. The treatment was unsuccessful, and Pipoly was told her husband wouldn't survive the plane trip back home. "I called my friend and he showed up on the runway with an ambulance," Pipoly said. "My husband passed away five hours later in the hospice facility." Pipoly recalled being so consumed with seeing to her husband's comfort in his last hours that she hadn't thought ahead to what's next. "I thought, OK, he's got life insurance, but I didn't realize I didn't take guaranteed-issue out on my husband." Besides dealing with life insurance, finances, burial and memorials, Pipoly also had to cope with shutting down her husband's law insurance practice. One day, she said, "I got an email from HR: 'Hi, sorry for your loss, you have three days of bereavement, you've used up all of your PTO.'" It was the fourth quarter, a busy time for those in the benefits business, and Pipoly didn't want to let her team down. "I get back to the office, and it's like a whole new world," she said. "What I needed was to crawl in a hole." Over the next weeks, Pipoly struggled to be present at work, despite the burdens she was dealing with personally. It took a Friday afternoon meeting with HR when she finally found her voice. "I said, 'I don't feel very supported in this moment,'" she recalled. "'Why did you have me come back to work if you didn't want to include me?' I shattered into a million pieces. I was sobbing." Pipoly finally took the time she needed to grieve, heal and get her husband's affairs in order. But she also resolved to do what she could to prevent others from having to go through the same experience. "If you hear someone's had a loss, don't call and ask about their work," she advised. "Say, 'Hey, I'm checking on you.' Do a needs assessment. What can we take off of their plate?" Pipoly's business, LOLA (Loss of Life Advocates), does just that. "What you need is a person to help guide you," Pipoly said. As a loss-of-life advocate, she can come in and help individuals or employees navigate the chaos in the death of a loved one, helping them recover emotionally--and get back to work when they're finally ready. More Expo coverage: |

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