2013 40 Under 40: Robin Hendry
West Region Reprints
Assistant vice president and senior account executive
ABD Insurance & Financial Services Inc.
Age: 37
As a benefits broker with a portfolio of clients consisting predominantly of Silicon Valley tech firms, Robin Hendry knows all too well the mounting pressure on employers to balance cost and competitiveness in their group health plans.
Ms. Hendry, an assistant vice president and senior account executive at San Mateo, Calif.-based ABD Insurance & Financial Services Inc., manages a book of business that generates up to $2 million in annualized revenue. Her current and former clients have included Aruba Networks Inc., Digital Realty Trust Inc., Twitter Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc.
“Our clients are faced with competing for talent with Google and Facebook and other companies that are offering extremely generous benefits and, in trying to stay competitive and contain costs at the same time, they're facing pretty substantial challenges,” Ms. Hendry said. “We have to be an extension of our clients' teams in order to meet their needs. They're looking to us not only as consultants, but they need us to be able to tactically deliver solutions as well.”
She is known for consistently high performance as a broker, and for her reputation among clients as a hands-on problem solver.
“She's an extraordinary listener, and that makes her extraordinarily collaborative,” said Rebecca Guerra, executive vice president of talent acquisition and care at San Francisco-based network service provider Infoblox Inc. “Brokers very often have a tendency to tell you what they think you should do, but what Robin does is build up a thorough understanding of all the nuances of the problem we're trying to solve, and then works collaboratively with her own team and with us to figure out what the right solution is.”
