Latinx Paths to Insurance -- Minerva Tirado

I was born in Yuba City, a small city in rural and agricultural Northern California. My parents were migrant farm workers, and we moved around between Sonoma County, Salinas/Watsonsville and Colusa County within California until I was five years old, when we finally settled in the very small, unincorporated town of Arbuckle in Colusa County (about 45 minutes north of Sacramento). Of all the places we lived, Arbuckle was the most rural of them all. It probably reminded my parents of the small, rural town where they grew up in Central Mexico – Paracuaro, Guanajuato. Both my parents’ families have lived in that same town going back for generations. They followed their older siblings to the U.S. in search of a better economic life, including my eldest uncle, who participated in the Bracero program in the 1950s. The Bracero program was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico.

While they were only formally educated through elementary school and some high school, my parents stressed the importance of an education. On my first day of kindergarten, I did not know a word of English. My parents knew enough English to get by, but we only spoke Spanish in our home. With English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and Sesame Street, I quickly got up to speed. I attended the elementary, junior high (which was new when I was in 8th grade) and high school in Arbuckle. My graduating class was about 50 people. After high school, I moved to the Bay Area to attend Stanford University, where I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. 

Growing up in Arbuckle, the summer jobs available to me were limited to agricultural/manual labor or fast food establishments. I remember the moment in the winter/spring of my sophomore year at Stanford, when I decided I needed to find different summer employment. I could not fathom another graveyard shift at a tomato cannery for an entire summer. I needed to work smarter, not harder. At the school’s career center, I looked into an organization called Inroads, which helps place minority students into summer internships within corporate America. In addition to the internship, Inroads also held Saturday sessions with interns to teach them about working in a corporate environment -- things like resume writing, dressing for a business environment, teamwork, and providing overall support to college students unfamiliar with an office environment. Inroads set me up with interviews with Chubb and Marsh. I took Marsh San Francisco up on their offer, and I am still here almost 30 years later. What is even more amazing is that some of those colleagues that I met during my summer internships are also still here.

My first summer as an intern, I rotated through many departments and met many people, from the mail and fax room to claims, Casualty and Healthcare. When I accepted a full-time position, I started as an account representative in the Casualty department. When the two-broker model came to Casualty in 2010/11, I moved into an ACE role within GRM distribution. Three years later, I was back in Casualty advisory, where I am currently a Senior Vice President and Co-chair of the HOLA chapter.

I live in Berkeley with Chris, whom I met at Stanford, and our two kids, Claudia and Dante. Our kids are lucky enough to be getting a bilingual education through Berkeley public schools, where I have started to volunteer to help other families, after a hiatus from being an elementary school PTA president. We look forward to supporting the kids’ track meets and basketball games again in the future.