Vanessa Heichert

Vice President, Business Optimization & Enablement The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company

Vanessa Heichert has over 20 years experience in the insurance industry, she has been a broker, managed Wawanesa’s personal insurance products teams, and worked on the transformation of our core technology systems with a focus on our broker connectivity and tools. In her current role, Vanessa is responsible for improving our organizational efficiency through optimizing our people, processes, and technology to fundamentally enhance our business performance, while also enhancing our broker, member, and employee experience. Vanessa is a life-long learner, holding a Certificate in Business & Administrative Studies from Red River College, and earning industry designations of Chartered Insurance Professional (CIP), Agribusiness & Farm Insurance Specialist (AFIS), Canadian Accredited Insurance Broker (CAIB), and Canadian Professional Insurance Broker (CPIB). She is currently pursuing her MBA through Heriot-Watt University. In her spare time, Vanessa is an active hockey-mom, manages and plays soccer year-round with two women’s teams, and enjoys spending time outdoors with her family including her two golden retrievers.

Tuesday, Jan 28: Main Conference Day Two

12:30 PM PANEL DISCUSSION: MASTERING COMPLEX ENTERPRISE CHANGE CHALLENGES AT SCALE

As enterprise transformations continue to elevate and expand, effectively managing large-scale changes becomes increasing critical. This session will explore different scenarios and approaches for unpicking change complexity, providing insights on best practices and strategies:

·       Ensuring leadership alignment before embarking on the enterprise change journey

·       Balancing the need to keep the lights on while transforming for the future

·       Planning vs execution: recognizing the importance of spending time and resources on planning rather than jumping straight in

·       Building a centralized change framework and teams to remove silos and create an end-to-end view of enterprise transformation

·       Discussing effective ways of advancing change maturity

·       Introducing and leveraging our change partnership model to build organizational change capabilities

4:00 PM PANEL DISCUSSION: HEARTS, MINDS & CHANGE - BUILDING TRUST AND CONNECTIONS TO INSPIRE LASTING CHANGE

Many change management initiatives fall by the wayside as they focus too much on the tools, methods and frameworks. Whilst it’s important to have a systematic approach in change management, it is much more important to build meaningful connections and a trusting environment in which change initiatives can succeed and last. Join this inspirational panel to hear practical ways to build these meaningful connections to engage not only teams’ work but also their hearts and minds.

·       The importance of and strategies for leading a transparent and open dialogue during change initiatives

·       The role of empathy and active listening in building trust and creating meaningful connections

·       Creating shared goals and values to engage hearts and minds

·       Sharing methods to motivate and inspire individuals emotionally and intellectually

·       Sustaining long-lasting change: effective approaches to embedding change within organizational culture

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Vanessa.

Download The Latest Agenda