"I'm a lifelong learner. I learn, no matter where the learning is coming from," said Ruchi Haubrich, who leads an infrastructure team at The Hartford that is supporting cloud migration. Haubrich shared that she has always worked in technology. She is currently the AVP, IT engineering but she started as a developer at The Hartford over 25 years ago. She loved the day-to-day of it and problem solving.
"I loved to fix issues and make applications run faster, to create solutions for the customer," she said. "I loved it all. There was no reason for me at that point in my career to look for anything different because I enjoyed my work so much but I never imagined that I would stay in the industry or even take on a leadership role. It was nowhere on my horizon."
Haubrich did imagine that she would leave the insurance industry and move to Silicon Valley and work at a technology company there but: "The longer I stayed the more I liked the culture. … I also started learning more about insurance in general and I thought it was fascinating and a very complex business and I actually rather enjoyed it."
Haubrich said she saw no reason to move into a leadership position until she realized there were more opportunities in the technology space at the company.
Haubrich said what helped her move into a leadership role was courses offered by The Hartford related to being an effective leader. "That's where I really started my leadership journey. What I really enjoy now is having a very large team of people. I love building highly engaged and productive teams."
She said there are many aspects that make a good leader but integrity and accountability are at the top of the list.
"To me, those are the two most prominent traits in a leader. I think just being transparent to your teams, to your customers, holding yourself and others accountable," Haubrich said. "That's the basis of building a trusted relationship."
Haubrich drove the adoption of cloud technology and leads a team that supports the company's migration. She also manages a team who maintains the existing on- premises database and infrastructure for the company. She said that technology is a real differentiator for businesses.
"The adoption of digital and artificial intelligence is helping make business decisions go faster and it's quite incredible. I think we are still in a very early stage of some of these new technologies," she said, adding that the speed of changing technology will likely only increase.
Haubrich added that there are new risks facing the insurance industry. There are always new risks to cover and an ongoing need for the industry to evolve its products to better serve its customers, she said.
She offered advice to younger people who are graduating college that insurance is interesting if you get into it and there are many kinds of innovative technologies that insurance companies are using. "There are endless possibilities to the kinds of careers you can pursue within insurance."
Haubrich said she hopes to continue to grow her career as a leader who is also a woman of color.
"I look to be inclusive and expand the diversity in our company. I look to provide a role model for young women. [Across the industry,] I don't see that many young women or women in general in technology and certainly not at the leadership level. As you go up the ranks, there's less and less technical leadership that I see from women. I hope to be able to provide the leadership, the mentorship to other talent and support younger generations as they come up."
Haubrich shared that The Hartford also has several women in leadership positions including a CIO heading technology and operations, two other CIOs and two heads of operations.
