A career with a calling
Meet Leigh, who fuses her career with her passion to serve her community.
What do you do at Blue Shield of California?
I’m a Compliance Consultant in Blue Shield of California’s Law Department, so compliance is my day job. Being the chair for the community outreach team for the Black Employee Network is my gift of love. It also helps cultivate a diverse and inclusive workplace as a logical extension of our mission and values.
How did you get involved with community service?
I was given hope through my life, and I want to give that back.
One example was during my morning commute into San Francisco last winter, I saw a sight that broke my heart: A young father was carrying his baby and, despite it being a particularly cold day, the baby was not wearing a jacket. I arrived at my office and announced that Blue Shield’s Black Employee Network was going to organize a winter coat drive. Two weeks later, we had gathered 250 coats and distributed them to children in need in Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.
When I see a need, I go all in.
What draws you to Blue Shield?
We want to ensure that every Californian has access to high-quality health care at an affordable price. So, whether doing that is through the corporate citizenship department or the Foundation, it all ties back to helping the community as a whole. That’s where I come in. To make sure families know that we care about them.
And we've had some extreme successes. We gave about $36,000 to an organization called San Francisco Achievers and we hosted a career day. But we took it even a step further and had our IT department go in and actually teach code. We partnered with Hands for Hope and Daughters of Zion and fed about 500 families.
What’s next?
When it comes to the community, putting them on our shoulders, I will never stop. We're going be very intentional about what we do. So, whether that’s giving scholarships to a kid, providing a meal or providing backpacks, I will never stop. And that’s just what it is.
