Five Local Businesswomen Honored as part of Vocational Service Month

Bettye Baldwin

Managing Principal

Retention Strategies LLC and Retention Strategies Insurance Corp.

As Managing Principal of Retention Strategies Bettye has been engaged in various aspects of leadership in employee benefits/HR consulting in Puerto Rico for over 25 years.  She formed Hewitt Associates in 1990 in Puerto Rico after having arrived in Puerto Rico and a career in the U.S. in Human Resources.  Among her positions were Regional VP of Citibank for Mexico, VP International HR for Estee Lauder and VP HR for Home Life Insurance Company.  She grew Hewitt in Puerto Rico (adding Venezuela and Dominican Republic offices) from two to 120 associates prior to selling her portion of the joint venture to Hewitt Associates LLC.  As part of this contract, she became the Latin America Regional Director for Hewitt and managed the region for the subsequent three years.  She departed in 2007, and while honoring her non-compete agreement purchased another business, Caregivers de Puerto Rico.  As early as possible she formed Retention Strategies LLC and Retention Strategies Insurance Corp with two partners to once again provide benefits consulting/brokerage in the manner utilized to make Hewitt so successful. 

Bettye has a BA in Economics and Sociology from the University of Arkansas where she completed graduate work in English.  She has done studies at the London School of Business and Wharton. 

Jennifer Bates

President

PR Soft, Inc.

Jennifer was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in New Jersey and Massachusetts. She graduated from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School second in her class, then earned her undergraduate degree in Pure Mathematics from Rutgers. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with departmental awards, and a full scholarship to Rutgers Business School of Business, where she went on to earn her MBA.

Jennifer worked for nine years at a business forms consulting company, where she analyzed and designed work flow documents and business forms for many customers in the New York New Jersey Metropolitan area. She moved to Puerto Rico in 1990 to join her (then) husband who was an officer with Carnival Cruise Lines. She found some programming work in Puerto Rico, and also started a desktop publishing business... a little of this, a little of that.

In 1992 she was out to lunch with a friend, who had brought along another friend, who happened to be a tax accountant. After some conversation, the accountant said, “Jennifer, what we need in Puerto Rico is a reliable and inexpensive software program to help us prepare Hacienda tax returns.” She thought, “Hmmmm… I can do that…” and put all her eggs in one basket for the next year, creating the first automated individual tax return product in Puerto Rico. It was a make-or-break decision, since she worked for over a year with no income, and with debt piling up.

She named her company PRSoft®, and ran it out of her apartment in Ocean Park. Jennifer single-handedly did programming, marketing, bug-fixing, billing, mailing etc. As her customer list grew, so did her employee list and office space. After several moves and expansions, PRSoft now occupies 6,000 square feet in Santurce, in a building owned by Jennifer, with a total of twenty employees and contract programmers. Her client list is in the thousands, with many loyal customers since 1994.

PRSoft products include PRTax® for Individuals, PRCorp® for Corporations and PropTax® for property tax. PRSoft’s best-selling product is PRPay®, created for any business that needs to file employer reports and produce year-end W-2’s and Informative returns. PRSoft is now in the process of a major upgrade to all its software, an exciting project that will take the company solidly into the future, and maintain its place as the number one tax software company in Puerto Rico.

Kimberly Casiano

President

Kimberly Casiano & Associates

Kimberly Casiano is President of Kimberly Casiano & Associates, an advisory firm specializing in assisting corporations targeting the U.S. Hispanic market.  As a member of three corporate boards, and the first Hispanic woman to serve on any of the top five “Fortune 100” corporate boards, Ms. Casiano assists in the recruitment of qualified Hispanic directors for corporate boards, bringing a unique perspective to the recruitment process and a national network of contacts in the Hispanic community.  In addition, Kimberly Casiano & Associates works with top executives in formulating marketing and communications strategies, public policy, advocacy, and diversity programs to reach this dynamic, growing market, the largest minority group in the country. Up until December 2009, Ms. Casiano was President of Casiano Communications Inc., the leading U.S. Hispanic publisher of magazines and periodicals in the country.

She actively serves on many corporate boards: In December 2003, she was elected to the Board of Directors of Ford Motor Company headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan. In April 2006, Ms. Casiano was elected to the Board of Directors of Mutual of America.  In March 2010, Ms. Casiano was elected to the board of directors of Mead Johnson Nutrition Company. Ms. Casiano is also active on the board of a number of non-profit organizations that support education, including the Board of Directors of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF), which awards over 4000 college scholarships annually to Hispanic youth.  She is also co-founder and Vice-Chair of Nuestra Casa de los Niños, a Puerto Rico-based organization that provides private-school education for economically disadvantaged children in San Juan.

Ms. Casiano's involvement in business organizations includes being the first female Chapter Chair of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), Puerto Rico chapter.  She is also a member of the Corporate Directors Council of the Hispanic Association of Corporate Responsibility (HACR).

She is a member of the Board of Advisors of Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, the third busiest cancer center in the United States.  Previously, for 10 years, she co-chaired with her husband the annual fundraising event for the American Cancer Society (ACS) in Puerto Rico, and, in 2005, she was the recipient of the prestigious ACS “HOPE” national award.

Ms. Casiano studied Politics and Latin American Studies at Princeton University (B.A., magna cum laude, 1979) and obtained her Master’s in Business Administration (M.B.A.) from Harvard Business School in 1981.  She is married to Peruvian-born Juan F. Woodroffe, and the couple has two children.

Nora Casiano, Kimberly's mother, accepted the award oh her behalf.

Elizabeth Parker

Founder & President

Caribe Direct, Inc.

Elizabeth Parker was born and raised in Wisconsin.  She graduated from Smith College, in Northampton, MA in 1976 with a BA in Art History.  After graduation she relocated to Rome, Italy where she worked as an artist for 4 years before returning to the US to attend business school at Syracuse University.  She graduated with an MBA in International Business in 1981, and went to work for the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation in corporate finance in New York City. In 1986, she and husband Gerry Cumpiano moved to Puerto Rico, and Ms. Parker became a direct marketing consultant to Banco Popular, first designing, and then implementing the bank’s direct marketing department as a full-time employee beginning in 1988.  When Popular merged with Banco de Ponce, Ms. Parker became the director of telephone marketing and service for the new bank.  In 1992, she moved to the Bank and Trust of Puerto Rico where she was the director of marketing and the head of the nascent retail banking operation.

In 1994, Ms. Parker left BankTrust and started her own company, Caribe Direct.  Drawing on her experience in direct marketing and love of art, she started Puerto Rico’s first mail order catalog, Isla, selling food, music, books, movies, and of course art and crafts from Puerto Rico and the Hispanic Caribbean.  Isla is now in its 20th year, having an internet sales component since 1997!   Isla works with suppliers in the US and Puerto Rico, (authors, publishers, artists, musicians and designers as well as manufacturers) to offer items that represent the history and culture of Puerto Rico to individuals, schools, and libraries mainly in the United States, and to convention goers and destination wedding guests here in Puerto Rico. Ms. Parker has been recognized by the Puerto Rico Tourism Company for the promotion of the arts and crafts of Puerto Rico Both in the US and Internationally, and she has been recognized by the United States Postal Service with the Puerto Rico Automail Executive Excellence Award.                                                                                                                                                                                                

Ms. Parker is active in the AAUW (American Association of University Women), where she currently serves as co-president of the San Juan Branch and National Chairwoman for Social Media.  She is also the Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair for the Board of Trustees of Wayland Academy (her high school alma mater) and Marketing and Public Relations Director for the Rotary Club of San Juan.

The mother of two grown sons, she is an avid photographer and writes a travel blog, called JetsyTravels.com.

Myrna Rivera

Founder & CEO

Consultiva Internacional, Inc & Consultiva Securities, Inc

MYRNA M. RIVERA, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Is a 30 year veteran in the field of investment management consulting. A Certified Investment Management Analyst ("CIMA"), Ms. Rivera is a recognized pioneer in the industry, having contributed to developing standard investment management practices employed today for middle market endowments and foundations, pension funds, insurance companies, credit unions, Taft Hartley Benefit plans and individuals and families.

Ms.Rivera has received several recognitions for her leadership in financial services, including the John Ellis Excellence Award for her tenure in institutional investment consulting at Smith Barney and its predecessors, the Joyce Johnson Award of the National Association of Securities Professionals (www.nasphq.org), for her contribution to the advancement of women and minorities in financial services, and the Highest Leaf Award from the Women’s Venture Fund of New York, for entrepreneurial excellence. Ms. Rivera appears in the “Top 100 Influential Hispanics” of Hispanic Business Magazine (www.hispanicbusiness.com) and Wealth Management’s 2012 roster of Top 25 women-owned RIAs. She was awarded Consultant of the Year by Opal Financial Group’s Emerging Manager Summit’s in 2008 and 2009.

Ms.Rivera is Chairs the Lehman College Foundation of the City University of New York. She is a founding member of the Comisión de Ciudadanos al Rescate de Caimito, a community-based organization in SanJuan, and a board member of Pro-Arte Musical, which promotes the appreciation and enjoyment of classical music.

Ms.Rivera is an undergraduate of the University of Puerto Rico and a Masters Graduate from Lehman College of the City University of New York, both honors majors in Mathematics.