One thing aspiring businesswomen could take from this year’s Hartford Business Journal’s Women In Business honorees is that a degree in accounting can take you places.
Kathy Bromage, senior vice president of e-business at Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. The Hartford, is yet another example of that fact.
“It’s been a long and winding journey,” Bromage said. “My career really got off to a good start because of my accounting background, but I’ve made it my business to find other roles and other businesses.”
And even though Bromage hasn’t done any accounting in a long time, she describes it as “a good fundamental” and judging by her current role at The Hartford, businesses take accounting experience very seriously when they’re looking to fill important positions.
It was less than a year ago that The Hartford decided it would make itself a leader, “best-in-class” in digital commerce.
And it put Bromage, who has been with the insurance giant since 2004, in charge of it.
As Bromage explains it, the effort to become a digital leader brings The Hartford closer to its customers and potential customers.
“It’s accelerating our capabilities,” she said. As consumers, “it changes the way we research products and buy products. It’s changing who has the power in the conversation.”
Her coworkers put it a slightly different way.
“Kathy just makes things happen,” said Michelle Loxton, a marketing and communications executive at The Hartford. “She often sees what others don’t and no matter what project she’s leading, her vision and accessible approach always inspire great performance from her team. She makes everyone around her want to work harder and better.”
Bromage’s experience and solid accounting background put her in a good position to put all that together.
It’s perhaps not surprising that Bromage is a runner. In their professional lives, runners are always looking for the next challenge, always looking to set a new “personal best.”
Early in her career, Bromage did a lot of running, and then fell out of it for awhile. Then, running half the Hartford Marathon last October got her back into it.
“It got me addicted again,” she said.
She points, too, to parallels between business and running.
“There’s something amazing about everybody having the same goal,” Bromage said. “I was (at the starting line of the half marathon) with 4,600 other people, and you’re all there trying to accomplish the same thing.”
The challenge, the 53-year-old West Granby resident says, comes with trying to fit training into a busy, demanding schedule,
“It’s usually at the end of the day. It’s a good thing to do to get into the relaxing part of the day,” she said. Apparently, she found the time: She finished the half marathon in a very respectable 1 hour, 57 minutes.
That’s the kind of drive, dedication and commitment that exemplifies many of Central Connecticut’s women in business. And Bromage said all of those characteristics have finally led to a more inclusive network of women than existed when she was beginning her career.
“Women today are far more supportive of each other than they were years ago. It is totally different today than it was 30 years ago,” she said.
“Years ago, in the companies I worked in, if there were women in the executive boardroom, there was one. Women’s networks were unheard of 30 years ago.”
Today, women get the kind of support they could only have dreamed of a generation ago.
“It’s not cajoling, but very much pushing women to get the skills they need to develop, to learn, how to present themselves so they get noticed,” Bromage said. “That just didn’t exist.”
If an accounting degree can take you places, the importance of giving back to the community is a commitment Bromage personifies.
Bromage is a board member of three nonprofits, including the Boys and Girls Club of Hartford, where she has served for more than 18 years. She is also past chair of the club’s board and is currently working on its “Smart Girls Program,” an initiative aimed at helping girls lead confident, healthy lifestyles.
She also has served on the board of the YMCA of Metro Hartford for more than eight years, where she heads the personnel committee and recently completed the search for the organization’s new CEO. More recently, she has also taken a board position with the Aurora Foundation for Women and Girls.
And it’s not just women themselves who are doing a better job of supporting each other as professionals. Businesses do much better today at supporting women, even though women are still underrepresented in the boardroom, said Bromage, who serves on the executive committee of The Hartford’s Professional Women’s Network.
What professional women, who today are often caregivers to both children and aging parents, need are “onramps to the workforce,” Bromage said.
And many companies are providing them.
“They’re doing a better job staying connected with talented women through flexible schedules and alternate career paths,” she said. By not doing those things, businesses “are losing out on the opportunity to tap into a vast talent pool.”
Name: Kathleen Bromage
Occupation: Senior vice president of e-business, Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.
Location of business: Hartford
You should know: Ran half of last year’s Hartford Marathon. Active or former volunteer in various nonprofits, including Boys and Girls Club of Hartford, YMCA of Metro Hartford, The Hartford’s Professional Women’s Network, and Aurora Foundation.
Favorite spot for coffee: “My kitchen has floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Salmon Brook. There is no better place. Unfortunately, I mostly am getting coffee in the morning in my car.”
