In this episode of Second Chances with Christy Belz, today we have Karon Harris-Hicks, a beacon of female empowerment and the first woman to chair the board of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City. Discover how her “posse” of lifelong friends and her dedication to education, particularly during the overlap of her marriage and career years, have shaped her into the remarkable woman she is today.
Join us as she unveils the rich tapestry of her life—from the motherly encouragement that fostered her resilience, to the pivotal teenage years, and through the intricate balance of marriage, motherhood, and a demanding career. This narrative isn’t just Karon’s—it’s a testament to the role of mentorship and the unbreakable bond of female camaraderie in personal and professional growth.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
- Karon Hick’s ascent to become the first female chairman of the board for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City.
- The strategies Karon used to foster inclusive leadership and the importance of increasing female representation in executive roles.
- Insights into creating environments where more women can ascend to leadership positions.
- Valuing of strong female networks in both personal and professional spheres.
- The challenges and achievements associated with women’s advancement in traditionally male-dominated roles.
Visit Karon Harris-Hick’s social media pages:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karon.h.hicks/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/karon-hicks-94080a13
Learn more about Christy Belz Social Communications:
Website: https://christybelz.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristyBelzCoach/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christybelzcoach/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christybelz
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Christy: Hi and welcome to Second Chances with Christy Belz’s podcast. I’m your host, Christy Belz. Enjoy our array of talented, open-hearted guests and their thoughtfully curated stories of second chances, life-changing choices, and new perspectives. We are here to empower you on second chances in your life.
00:00:38 Christy: So welcome, Karon Harris-Hicks, to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here.
00:00:43 Karon: I’m glad to be here.
00:00:46 Christy: So I always love it when my guests come on to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with my audience, our audience. And I really want you to not only share personally who you are, this beautiful being, but I really want you to share your professional journey because you are one remarkable woman and an example for so many of us.
00:01:07 Karon: Thank you. That’s very kind of you. Well, it forced me to kind of sit down and say, what parts of my life have I been through and what has it done? And strangely enough, I realized that empowerment started when I was a child. My mother empowered me. She nurtured me and my sister and our friends. And she continually encouraged us to do things, to step outside the box, to be what we wanted to be. And her favorite saying was she said, “Keep your friends, they will be more important as you move forward,” and that is so, so true.
00:01:41 Karon: The second part of my life, I call the teen years, and as I moved into the teen years, I loved school, loved it, particularly the social part. During this time though, I ran into kind of a sticky wicket, and as I would call it, I noticed that there were two groups of people, two that were really serious about education and what they wanted to do. And then another group that were not so interested in stuff like that. Now that group was fun, fun, fun. Had the cutest boys, you know, but they would smoke cigarettes. They would do, you know, a few things that, you know, we’re questioning back then wouldn’t be a problem now.
00:02:19 Karon: But anyway, I, there was another group of people that also sought me out. And this one seemed to be the perfect set of people that were good, good people. They were fun as well. And I decided that that was the group I wanted to go with. And so the moves in my life was to a path that a woman would follow me for the rest of my life. And I thought it was very important that I choose carefully. And I did, and I think this is one of the pivotal parts in my life in the teen years, when I chose the road less traveled, I guess you could say.
00:02:56 Karon: That third part is the married years, and they kind of interlock with the marriage years and the career years. But while there is this overlap between them, the marriage and career, my network of friends became my posse. I’m kind of using the vernacular of the day. We didn’t call ourselves that, but we do now. It’s for today we do. Even when we were busy with raising kids and trying to make our marriages work, others were more successful than others. But we had a very close relationship. We didn’t just talk to each other every year or something like that. When we could, we would be together and we would, you know, talk about the problems that we have and trying to raise our kids and we shared things and stuff.
00:03:45 Karon: And then when the kids were older, though, then we started having one trip a year, at least had some others in the meantime, but one at least where we would go someplace that we could contemplate what was happening. Christy would lead us through these wonderful empowerment issues. And she as she grew, we grew. And so that was a wonderful part, too.
00:04:06 Christy: I want to stop you real quick here, because the thing I think is so beautiful about this posse, right, and this is a group of women that I’ve been blessed to have in my life for the last 40 plus years. You guys grew up together in a very small town in Kansas, and you went to kindergarten together.
00:04:21 Karon: Absolutely.
00:04:23 Christy: And this is the posse that still today, right, comes together. We’ve lost some of them and they’ve passed on, but this is so remarkable to me that a small, a group of small town girls from kindergarten on have stayed together well into their 80s now and continue to connect and love one another and support one another and be there for one another. Just, I love that. I just want to clarify for the audience how strong and significant posse is.
00:04:50 Karon: It is. The career years, though, to me were so, I was so excited. It was a whirlwind. I wanted had so many options and I was delighted with the help of mentors. And my posse again, we thought we were making a difference through our jobs, community or just taking on changes and challenges. I worked my way at the corporate ladder. I was so thrilled to be part of this, to meet so many wonderful women who helped me along the way.
00:05:19 Karon: And guess what? The posse was always there as well. I was going through my MBA and I was really involved in what I was doing at work. But we always made time and the posse made sure that I came out and I had some fun as well. Because sometimes that fun would last into the evening and I would have to do double duty in order to to do the work and stuff. But it was worth it to be with them and have them stand behind us.
00:05:49 Christy: Just quickly on that, for me, when Karon was working her way up the corporate ladder, and she decided to go on to get a graduate degree, I was so impressed and so in awe that you were able to do that with everything you were carrying in your work life. But that education component was really significant and important to you. And I have to tell you that you were part of the inspiration for me to go on and get my graduate degree. So yeah.
00:06:17 Christy: Yeah, as I said, I was just talking to Sue Kenny, my last podcast, Sue was my boss at Project Wise, you know, the power of education for women is one of the most significant things that we can do and support one another in is getting your education and doing that. So thank you for your mentorship in that.
00:06:38 Karon: Let’s see, we’ve covered childhood, we’ve covered teens, married in their career have kind of gotten together. And so I’ve reached I’ve been retired now. I served on the board as chairman of the board. Wait, wait, wait. Chairman of the board.
00:06:50 Christy: Wait, wait, you can’t pass that over.
00:06:55 Karon: So it’s a biggie in my in my terms. When I was eligible for retirement, I was thinking contemplating it would be an early one but I was contemplating doing it. And then they asked if I would be on the board. And that was such an honor for me to these people that I had worked with in management. Now I was going to be part of them. But it gave me such a unique idea of both places. Why it’s necessary for management and it’s necessary for the board to oversee that. And there is a purpose there. I probably went into thinking, you know, oh, this can’t this can’t be true. I mean, there can’t be that much to do being for management. We thought we had all this.
00:07:36 Karon: But actually, then what it really does is when you bring that the perspective, she’s keeping me from moving my hands. And so I realized the need for both the board and the management, and it was wonderful to watch it occur.
00:07:50 Christy: So why do you think those two things are important, right? Because you had all the senior leadership experience, and then you were asked to be on the board, right? And as a board member and not as part of the management team, make that distinction, how did you?
00:08:06 Karon: Well, you hire your management people and their work and their job is pretty much laid out, you know, like it is. You bring in your board, and that’s why sometimes you see so many different kinds of ideas. You bring them to come from a different strata of where you’re supposed to be. They are going to talk about things, think about things that you as a manager can’t do that, don’t have the time to do that, isn’t it under the job description what it is?
00:08:32 Karon: But it’s necessary because if you only did one or the other, you wouldn’t make it and having exactly what really happened. But anyway, we get to the point now where I call it the end of lying years. It’s kind of morbid.
00:08:50 Christy: Wait, we’re not done talking about your board service. So you were the first female woman board chair of Blue Cross Blue Shield of… Kansas City.
00:09:02 Karon: That’s correct.
00:09:03 Christy: We call that breaking the glass ceiling. Well, then I do hope that that, I know that that helped and yeah, it was.
00:09:11 Karon: Have there been any other female board members or leaders after you?
00:09:15 Christy: No, now there are, now there’s lots of vibrant, wonderful women involved, but it wasn’t always like that. But first I had to break the ceiling by breaking it, by becoming an officer of the company. They didn’t allow women to reach that. Then I did. Then to go on the, to become an executive vice president and a chief of staff, and then going into becoming a board member. And I think it was probably unusual and new for them to have a woman board member.
00:09:47 Karon: And their concern was, you know, well, that’s always going to be the management philosophy. But that isn’t the way I approached my job. And that isn’t the way it turned it out. And many of them came to me and said, we had that fear. But now you have broke in the ceiling and we know women have so much to offer in that leadership position.
00:10:05 Christy: Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. I love that.
00:10:08 Karon: It was.
00:10:10 Christy: Congratulations. And last thing, I keep–
00:10:12 Karon: I don’t know, I’m just–
00:10:13 Christy: Like keep it jumping in here, but that was a paid board position, correct?
00:10:18 Karon: Absolutely.
00:10:19 Christy: So this is really significant in women’s empowerment, women’s development, right? Because women do not get paid board positions the way men do in our society.
00:10:26 Karon: That’s true.
00:10:28 Christy: So at some, when we come, I want to talk, I want you to talk about how do we do that? How do we make that happen for more women?
00:10:35 Karon: Well, one of the things that I was able to do is, I guess, maybe if you’re able to look at their qualifications, look at what they’re all about, forget what they are versus a man or a woman. And we’ve got that. But you’re right, we haven’t gotten to the end where we need to have total equality there. But we had women on the board, so I had some support there, a lot of support actually. And then there has been a woman CEO since me, there’s been a chairman of the board, a female. And so they’re taking baby steps, but they’re making a lot of changes. So…
00:11:16 Christy: What do you think it was about you that allowed you to, we talked about that you didn’t take on the board position as a manager, that’s not who you were, but like, what do you think it was? What was your skill set or your gift that allowed you to go to that place of chairing the board that had never been chaired by and what year was that so we can put it in context?
00:11:37 Karon: Oh my gosh, I’m not even sure I can tell you. I was on the board until about three years ago and prior to that I was chairman for two years and then they had the rotation system so… I don’t know, maybe it was thinking that I could give something because I had been in management to the board so that you can connect those two dots and nobody else could do that or know at the time to do that. And if you’re gonna solve a problem, if you’re gonna oversee a company, if you’re gonna do all sorts of things, you need as much input as you can get.
00:12:16 Karon: And that input doesn’t, it needs to come down to what is real and it’s not the things like, you know, I… coming up that ladder, it’s kind of interesting. You run into some people that are your peers now, but some have not accepted as your peers. And so I think I showed in the management part that I could take, we had strategic business units and I took the one none of the boys wanted, but mine became the most successful because of the people that I put with it.
00:12:45 Karon: So kind of, I think a lot of that innuendo things are not happening so much right now, but it kind of was part of it. An example would be we were challenged with some sort of a proposal. And so my team, we did the research with the background, we put it in slides and we did all that. And one of the when the president was saying, well, this is great, this is what I’m looking for. And one of the male members said, oh, I didn’t know you wanted fluff. So that was like just a, you had to deal with things like that. But..
00:13:25 Christy: But you always do diplomatically. It’s something else I love about you is you’re just very diplomatic. You don’t get triggered very easily. Not that you don’t, but you handle that extremely well.
00:13:37 Karon: And that was, that’s kind of an important, Because what you, what you, what you keep your eye on the ball, what you want is to do the best thing you can for this company to make it successful. So… And I love the corporate world. I absolutely do. It’s…
00:13:50 Christy: Yeah. Well, they were lucky to have you. All right. We need to take a break here. So let’s just cut to break, and we’ll be right back.
00:14:00 Christy: This is your host, Christy Bellz. Many of the people you meet on my podcast have participated in my online curriculum called Uproot. This 15-week course takes you through my transformational process of understanding our roots, reviewing our path, and collecting the tools for life’s success. I would love to help you on your journey. Learn more about the Uproot course, take my quiz, and explore my transformational retreats at christybelz.com/uproot.
00:14:37 Christy: All right, welcome back. I’m so excited to continue this conversation with my dear friend Karon Harris-Hicks. All right, Karon, we’ve heard so much about your fabulous story and how you just have done such remarkable things in your life professionally and your band of women that I happen to be a part of that I absolutely love. I always like to give my guests some nuggets from the wise women, the sage women that have been in my life. And I’m just curious.
00:15:07 Christy: You know, my book is called Oh God of Second Chances, Here I Am Again. We all have second chances. So when you give us some nuggets, I also want you to talk maybe about some second chances that you had in your life that in hindsight, you recognize that maybe at the time you didn’t quite realize that they were opportunities.
00:15:29 Karon: Well, and I think the women that I met along the way and the women that had different ideas and things like that and that I sought out and that hopefully sought me. So that was… as you’re talking in your career, so that would be something that you don’t always discuss. But I suppose that was, I was lucky to find the women I found that were supportive of me. I was lucky to have a family that was behind me. I was lucky to work the long hours to do the work, do the job because it felt right.
00:15:59 Karon: And most of probably my… if I look on the past, most of the things I did by, did it feel right? Did it feel right to hang with this particular group of people? Did it feel right to go this direction versus that? So I’ve used a lot of instinct, but it’s definitely instinct plus the input from some absolutely fabulous women. And I, we’re at the point now, I call my last part of this, the end of the years, in the end of the line years, but you would say now there’s nothing to do, right? But no, I need my posse, I need my friends, I need my mentors more than ever.
00:16:37 Karon: We still explore many things that we are passionate about, that we, women and the posse has helped me all along. And it has been interesting and heartwarming to do this with Christy at the lead. Christy, when she was 19, had a long way to go and we mentored her but it wasn’t long before we realized she’s mentoring us, you know, and it was such a smooth transition. So, and I will always thank Christy for what she has done and never forgetting the Sage moms.
00:17:12 Christy: How could I? Yeah. So I want to tell a story about us that when the ladies turned 65, I brought them up to my mountain house and I put together a week long retreat for them. And it was hilarious. It was a cowgirl theme. And I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard in my life as we are spending time together. We had hats and all sorts of shenanigans. And can I tell the Can Can Girl story?
00:17:40 Karon: Sure, why not?
00:17:41 Christy: Oh my gosh. So I went to the, it was their actual birthday celebration day and I was taking the lead on dinner and entertainment. And so I had gone to the store, I was completely stressed out. I was like… it was too much going on. I went to the store, got the groceries, and I came back with the cake and the food and all of that. And I walk into my house and these ladies are dressed with their underwear and bras on the outside of their clothes. And they’re in a semi-circle doing the can-can. And I’m like, oh my gosh. And there was a sign that we’d gotten that weekend that said, pull up your big grill panties and deal with it.
00:18:17 Karon: That’s a thing. Right, yeah. There was never any of our retreats where they were. We didn’t laugh as much as we cried or as much as so. And we’ve, you know, the posse’s minusing about three people now. And I have to say, I miss them. But I think we will always keep them in our hearts. And the effect that it had on our, on our lives was tremendous. So…
00:18:40 Christy: Yeah. It’s a very, very special group of women and they just feel incredibly blessed to have you in my life. And that is gonna be on and the other women that we just continue to.
00:18:52 Karon: My younger sister will be on and she’s a delightful.
00:18:54 Christy: She is delightful.
00:18:55 Karon: A delightful person.
00:18:56 Christy: Yeah, so, all right. Any last piece or nugget that you, based on your wisdom, that you would wanna share with our listeners?
00:19:04 Karon: I don’t know. I can’t think of any particular one. We might have to, you know, I could come up one, but I can’t come up with it now. There were lots of them. They were all over the place.
00:19:12 Christy: They were all over the place.
00:19:14 Karon: And there was, yeah, there was the… on the story about when we first met, you didn’t really like me a lot.
00:19:24 Christy: That is not true.
00:19:25 Karon: You were suspicious of me. You were my sister’s friend. And she demonstrated that one day out around the pool, somebody’s giving a story and she’s looking at me and she said, and what’s her name over there? What’s her name? After all these years, what’s her name? Thank you, Christy.
00:19:43 Christy: Okay. The other side of the story is that Karon intimidated me and I was so in awe of her that I literally would get nervous and could not get her name at the moment. So I did call her what’s her name and she’s never let me live it down.
00:19:56 Karon: Nor will I ever. But there’s something: there’s three of us that just turned 80 this year. It’s kind of hard on us. But the rest of the posse, they did a magnificent job as making it making us feel wonderful. They gave us presence every day. They did all the work, the arrangements for the things we were doing. And I think we’re going to like to do that every year.
00:20:15 Christy: Oh, yeah. Well, I think we can arrange that. Oh, my gosh. Love you. Love you so much. Thank you for being vulnerable and being with me on this podcast. Your story is going to be impactful for a lot of listeners that are listening to me because you are an empowered woman. You are an incredibly empowered woman. And I love to get to share you with my audience. Thank you. I love you.
00:20:39 Karon: Bye bye.
00:20:44 Christy: It is the joy of my life to showcase the voices of people and the messy details of life’s journey. As you have experienced, my guests are thriving with purpose and style, but that does not mean that their life is easy and without challenges. I’ve dedicated my life to you and your journey. Thank you for listening to Second Chances with Christy Belz. Please subscribe and learn more at christybelz.com/Second Chances.