If you run down Tashi Theisman’s résumé, you’re going to recognize a lot of names: PayPal, HP, Dell, BP, and Compaq. And as the current vice president of global benefits at Visa, she has considerable benefits experience when it comes to consumer-facing tech companies.
Since coming to Visa in 2023, Theisman has put that experience to work quickly. The VP’s ongoing projects highlight a benefits leader who knows the lay of the land and how to best drive innovation and evolution for a forward-looking, global organization.
COE and Broker Model Success
Theisman’s remit extends across continents, where she’s charged with aligning local nuances to a unified, worldwide strategy. The leader’s philosophy is grounded in listening closely to regional leaders and peers and demonstrating the tangible value of an aligned global framework and approach. Rather than imposing top-down mandates, she integrates cross-regional perspectives, highlighting exactly what is to be gained from this approach.
Drawing on similar transformations at her prior organizations, Theisman has successfully established a Global Benefits Center of Excellence (COE) that supports eighty-seven countries, and more than thirty-four thousand employees all over the world.
At work, Tashi Theisman is both a seasoned leader and innovator in the benefits space. At home, her creative side shines through in a favorite hobby: scrapbooking.
“I just love weaving the story together in a visual and sentimental way,” Theisman explains.
She recently celebrated her thirtieth wedding anniversary and is the proud mother of a University of Texas student, a daughter who, Theisman jokes, has overheard enough benefit meetings and conversations to know she may choose a different career path.
The VP has managed another milestone with kicking off the company’s rollout of a comprehensive global broker model. One of the main challenges of the project was that many often expect a global broker to deliver a miraculous fix, aligning disparate systems overnight.
But Theisman already knew that this is not the reality. What she has delivered has been driven by relationship-driven approaches and negotiating creative contracts that allowed Visa to enjoy both global consistency and local strengths, directing a major percentage of the company’s population and insured business through the broker while retaining flexibility for specific locations.
This flexible structure provides superior data consolidation, purchasing power, and leverage in negotiations, driving efficiency and enhanced benefits for employees. Theisman raised expectations of brokers, positioning them as true partners, responsible for end-to-end strategic benefits management, not just transactional renewals.
“It’s not just about getting commissions and doing renewals,” she says. “You’re a global partner as part of that brokerage. You’re an extension of our team driving our strategy and experience.”
Wellbeing with Purpose: Building Impactful Programs
Theisman was pioneering more expansive views of wellbeing programs long before “wellness” came to mean, well, just about anything. The leader is cautious of indiscriminately labeling every activity or engagement program as “wellbeing,” warning that dilution undermines impact.
It’s an important moment, the leader says, with five generations in the workplace who all have different needs and expectations from their benefits. The strategy requires a “complicated heat map”—balancing support for new families, mid-career professionals and those nearing retirement and doing this in an effective and sustainable way.
To navigate this complexity, her strategy is carefully curated: building tailored ecosystems of partners, defining clear boundaries between engagement and true wellbeing, and investing where programs genuinely make a lasting difference.
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That’s been especially important when it comes to financial wellbeing and education.
“Financial stress can impact every aspect of a person’s wellbeing,” the VP notes. “Empowering people with financial literacy—skills like budgeting, saving, and understanding their options and benefits offered—lays the foundation for healthier, happier lives.”
Theisman says that the benefits space got a little overzealous in its pursuit of point solutions and is more in favor of streamlining the employee experience, so support is accessible, holistic, and meaningful without overwhelming employees with choice fatigue.
“Tashi sets a clear course, and we’re privileged to help bring that strategy to life—aligning our technology, data, and service to her vision,” says Carey McKenzie, chief strategy officer at Businessolver. “Together with her team, we’re turning vision into action that elevates the employee experience.”
Adopting, Teaching, and Leading by AI Example
Theisman is a vocal proponent of the power of AI adoption. A self-described “high utilizer” in her own right, the leader is looking for new ways to weave AI into the benefit function’s DNA. She’s participated in hands-on prompting sessions with Microsoft where attendees built an in-house benefit agent prototype. The digital tool does more than answer routine questions. It can help employees understand the interdependence across multiple benefits the company offers, the competitiveness of their benefits, create personalized suggestions, and help employees wade through various options. All of this is in service of helping employees get answers to questions they did not know to ask.
For the leader, AI adoption is a team journey, not just her individual mandate. Her team is working to embed it into their daily experience with monthly learning cadences, friendly challenges to build skills and informal incorporation of AI demos during one-on-ones.
“We use AI in real-time to augment our learning, conversations, our strategy, and our thinking,” Theisman explains.
Theisman has been at Visa for almost three years, and she sees tremendous opportunity to continue to optimize and innovate for the betterment of the global workforce. Her vision is simple: benefits should reflect the same commitment to innovation and inclusion that defines Visa’s role in powering economies everywhere.
Businessolver partners with businesses to transform their benefits administration and engagement. Our market-leading technology delivers empathetic service by anticipating and responding to our clients’ needs—and helping them prepare for the future of work, HR, and benefits. We help our clients develop and administer modern benefits programs designed to engage employees, drive better wellbeing outcomes, minimize risk, and maximize healthcare and benefits investment. Founded by HR professionals, Businessolver’s unwavering service-oriented culture and secure SaaS platform provide measurable success in its mission to provide complete client delight.
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