PBN 2026 C-Suite Awards
ENTERPRISE PRIVATE COMPANY (More than 500 employees):
Kimberly Hayes
FM head of global technology enablement services
Kimberly Hayes, the head of global technology enablement services at FM, is at the forefront of innovation, identifying new technology and adopting it into scalable solutions. Beyond her efforts as a leader in growing and making businesses more efficient, Hayes is also known among her peers and colleagues for building highly collaborative relationships.
“People want to be a part of the work that she is involved with, not because of a title or because she’s asking them to be but because they truly enjoy working with her,” said Michelle Pope, a longtime collaborator with whom Hayes spearheaded Pope-Hayes Consulting.
Their firm focused on helping clients with their strategy, organization, operations, technology, analytics, mergers and acquisitions, and sustainability across industries.
“She goes into a room with an idea, socializes that idea, listens actively to people’s input and comes out with something better,” Pope said. “And as a result of that, people really feel bought-in to where they’re going from that conversation.”
At FM, bringing increased financial transparency and streamlined, cutting-edge processes to internal operations has been a priority for Hayes. The company has experienced significant growth in the past three years, almost doubling its gross revenue for the first half of the year, according to figures reviewed by Providence Business News. Headquartered in Johnston, FM is a leader with global reach in the mutual insurance industry specializing in loss-prevention services for large companies.
Hayes has instituted culture changes to a total-cost-of-ownership approach, as well as established a cloud financial operations, or FinOps, framework.
The total-cost-of-ownership model is a financial framework used to estimate the cost of an asset or system throughout its entire life cycle, factoring in the costs of maintenance, training, development and disposal.
FinOps is a model by which data and other informational tools are consolidated to maximize value from cloud services. By consolidating information, organizations can expedite data-driven decision-making and promote financial accountability across departments.
“I came into the organization building out a function and capability that didn’t exist before,” Hayes said of her use of cloud services and culture changes to financial cooperation and transparency. “We have actually helped bring forth some key strategies and initiatives for our organization to help evolve.”
One of Hayes’ forthcoming endeavors in continuing to modernize FM’s systems is establishing identity and access management capabilities for the organization. IAM is a cybersecurity practice that prioritizes access to resources, systems and data to the right individuals in situations that match need, authorization and circumstance. Part of that is achieved through safe and secure authentication and authorization policies.
“What is really impressive to me in doing these things is that I operate in a very lean team,” Hayes said. “I don’t have a lot of overhead making all these things happen together. So, I’m very fortunate with the team that I’m a part of to be able to bring forward those capabilities and in helping our organization achieve our objectives that we set out year over year.”
Diversity, equity and inclusion are also key areas where Hayes hopes to leave a mark. As a bisexual woman, she says that being allowed to embrace her identity in the workplace and in her community has helped her become a better leader.
“As I have navigated this latter half of my career, I really have stepped into what I see as my authentic self, really leading with my full transparency as a person and human being,” Hayes said.
Hayes noted that her identity as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community was something she had kept private during portions of her career.
“When you can marry both that personal side to your professional side, I think you’re really living in your truest form,” Hayes said.
Part of sharing that story included her chapter in the book “Born to Rise: How 22 Extraordinary Women Rewrote Their Stories, Claimed Their Power, and Followed Their Dreams.” The book is a Wall Street Journal bestseller.
“I was very privileged to be able to take that journey and continue to utilize that journey in business,” Hayes said.
