Hailing from Southern California, Nasim Vali has been Portfolio’s human resources director for nearly six years. Nasim oversees all aspects of the HR department, implementing strategies that align with our organizational goals and objectives, including development and implementation of compensation and benefits programs and policies, payroll, performance management and ensuring compliance with labor laws and regulations.
Although HR is no longer new to her, it was not the career direction she originally planned.
“My education and my background are more in marketing,” Nasim explains. However, after working many years in digital marketing for a startup company, she found herself wearing many hats, as is often the case in small organizations. “Because the company was so small, I was already doing most of their HR functions” when a full-time HR position fell into her lap. “The company had become more established and was ready to go a different direction with their marketing efforts. I decided to be open to this change and give HR a try. They supported me in getting the PHR certification necessary for my new role.”
At Portfolio, Nasim manages a team of individuals who are mostly based in Ohio. Besides responding quickly to questions associates may have and providing guidance to her team, her day-to-day responsibilities often include “coaching managers through complex employee relations matters, performing compensation analyses, HRIS maintenance, benefits administration and 401(k).” Nasim estimates that although each and every day varies a bit, about half of it is typically spent answering associate questions and processing updates in the payroll system. She works most closely with the accounting department “primarily because of payroll and reporting, but also for our annual benefit and insurance policy renewals.”
The strong communications and interpersonal skills Nasim exhibits help her to be successful in this demanding, high-profile role at Portfolio. The nature of her position requires her to deal with people across all levels of our organization and at all of our locations.
“I also get to work with our owned-agency leaders, serving as their HR service liaison.” Nasim enjoys the challenging work that she’s entrusted to perform and the people she works with at Portfolio. “I have a lot of respect for our leadership team. We have many people with strong business minds — people I look up to as mentors in many ways.”
One aspect of work at Portfolio that she is most proud of is how HR helped the company to adapt in a post-COVID world. “Pre-COVID, we were really traditional in many of our policies and practices. Since the pandemic, we’ve done a good job of becoming more flexible and more current with how businesses are operating today.” Another reason Nasim loves working at Portfolio, she adds, is because “Portfolio does a good job of taking care of its employees.”
Outside of life at Portfolio, Nasim likes to stay active by taking Pilates classes or going for hikes. She also gets great pleasure out of spending as much time as she can with what she dubs “her favorite humans” — her family members.
“I have a niece and a nephew that I absolutely adore,” Nasim gushes. She loves to travel as well but would love to do even more globetrotting — including exploring ancient ruins, immersing herself in each country’s rich history and, of course, enjoying their delicious cuisine — with her new husband. “I hope to start planning our honeymoon to Italy and Greece.”
Although Portfolio would miss such an invaluable cog in our wheel for a few weeks, we hope Nasim has a great time while traveling and we look forward to hearing about all of her adventures upon her return!
