As a global HR business leader and champion of equity, Teedra Bernard embodies multi-dimensional success as a woman in business. After a few years along a nontraditional career route in pharmaceutical sales and retail operation, it was a position at an investment banking company that made Teedra fall in love with both HR and financial space. In 2019, she became a Technology Human Resource Business Partner at TransUnion, and in August of 2020, she became Transunion’s industry’s first-ever Chief Talent and Diversity Officer.
Beyond her current position, Teedra Bernard is an advocate for women’s financial literacy empowerment first and foremost. “The research shows that women not only have the majority of buying power but the majority of consumer influence,” Teedra explains. Given the power and influence women have in our markets, Teedra finds educating women on the power of credit crucial not only to making women self-sustaining but helping build entire communities, which is how her work as a diversity, equity, and inclusion officer ties into her credit education advocacy. “It is important for us to be able to have these conversations about finances and wealth, particularly to people who look like me,” Teedra Says.
“Credit changes lives. It breaks generational curses.” By educating women, particularly black women about credit, wellness, and habits, Teedra says “we have an opportunity to level the playing field here.”
Through her work at TransUnion, Teedra implements this into her day-to-day work through employee resource groups in which she and her women colleagues can speak openly about financial issues tailored to women. But Teedra’s top suggestion on credit education outside of the workplace is simply talking about it. “If we incorporate financial literacy conversations into our normal day-to-day conversations, we could make it a thing that we are always learning about together,” Teedra Explains. “I want to make financial literacy cool! This should just be something we’re always talking about, we should always know how our credit is calculated and what we can do to address credit mistakes.”
