Kristi Kaye Burma, executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Athene, has worked many jobs in her career, including one of her first – McDonald’s – at age 14. 

She said working hard from a young age influenced her leadership style, starting her first job weeding acres of soybeans by hand in her hometown of Spencer when she was 12, and then, McDonald’s. She went through Hamburger University, a training school for McDonald’s employees, and by the time she was 16 she was the manager, the job with which she put herself through college.

“They would send me to different stores to do different things,” Burma said. “And I think I’ve been asked to do jobs because people see me put in the work. And that’s [CEO] Grant [Kvalheim’s] mantra right now … you want to get promoted, put in the work so people watch you do it. I try [to] teach people the same thing, and I try [to] also recognize when somebody’s putting in the work too.”

Burma’s work is now getting recognized. She is the Business Record’s 2025 Dentons Human Resources Professional of the Year. The award, launched in 2020, is designed to highlight an outstanding HR professional from Central Iowa for their professional accomplishments and community engagement.

She received the award during the Business Record’s virtual Jobs Outlook panel on Oct. 15.

Burma, 61, has worked at Athene for 12 years. Before that, she was vice president of human resources at Aviva USA, which Athene acquired in 2013. She now oversees human resources strategy for the 10 Athene locations across the United States, Bermuda, Canada and Japan. 

She has also stepped into community leadership roles, both individually and through Athene. She currently serves on the board of Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity and United Way of Central Iowa.

Burma sat down recently with the Business Record to talk about leadership, family and finding value in making mistakes.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

I read that you’ve really thrived during times of transition, such as when Athene acquired Aviva. How do you help people navigate big changes like that? 

It was scary for me too. When it happened, I wasn’t a fan of it. And then I think I just woke up one day and went, ‘I could go somewhere else, or I could try and make this better,’ and just had this realization it was in my hands to try and make a difference. I also had a really good conversation with our CEO where I realized his desire was to become a better CEO. It was like we reached this platform where we could talk openly about, ‘Well, what do you want, and how do I help you get there?’ It was like a chess match, all these different things that I felt like I could do, because I knew where he wanted to go, I knew where I wanted to go, and it was meeting in the middle. 

There was a group of about 10 of us that really wanted to stay and really wanted to be better, so we basically said, there’s the old Athene, there’s the old Aviva, and there’s this new company. We have to bring this all together. We drew pictures of what it is we want to be. Maybe it’s not there today, but prospectively, what’s a goal we could aspire to? Some of the things we set out originally were aspirational, but it was like, ‘This is what we want to be, and that’s how we start talking about work.’ People started to believe, and change became a little less difficult. I had a lot of people in my office crying, my team crying. I used to cry a lot, and I had to tell them, ‘You just have to trust me, it’s going to be OK.’ 

So you navigated that change, and then was there another change. What was that?

They bought us in ’13, and then we went public a couple of years later. Being a public company was a big change again. I found my pictures last night when we went to ring the bell. I was the only female on the floor, with all those men. That’s not that way today, but it wasn’t easy initially, being the only woman. I’m generally a behind-the-scenes person. I don’t like to be in front. I generally don’t like to speak in public. But I’m not afraid to speak my mind either, so if somebody asks me, I’ll tell them my opinion. I just don’t like to be the person posting yourself out front.

A lot of people said you’re not a good company because you don’t have women with a seat at the table. But I have a seat at the table. And I’m trying to take care of it, and I’m trying to change our leadership. And it has changed over time, when we have more women in leadership positions. There’s now four of us in leadership positions, so it gets like 25%, so better than 5%.

I’d love to hear you talk about the importance of supporting other women and why that has become something you care about.

We ran a session called Power Up for a couple years. It was all about helping women grow, and helping women get over the imposter syndrome. We taught people about leaving loudly, because men will leave the office and not say a word, and women will go, ‘I’m going to get back online later. I’m going to do this later.’ Just say, ‘I’m going to leave now.’ It’s your right to leave. And when you have to take care of your work, you don’t have to explain to everybody when you’re going to take care of your work, just do it. We trust that you’ll do it. And for some reason, there’s research to say women don’t do that as much. They apologize more in meetings. They tend to take administrative duties more than men do, so we were trying to do this research and the training to break the pattern so that people would feel more confident and ready to take on future roles. Now we do coffee connections on a regular basis, where women learn from other women. Ask them any question you want, ask them about the greatest mistake they made, and that has gone over really well.

What’s the greatest mistake you’ve ever made?

I sent a payroll file to like 100 people in the company. And they didn’t fire me. I was a huge fan of my boss after he said, ‘Yep, that’s a huge mistake. That’s one of the biggest I’ve seen. Don’t do it again.’ And he just walked out of my office, and I was like, ‘You are a strong person.’ Because he didn’t take any action. He said that was a huge mistake. When people make mistakes, they come in and they apologize, and I’m like, ‘You’re your hardest critic, but I’m good. Thanks for telling me, move on quickly.’ I think some people need more permission to make mistakes. I’m a firm believer you learn as much from your good leaders as your bad leaders. You have to make a few mistakes to figure out what’s right, what’s wrong. It took me a long time to figure that out.

How did you resolve the mistake?

I personally apologized to everybody, and nobody said anything to me. It was a small company. I want to say it was like 75 people at the time, so everybody was very familial, and I think everybody just took it with a grain of salt and said, ‘You know what, we’re all for the same thing.’ So no harm, no foul. I know I got lucky.

Your nominator said that you place people at the center of your decisions. How do you do that?

It’s called people-centered leadership for a reason. I don’t think you can have a company without people. I always ask myself, ‘How would I feel if somebody did that to me? What’s the right thing to do?’ My boss used to say the Burma rule is do what’s great for the most people. 

You have a mantra of “Family first.” Can you tell me more about that?

I firmly believe your family is your lifeline. And I think we try and create a work family so that we can depend on each other when somebody’s going through rough times. I’ve been [at Aviva and Athene] 17 years, and I have seen a lot of really good and really bad things happen to my staff. But I think we can rely on each other, but we can also be there for each other, but when they have something go wrong, they know, go be where you need to be. That’s my answer all the time. This will be back here later, or we’ll pick it up, or we’ll figure out something, but I might need that sometimes too. I grew up in a different generation, where my dad taught me hard work. He was disciplined about work, work, work. I think the generation now is very different. I think it’s more supportive and more – get your work done, whenever you can, it doesn’t really matter. But if you need to go home, you need to go pick up your kids, I mean, those moments go by so fast. Your kids are gone so fast. You should be there at all their games. I didn’t get to make all my kids’ games, and I miss it. I just wish I would have, so you should go do that. I wish somebody had given me those things, because I was always worried sick about, ‘Do I leave, and I lose my job?’ and it’s such a different environment now. 

What is Athene’s approach to hybrid work?

We’re 4-1, so we are in the office four days a week and one day at home. People can pick whichever day they get from home, and then we just call it flexibility after that. Do we need to leave early for a doctor’s appointment and work from home? So be it. But I think that’s what we try to do is instead of having a 3-2, it’s better to say we’re 4-1 and use the flexibility as you need it. I also implemented flexible time off, so we don’t have paid time off balances either. You just take what you need. 

How’s that going?

I think it’s great. And your average employee, some people are nervous, some people don’t like it. I think most people that are comfortable in their skin absolutely love it. They’re not worried about it. I need to be gone three hours on Friday, still going to get my job done. What difference does it make? It also helps people, if I need to leave at 4 instead of 5, great do it. 

Who is your mentor? 

I have a lot of mentors, so my husband is one of my best friends and also my guide. He’s my tether in terms of helping me and guiding me and walking through things with me. But it’s weird, because my kids are my mentor, my direct reports, my boss is my mentor. I have a lot of people. I have a woman who used to work at Athene, who used to run the foundation, Karen Lynn. She’s taught me so much. There’s so many people. It’s men, women, all ages. I’m learning from my kids right now so much about how to work with this generation, so they’re reverse mentoring me, so to speak.

What are you learning about working with younger generations?

To appreciate different working styles. This generation doesn’t want to converse as much sometimes, and doesn’t want to be in the office. That’s probably my biggest struggle, is getting people to be in the office and learning the skills that you learn by watching and being with others and teaching them that it’s great that you have flexibility, but there’s a lot of other things you get from socialization, from watching, how much you learn from seeing others. It’s hard to see that on a camera. It’s really hard to see if you don’t turn your camera on. I keep telling people the same thing I’ll tell my kids: Show up, put in the work but also, you have to learn from other people.

How have you driven Athene’s philanthropic growth?

It’s our No. 1 employee satisfaction topic. It means a lot to them. If we’re going to do good, we need to be good. And I love that. It inspires people. Our volunteerism has significantly increased. The good thrives and drives more and it’s just a fun thing to watch. As we get to be a bigger company, it wasn’t necessarily all my greatness. None of this was just me. We are a much larger company now and our intention is to give accordingly. We should give more. We want to be different. You’ll notice that a lot of our gifts are different. For example, the Athene Pedestrian Bridge and Athene North Shore Recreation Area stand out as two gifts that demonstrate our commitment and passion.

That closely relates to our program hiring neurodiverse individuals [Athene@Work]. That’s such a rewarding program. You can see this. [One Athene@Work participant’s] mom never thought he’d ever have a job, ever. And not only does he have a job, he’s been promoted. These are just rewarding programs. Everybody, anybody who’s around these individuals, just loves what they’re doing because they love their jobs.

What job is this employee being promoted to?

He’s in quality assurance right now, but he’s going to go into another area. It’s like security access management, which is kind of difficult. But he happens to have a mind that works really well for the rote work that needs to be done in security access management. I’m just amazed. We have some pretty proud moms and dads out there too. It just breaks your heart to think that they thought their child would never work, and now they’re so successful.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Athene@Work employee has been promoted.