On October 7, 1999, Josnelly Aponte started a minimum wage job as an accounts payable assistant at an electric company in Margarita Island. Little did she know that it would mark the beginning of an incredible career within the energy industry, which would include moving to the US from her home country, Venezuela, a few years later.
Celebrating her 25th work anniversary at CMS Energy on LinkedIn today, Aponte expressed her gratitude for the countless blessings she has experienced along this journey.
She also thanked all the amazing people who made this milestone possible.
Recently, Women of Color magazine’s Women’s History Month edition featured Aponte in the “She Thrives” department. Excerpts are below.
Josnelly Aponte was honored with the Women of Color FinTech Leadership Award for her outstanding contributions to the development of financial technology products, devices, or processes.
Aponte’s nomination for this prestigious award was supported by the Minority Advisory Panel, an employee resource group at Consumers Energy dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion among minorities through education, development, and networking.
Aponte has demonstrated strong leadership in various instances, largely due to her groundwork.
In the interview with Women of Color magazine, she mentioned the increased prevalence of metadata in the utility industry, emphasizing the use of data to understand customer energy usage within the state of Michigan, which serves 1.8 million customers.
Aponte, an early analytics adopter, was the sole electric and gas regulatory proceedings expert to complete a CE program. This new knowledge enabled her to involve others in making a more significant impact on customer savings, reducing inefficiencies, and providing equitable information to the Michigan Public Service Commission.
Reflecting on her parents’ emphasis on lifelong learning, Aponte highlighted the importance of continuous improvement.
She noted her father’s influence as an accountant and her own artistic inclination, which led her to learn to love her trade.
Both her parents, who grew up in poverty, pursued higher education later in life for financial security. Aponte’s father stressed the value of learning a second language, swimming, and acquiring skills that would be beneficial in life.
Her father lived long enough to witness her success. In 2006, Aponte was transferred from a CMS Energy affiliate to Michigan due to her accounting expertise and multilingual abilities.
By 2010, while adjusting to life in the U.S., she dedicated time to volunteer as a board member at the Junior Welfare League, where she spearheaded funding for educational and social programs benefiting thousands of individuals.
Currently, she serves as the chief administrative officer of the Jackson Preparatory & Early College Board of Governors and is a member of the Jackson Community Foundation Financial Committee.
Aponte shared that volunteering looked different growing up in Latin American countries due to prevalent poverty, where helping neighbors was a common practice.
She also reflected on the challenges of preserving traditions while raising children, particularly as her daughter recently graduated from high school and obtained an associate degree simultaneously. Her daughter was born in Venezuela and moved to the U.S. at the age of 2.
Initially, Aponte found corporate America overwhelming. The problems became more complex as she gained influence.
Her most daunting challenges were office politics, building work relationships, and navigating the hidden rules of her new workplace.
“There’s a lot of good and bad memories,” Aponte said of her early days as a transplant from Venezuela.
A 2022 McKinsey Women in the Workplace report, conducted in partnership with LeanIn.Org, surveyed more than 40,000 employees and conducted interviews with women of diverse identities—including women of color—to get an intersectional look at biases and barriers.
According to the report, Latinas and Asian women are more likely than women of other races and ethnicities to have colleagues comment on their culture or nationality.
“Sometimes it’s very subtle,” Aponte remarked. “I have found myself thinking after an interaction, wow, that wasn’t nice. But it comes with disbelief that people can cross that line,” she said, adding that cultural stereotypes she has had to deal with are of Latin women being passionate and intense.
“There have also been situations where if I bring a message to the table as a confident woman in what I’m sharing, it’s very evident that I have been dismissed because I bring that passion.”
Her advice to new graduates is to persevere. “Even when people ignore you or give others credit for your point of view, eventually, I could prove my point with data,” she said. “That was a journey I had to live through. It took a while for people to buy into robots and automation, I didn’t give up.”
Speaking to her younger self, she said relationships are the most important thing people can develop. “You get to know people, and people get to know you. As immigrants, we come in and work, work, work. Then we feel isolated. It’s easy to get into that mode and not focus on what’s most important, and that is relationships.”
Aponte also said it is important to trust yourself. “Sometimes we doubt ourselves, but if we know in our gut, heart, and mind what is the right thing to do, then go for it.”
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