How I accidentally started a career I ended up loving
By Anne Glorioso, CEO, Solidarity Health Network
Let me set the scene for you.
It’s 1995. I just graduated from Kent State University. I have a degree, a diploma, and absolutely zero idea what I want to do with my life. So I did what any reasonable, newly minted college graduate does in that situation.
I chilled.
Genuinely. I enjoyed my summer. I had no urgency, no plan, and no apologies about either. I was twenty-something and the world could wait.
Then my father called.
His office manager at Solidarity Health Network — the company he founded in 1989 with AFL-CIO labor leaders — needed to take a medical leave. He needed someone to come in and help. I was available. Extremely available. So I said sure, fine, why not, and showed up.
What happened next was not something I saw coming.
He enrolled me in insurance school.
The Back Row. The Crossword Puzzles. The Clock.
I want to be very clear about my level of enthusiasm at this point: it was zero.
I sat in the back row. I did crossword puzzles — and hid them inside my insurance book – because at least I had the decorum to be discreet about it. I stared at the clock the way you stare at a clock when every minute feels like a personal insult. This was temporary. This was a favor. This was absolutely not my future.
Then it was time to take the licensing exam.
I barely studied. I had no particular motivation to ace a test for a career I wasn’t planning to have. I sat down, I took the test, and —
I passed.
Not because I had studied hard. Not because I was especially prepared. But because thirty years of sitting at a dinner table while my father talked about insurance had apparently sunk into my brain whether I wanted it to or not. Turns out you can absorb quite a bit of information through pure, involuntary exposure.
Thanks, Dad. I mean that sincerely.
The Job That Changed Everything
So now I had a license. And a job. And still no plan.
My career officially began when I was asked to go out and educate dislocated workers — people who were being laid off and needed to understand their healthcare options. I walked into those first sessions thinking I was there to help people enroll in coverage.
What I found was something else entirely.
Person after person sat across from me — scared, overwhelmed, and completely in the dark about what they were entitled to. These weren’t people who had made bad decisions. They were workers who had shown up, done their jobs, and were now losing their health coverage and didn’t know what came next or what their rights were.
I realized something sitting in that room that I have never forgotten: I wasn’t there to sell anything. I was there to educate. Those are completely different jobs, and confusing them is how people get hurt.
I went back to my office that night and threw out everything I had. I researched every law, every protection, every right that a dislocated worker was entitled to. And then I did something that apparently was unusual at the time — I educated them on all their options in all of my meetings and cited the actual regulations, right on the information packet I handed to each person. Chapter and verse. Because if someone is scared and confused, the least you can do is show them ALL their options and then the rule in writing and say: this is what you’re owed. This is yours. It’s right here.
I wasn’t there to sell anything. I was there to educate. Those are completely different jobs, and confusing them is how people get hurt.
The Part Nobody Tells You About Honesty
That first year, I didn’t enroll many people into health plans. Because for a lot of them, enrolling in their spouse’s employer plan or COBRA was actually the better deal — and I told them so. Every time.
What I didn’t expect was what came next. The people I never enrolled — the ones I sent away with better options and better information than they arrived with — started referring me to everyone they knew. They trusted me precisely because I hadn’t tried to sell them something. I was always looking out for their best interests.
One of those referrals eventually landed me my first large client. A major labor organization that had been talked to by every “expert” in the region. Everyone else told them what they wanted to hear — big promises, smooth presentations, commitments that sounded great until they didn’t hold up. We told them the truth. We told them what we could do, what it would cost, and what they could realistically expect.
They chose us.
We have had that client for over 23 years. The relationship has only grown.
Funny how honesty works out.
Thirty Years Later
It’s now 2026 and my dad, Tony Mangoni, still comes into the office several mornings a week. His photo hangs in the front lobby — and it always will. When it was first hung, enough people asked what happened to him that he eventually walked over and added his own sticky note directly to the frame.
It says: “Still kickin’.”
That’s my dad. That’s SHN. It was his compassion, his idea, and his grit to do what was right that started all of this. Everything we’ve built — every client we’ve kept, every retiree we’ve helped, every dislocated worker who left our office with answers instead of confusion — started with him believing that working people deserved better.
The sticky note stays too.
My son Virgil graduated from Kent State University in 2023 and is now our Director of Social Media and Marketing. My husband Bob — retired Cleveland firefighter, former tax preparer, rehabilitator of homes, and now our CFO — got his insurance license over 20 years ago. And this spring, my daughter Francesca graduates from Ohio University — which is honestly what got me thinking about all of this in the first place. I remember that year of uncertainty. I remember not knowing. And when she comes in this summer to see if this is something she wants to do, my greatest hope is that she somehow finds a way to love it as much as I do.
Our youngest, Nina, is still in high school. But her empathy and compassion for everyone around her already tells me that wherever she lands, she will find the same satisfaction I have in knowing that what you do every day actually makes a difference in someone’s life.
That’s the thing nobody put in the brochure. But it’s the whole reason I stayed.
I came in with no plan. I stayed because it turned out I was good at this. And then somewhere along the way, I realized I didn’t just do this job. I loved it.
I used to read romance novels. Now I read the CMS website and Modern Healthcare.
The SHN Team surprised me for my 30 year SHN anniversary. The photo they chose makes me look like Lord Farquardt, but that’s ok! It made us all laugh! I am not a spring chicken. But I am absolutely not old. I am seasoned. And I am just getting started.
Next in the series: “My Best Clients Are People I Never Enrolled” — the business case for telling the truth.
Anne Glorioso | CEO & Owner, Solidarity Health Network, Inc.
Cleveland, Ohio | www.shninc.org | SOC 2 Type II Certified | Founded 1989
SHN employees are proud members of CWA Local 4340