Welcome to the Transform Awards Winner Spotlight Series, celebrating innovation and leadership in reshaping industries and workplaces globally. These awards commend individuals and companies at the forefront of transformation, setting new standards and challenging the status quo. Recognized for their people-centric and visionary approaches, our awardees are the global changemakers pioneering advancements in business, entrepreneurship, and beyond. This series shines a light on their achievements and the impactful ways they’re moving the world of work forward.
About The Award: Power Pair – Executive Partnership of 2025
This award celebrates the power of partnership to drive transformation. This pair exemplifies how strategic alignment between business and people operations drives positive outcomes for the business and its people.
About Our Transform Awards Winner Wagmo
Wagmo is redefining pet benefits with flexible, turnkey plans that support the full pet parenting journey, not just emergencies. Unlike traditional pet benefits, Wagmo combines routine care, emergency coverage, telehealth, and lifestyle perks into flexible, customizable plans. Our guaranteed-issue, flat-rate options integrate seamlessly with benefits administration platforms and drive high employee enrollment, delivering meaningful value for pet parents and measurable ROI for employers. Wagmo was founded in 2017 and is the only female-founded and operated pet wellness company in the market.
Let’s hear from Christie Horvath, CEO and founder of Wagmo, to see what made them stand out!
Initiative Overview
Transform: What does this recognition mean to your team?
Christie: Jessica Bryant, our COO, and I were thrilled to receive the “Power Pair: Executive Partnership of the Year” award from Transform. What makes our partnership work so well is that our strengths truly complement each other. Jessica moves quickly and gracefully, but always with an eye toward long-term strategy and scalability, which is critical as we grow. Building a company is incredibly hard, and having a true partner at the table makes all the difference. Our team is also proud to be led by a C-suite made up entirely of women—representation like that really matters.
Transform: Can you tell us a bit about the initiative or program that earned you this recognition?
Christie: We have developed an innovative first of its kind, comprehensive pet benefit. Our pet insurance and pet wellness offerings put Wagmo on the map as the leading pet benefit in market.
Transform: What inspired this idea? How did it first come to life?
Christie: We wanted to make responsible pet parenting easy. We help pet parents navigate the job of taking care of their pets and keeping them healthy and well. We also wanted to help employers be on the cutting edge of benefits by offering full family support to their employees, because pets are now considered part of the family.
Transform: What challenge or opportunity led your team to focus on this initiative?
Christie: When I was in business school, my dog Denver, who was young and healthy, got sick and had seizures. I was grateful that pet insurance was able to support us. However, when my brother got a pet, I tried to convince him to buy pet insurance, but he wasn’t. At that point, I fully understood the trauma and hardship of being a pet parent, but I realized there was a real disconnect in the market. Through building Wagmo, we have been able to bring this solution to life.
“Statistically, pet parents are the largest demographic—
ignoring them means missing a major piece of your workforce.”
Impact & Results
Transform: How do you measure the success or impact of this initiative?
Christie: At Wagmo, we’ve successfully designed a benefit people use and enjoy. We are driving high levels of engagement and record-high enrollment rates in the industry. Employers and pet parents use Wagmo offerings day in and day out.
Transform: What outcomes or changes have you seen resulting from this work?
Christie: Wagmo has purpose-built our pet insurance and pet wellness benefits for employers. They are specifically designed to make HR leaders’ lives easier. HR leaders don’t need to choose between the best and the easiest pet insurance and wellness solution since Wagmo offers them both. We have grown our employer business 3X year-over-year and now reach over one million employees who are eligible for Wagmo through their employer.
Transform: Can you share an example of how this initiative has positively impacted your team, culture, or business?
Christie: Our turnkey solution is an easy-to-implement, plug-and-play, best-in-class pet benefit, so HR can focus on the many other issues they need to manage.
Transform: Do you have any photos, stories, or links showing this initiative?
Christie: More information on the offering, statistics on enrollment rates, client testimonials, and more can be found here:
https://wagmo.io/business/hr
https://wagmo.io/business/brokers
Insights & Learning
Transform: What is one lesson or challenge your team faced, and how did you work through it?
Christie: One major challenge we faced was the market’s lack of understanding of pet wellness. Most people equated pet benefits solely with emergency coverage, overlooking the everyday, preventive care that keeps pets healthy. To address this, we made education a core part of our strategy. This helped differentiate us in a crowded market and allowed us to position Wagmo as a comprehensive pet health partner, not just another insurance provider.
Transform: What has this experience taught you about your people, culture, or customers?
Christie: The experience of building Wagmo has shown us that in order to solve our customers’ needs, we need to meet our customers where they are, especially for HR leaders. HR leaders are understaffed, overworked, and have a ton on their plates. With Wagmo’s customer-centric approach, we are working within their world rather than asking them to work within our world.
Transform: What advice would you give to other organizations aiming to create a similar impact?
Christie: I advise speaking your customers’ language instead of making them learn it. At the end of the day, we’re helping to support HR and human capital. In an industry built on reputation and relationships, people want to make sure that they can trust the employee benefits programs that they’re implementing and the people behind those programs.
“Speak your customers’ language instead of making them learn yours—
it builds stronger, trusted relationships.”
Growth & What’s Ahead
Transform: How does this initiative align with your company’s mission or vision?
Christie: Wagmo’s mission is to empower and inspire responsible pet parenting. We’re also empowering and inspiring HR leaders to do the very best for their pet parent colleagues.
Transform: What are your next steps? How do you plan to expand or evolve this work?
Christie: We’re continuing to expand partnership reach to get Wagmo’s pet benefits to as many pet parents as possible. Our vision for the future focuses on continuously solving the most pressing problems for pet parents. We will continue enriching our offering across our wellness, insurance, and telehealth products, bringing on additional perks and discounts for Wagmo pet parents. We’re constantly listening to employers and pet parents alike to understand their challenges and what’s on their minds so we can continuously enhance and evolve our products. Wagmo is the benefit that keeps getting better and more comprehensive every year.
Transform: What is your company’s vision for the future regarding workplace transformation or leadership?
Christie: The understanding of family is broadening to include pets, and full family benefits means including benefits for pets. In the workplace, you may have done everything for human parents in your population, but how can you also do everything you can for the pet parents in your organization? Statistically, pet parents are the largest demographic. You don’t have to choose between having the best pet benefit and the easiest – Wagmo is the best and the easiest.
Industry Perspective
Transform: What workplace trend or shift will matter most in the next 3–5 years?
Christie: In the next three to five years, we’ll see more and more that offering pet benefits at work is more than a perk—it’s essential and here to stay. Providing pet benefits to employees is not niche—it is a core benefit.
Transform: How do you see your work today influencing the future of work, teams, or culture?
Christie: Just like our kids, our pets are such a huge part of us. Pets form the fabric of our identity and day-to-day lives. You wake up, feed the dog, and walk the dog. Our daily schedule runs around our pets just like it does for a human. By bringing that into the workplace through pet benefits, our work is making that connection more visible and accepted. It’s helping create a future of work that’s more human, where employees feel seen for their whole selves, not just their roles.
By offering pet benefits, you’re showing employees
they’re seen as whole people, not just roles.
Final Thoughts
Transform: Is there a memorable moment from this journey that stands out to your team?
Christie: Wagmo was founded in 2017, and we’re still relatively new in the space. So, to get the Transform award this year, which is such a major recognition, so quickly and so early in our journey, it was a big moment for us.
Transform: Anything else you’d like to share with the Transform Community?
Christie: I love Transform! I’m secretly not much of a conference person, but we truly have fun at Transform! As part of the Transform Community, we see that folks really are quite tight-knit, relying on one another for hearing about the next innovation or cool idea, brainstorming with each other. Also, when people find their way to the Wagmo booth where we sponsor the puppy lounge, they are delighted! It’s pretty hard not to enjoy sharing in the enthusiasm and bringing people together.
Transform: How would you sum up your overall Transform experience?
Christie: The energy of Transform is really supportive. People clearly look forward to going there and being together. There is a spirit of community that comes through at the Transform Conference. It underscores the human element of what it means to be a people leader.
Check out our other Transform Spotlights on the blog to learn more about our Global Ambassadors. People-First Leaders, Authors, Award Winners, and more!