It started as a joke between Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska (BCBSNE) employee Alejandro Cardenas and his manager: “Do you have any more siblings who’d want to come work with us?”
“I’d say, ‘yeah, but they have good jobs right now,” Cardenas, one of four siblings, said.
Then, Moises Cardenas started at BCBSNE in 2017. Gerry Cardenas joined the company in June 2019 and Marisol Cardenas began in September 2019. The joke had become reality.
The four Cardenas siblings work together in the claims department, but they’ll be the first to tell you they don’t see each other often throughout the day.
“We’re on different teams, even though we’re in the same area of the company,” Alejandro said. “It’s pretty neat because we can come to work together, and we can get coffee or grab food when we have free time.”
The Cardenas rely on one another’s areas of expertise.
“It’s really helpful that we’re all on different teams since we still have each other through messaging,” Gerry said. “If we have a question, we can reach out and come up with a good solution to the problem.”
Moises said he relied on Alejandro for help when he first started at BCBSNE and hopes Gerry and Marisol, the most recent additions to the team, can rely on him in the same way.
“I hope they look to me as a resource they can go to with any question,” Moises said.
People often ask the siblings how they can work together. Their collective response? “We enjoy it.”
“I think that goes back through the years and our parents raising us to be close and respectful of each other and to be there for one another,” Marisol said.
“We’ve always had a close relationship and always talked,” Alejandro added. “It’s really nothing out of the ordinary to me.”
Now that all four Cardenas siblings work for BCBSNE, Alejandro said the joke he shares with his managers has changed.
“Managers ask me, ‘do you have any more siblings you just don’t know about?’” Alejandro said. “I’m like, ‘no, not that I know of.’”
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