Stefania Henriques has spent her career doing what most people find overwhelming: walking into complex, high-stakes environments and making them work. With over a decade of experience spanning human resources, payroll operations, compliance, and organizational leadership, she has built a reputation as someone who doesn't just manage systems — she transforms them.

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Raised in New Jersey and proudly rooted in the Shore community, Stefania's professional journey reflects a consistent pattern of being trusted with the hard problems. Early in her career, she stepped into HR and payroll leadership roles that demanded precision, discretion, and the ability to hold a team together under pressure. She became fluent in the full arc of the employee experience — from recruiting and onboarding to benefits administration, compliance, and the often-invisible work of making sure people are paid correctly, treated fairly, and set up to succeed.

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Over the years, Stefania built deep expertise across some of the most demanding operational environments in the region. She has managed payroll and HR functions for organizations with hundreds of employees across multiple departments and locations, navigated complex multi-state tax and compliance landscapes, and led large-scale implementations of HR and payroll technology — including full-system overhauls that saved organizations significant time and money. Her instinct for identifying inefficiency and replacing it with something that actually works has defined her career at every turn.

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Beyond the numbers and the systems, what has always driven Stefania is the people. She has a natural ability to connect with employees at every level — from frontline staff to executive leadership — and to build the kind of trust that makes organizations function well from the inside out. She is a trainer, a problem-solver, and, in her own words, someone who simply doesn't walk past a problem when she knows how to fix it.

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Stefania joined the Female Forward Alliance because she has seen firsthand what happens when women don't have access to the right networks, the right mentors, and the right rooms. She knows what it means to be the one figuring things out alone — and she knows how different that experience becomes when there is a community behind you. For Stefania, the FFA isn't just an organization; it's the infrastructure she wishes had existed earlier in her career, and she is committed to making sure the next generation of women in this community doesn't have to build it themselves.

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As Secretary of the FFA Board, she brings the same rigor, care, and quiet determination to her volunteer work that she has brought to every organization she has served. Fluent in Italian and deeply connected to the fabric of coastal New Jersey, Stefania resides in Point Pleasant Beach with her husband and two children. Energized by the mission of women lifting women and grounded by the family she comes home to every day, she is the kind of board member who makes everything around her run better — and makes the people around her feel like they can too.