Helping Working Families Navigate Time Away With Confidence
Penguin Benefits delivers an unparalleled leave experience to millions of employees—and counting.
Built on direct user feedback, our state-of-the-art SaaS platform replaces manual, time-consuming workflows with instant, personalized leave scenarios and comprehensive benefits clarity.
By integrating self-service access and actionable checklists into every plan, we streamline workflow for HR teams while giving employees clear, guided support. Our "powered-by" solution deploys in days, reflecting employers' specific policies to reduce administrative burden and empowering employees to navigate time away with the most intuitive and comprehensive leave planning tool in the market.
Our mission is to ensure that all working families feel confident throughout the leave planning process by providing personalized, comprehensive benefits information they can count on and access during life's big moments.
We envision a world where every working family navigates life's big moments with ease and confidence.
Our Story
The idea for Penguin Benefits
was hatched in 2020 when first-time expecting mother Chengchen Li found herself struggling to navigate the complexities of planning her leave of absence.
Telecommuting in California and employed by a company in the Northeast, she needed clear and comprehensive information on the various leave options she had available to her. Unfortunately, she found no single resource that could help her coordinate her paid parental leave benefits.
Bouncing between three different parties - human resources, a third-party insurance administrator, and the California State Employment Development Department (EDD) - she spent numerous weeks seeking answers to her questions about federal and state paid leave benefits and how they interacted with her employer’s disability benefits.
A thorough understanding of the benefits and their interactions was important for planning my leave to ensure that all of my insurance claims were filed timely and correctly.
It was something I had to take upon myself to coordinate, and it was a time-consuming and frustrating process.
Chengchen Li
Then Chengchen brought the challenge
to her classmates while attending Stanford's Graduate School of Business Entrepreneurship Program. They researched the insurance and benefits needs of new parents. In the process, they spoke to hundreds of expecting parents and those seeking to adopt or foster children as well. They all shared the same struggle - there was no single resource for finding the information they needed to effectively plan their paid leave benefits.
As a result of her personal experience combined with the research during her class, the idea for the Penguin Benefits platform was born in 2020. Join us on the journey to make leave planning a better experience for all.
Our Team
Chengchen Li, FSA, CLMS, MSx
Founder and CEO
Chengchen Li has a unique blend of deep insurance industry knowledge and the human-centric design thinking approach to innovation. With nearly 10 years of experience as an actuary, Chengchen (“CC”) understands the insurance product development process as well as modeling methods for financial contracts and regulations. The potential of using modeling, along with her personal experience navigating the complexity of leave benefits, sparked her interest in leveraging technology and innovation to address the complexity of leave planning.
Combining her professional background with a passion for solving pain points for working parents, CC founded Penguin Benefits with the goal of simplifying and streamlining the process of understanding and accessing leave benefits. Through the use of advanced algorithms and user-friendly interfaces, the platform provides employees with personalized guidance and support throughout the leave planning process.
CC’s vision for the company extends beyond leave benefits. She envisions a future where technology-driven solutions empower individuals to easily understand how to leverage a myriad of public, employer-sponsored, and private insurance coverage options to achieve financial well-being for their families. By harnessing the power of data and automation, CC aims to revolutionize the insurance industry and improve the lives of millions of families.
Strategic Advisors
Phil Bruen
Senior executive with a proven track record for driving revenue and earnings growth in the group benefits market from a variety of senior management roles in sales, product management and development, contracts and product compliance.
Deep expertise in paid leave and absence management, group life and disability insurance, as well as executive life and disability benefits.
Liz Incze
Highly experienced and successful strategist, facilitator, and leadership coach with a focus on enabling high performance.
Deep expertise in the leave and disability insurance industry, and a keen understanding of risk management.
Skilled in strategic planning, market development, operational strategy, and change management.
Stacy Varney
Growth-minded strategic sales, marketing and customer success leader.
Strong track record of helping companies grow by developing meaningful and lasting partnerships while delivering valuable products and services.
Multi-line insurance and insurtech professional and builder of strong and diverse teams to drive revenue.