TIAA adds industry veterans to retirement solutions team

TIAA is bulking up its retirement solutions team by bringing in a pair of industry veterans from the Vanguard Group and Prudential.

Kourtney Gibson, TIAA’s chief institutional client officer for retirement solutions, announced the hiring of Jim Mullery and Shamila Rajaratnam to round out the retirement solutions leadership team at a company town hall meeting this week.

Shamila Rajaratnam will lead the sales enablement team. Prior to joining TIAA’s retirement solutions, she served as the head of sales enablement for the institutional investor group at the Vanguard Group. Rajaratnam held roles in the product, participant education and enablement divisions during her tenure at Vanguard.

Rajaratnam will start her new role March 27 and will be based in TIAA’s regional office in Philadelphia, according to Gibson.

Also joining Gibson's squad is Mullery, who most recently served as chief sales and distribution officer at Prudential Retirement Strategies and Life Insurance. He signed on to be the TIAA retirement team’s head of institutional relationship management.

Gibson praised Mullery’s “deep understanding of the annuity business” in her welcoming statement, as well as his “proven track record of creating high performing teams focused on growth in retirement, insurance, and annuities.”

Mullery is slated to start this new role Wednesday in TIAA’s New York office, with the group’s regional managers and strategic client segment leads reporting to him.