The following highlights 10 of the most influential women in insurance. The six Honorees and four Notable Achievers featured were selected based on their job complexities, leadership and management skills, their involvement in corporate governance and ethics and their contributions to their institution's bottom lines. Nominations were vetted by INN editors and then judged by five of last year's Women in Insurance Leadership Honorees: Sallie Graves, ING U.S. Insurance; Susan Gueli, Nationwide Financial; Sandra Parrillo, Providence Mutual Fire Insurance Co.; Pat Rayl, Aflac; and Angelyn Scardino Treutel, SouthGroup Insurance-Gulf Coast. Thank you to our judges for their critical role in this program. To view the slide show, click
2011 WIL Notable Achievers
Denise Blankinship - VP of Information & Data Support, Church Pension Group
As the VP of Information and Data Support for the Church Pension Group (CPG), a group health, group/individual term life and annuities provider, Denise Blankinship has her hands full keeping everybody on the same page. Geography presents one challenge, as CPG is based in New York but reliant on a network built between four offices and 26 additional telecommuting employees. Another challenge: formulating and translating business tactics into IT strategy for each business unit before carrying out that strategy across the branches.
At CPG, Blankinship helped create an all-encompassing, self-serving and online plan administration system. The system automates and centralizes processes for group enrollment, policy maintenance, billing, collections and accounting. What was once manual and paper-based is now automated, generating and managing out-bound and in-bound documents.
Blankinship has proven a master of connecting CPG's business goals with technology means, serving as an ambassador between business ambition and technological pragmatism. - Nominated by Oracle Insurance
Yvette Gonzales - CIO, VP of Information Services, Shelter Mutual Insurance Company
Yvette Gonzales claims responsibility for numerous enterprisewide projects involving IT and business operations, combined with day-to-day maintenance and production support for a company maintaining nearly 2 million policies and 20 locations nationwide. As the main planner and executor, Gonzales spearheads the project-based reform approach that Shelter boasts to foster harmony between business and technology.
Overhauls to Shelter's system under Gonzales' direction include extending Shelter's First Notice of Loss directly to agents, customers and vendors, which reduced customer service call volume by 35 percent. These changes take business requirements and apply the serious technological innovations required to make them a reality.
Other such accomplishments under her tenure include implementation of paperless claims administration, in-house development of a policy platform, marriage of marketing and business through social media, and adoption of an IT Infrastructure Library and Project Management Office into the Information services department. -Nominated by StoneRiver Inc.
Cyndy Smith - VP and Director of Technology, Haylor, Freyer & Coon
When Cyndy Smith began with Haylor, Freyer & Coon (HFC) as a claims representative nearly 30 years ago, it was a fledgling company of 35 employees. HFC now employs 200 and boasts $230 million in revenue. Although her impact on the company's increased success-including staking claim to her current position as VP and director of technology-is not directly quantifiable through her various positions, it quickly becomes self-evident when adding up her accrued duties.
As head of IT tool implementation for all divisions of HFC-including acquisition, implementation, maintenance and training-Smith identifies worthwhile industry trends, understands how to implement them vertically and horizontally, and communicates to and trains employees on new processes.
It's difficult to measure someone's success when their efforts glean abstract yields, such as effective, happy and efficient employees assisting happy, informed and appeased customers. But, HFC's overall company growth and trajectory proves Smith's success. -Nominated by Vertafore
Belen Tokarski - AVP Technology and Agency Solutions, CNA
Belen Tokarski's charge to grow CNA's business unit by being the most technologically advanced small business carrier is a relatively direct proposition. Nonetheless, reconciling this mission with clients of varying sizes and technological inclinations requires a business person with an innate eye for managing technology.
Boasting an MBA in e-commerce and an open managerial style, Tokarski has promoted use of social media within the company as a means to not only provide customer service and feedback, but also to elicit feedback from agents on how technology and basic relations can be improved. To keep CNA's small business unit at the forefront of technology integration, Tokarski moved her unit's commercial lines to an online self-service model. She was responsible for bringing in vendors as well as meeting with several teams and individuals to coordinate an effective transition.
And as agents flocked to use the new system, clients followed, as the straight-through processing methods have provided CNA a clear advantage over the competition. -Nominated by SeaPass Solutions Inc.
2011 WIL Honorees
Shohreh Abedi - SVP, CIO, Farmers Insurance Group
Migrating with her family to the United States from Iran at age 10 and losing her mother at age 11, Shohreh Abedi was thrust into a leadership role at an early age. At 13, she started working to help support her family, and her father expected big things from her. "Though a traditional, conservative man, he was not so traditional in the education of his daughters. I was young and a female, but as far as he was concerned, that didn't limit me in terms of my aspirations and professional potential."
From the way her career began, she couldn't foresee that she wanted to become the CIO of Farmers Insurance Group. Starting in 1989 as an office administrative assistant at Litton Industries, a defense contractor at the time, Abedi met a man who would become one of her greatest supporters and her mentor: Robert Casanova, who served as head of IT. "One night I sheepishly knocked on his door, and he said, 'Yeah, kid?' I asked him if I could do more and told him I could offer more. He said, 'I can't remember the last time someone asked for that. You're going to come back and say stop.'"
Casanova advised Abedi to attend Nortel telecom engineering school where she received perfect scores, and so began her career in technology. When Casanova retired in 1993, Abedi put in her notice and took a telecom manager position at Epicor, a software provider, where she built call centers and took over data and network areas of the business. "Around this time, system integrators started to really focus on call centers and computer-telephony-integration (CTI)," she says.
Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP) approached Abedi to consult on CTI and CRM. Going from an industry role to consulting would be a change, but she looked at the pros and cons. "When you're a part of IT in a company, you're consistently viewed as a cost center-affected by budget cuts, efficiencies, etc. So, I tried it out," Abedi says. "I traveled for two years straight, working as a network architect, call center expert for CTP."
Abedi joined Ernst & Young in 1999 and worked closely on a call center project at Farmers. "There was something about the Farmers' spirit and the people-something magnetic," she says. "I stayed in touch with the people there."
In 2000 Abedi focused heavily on network architecture, CTI and CRM, and eventually became a VP and sector lead for financial systems integration on the West Coast in 2005.
Abedi, who at the time had a five-year-old son, was traveling every week. "I realized my kid was going to grow up with me missing four days of every week of his life," she says. "That next day I happened to receive a call from Farmers and decided I would look into it."
She took the job as Farmers' VP of IT, claims business unit in 2007, where she quickly began to modernize the claims department and spearhead multiple transformation projects, including integrating an industry-leading business process management (BPM) solution into its existing claims environment. Currently in use for its auto lines, the rules-driven BPM system gives Farmers' customer service reps a single simplified presentation layer to record first notice of loss.
In September 2010, Abedi was named CIO at Farmers. "Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm a CIO of a really large company, because I don't think about it," she says. "Regardless of what level people are at, my door is always literally open. That interaction and closeness with people-and of course loving what I do-drives me."
It also drives Abedi's collaborative management style. "I require my direct reports to challenge themselves, challenge each other, and challenge their superiors," she says. "If I was always right, I wouldn't need people. By expressing and hearing different points of view, we can craft what's right." She tells her employees, "Look to your right, look to your left: That person's failure is yours, and the other person's success is yours. We have to do what's right for the business and not an individual's agenda."
Doing what's right sometimes means giving all you have, and Abedi believes women have a lot to give. "Don't look at being a woman as a crutch; it's an advantage in some cases, especially when it comes to communication," she says. "Women are great communicators and mediators. Those are strengths. Look to those and take advantage of them."
That's just what Abedi is doing. With hardships behind her, she is looking to her strengths and still giving all she's got.
Number of years in the insurance industry: 11
Number of direct reports: 12
Farmers' business operating profit: $1.7 billion
Janice Abraham - President, CEO, United Educators Insurance
Early in her career, Janice Abraham remembers hearing about some of the generic rules to do business by: the customer is always right, it's all about the bottom line, don't bring me a problem without a solution and more. "I've learned that they are wrong," says Abraham, "and I've decided not to follow those rules."
In the enviable position of having direct experience in the niche market in which she now insures, Abraham has established her own unique rules for success along the way. Her background as an international banker for J.P. Morgan lead her to various senior positions at Cornell University and ultimately as CFO/treasurer at Whitman College-both customers of her current employer, United Educators Insurance. As a result, Abraham, now UE's president and CEO, applies those rules to the mechanics of this privately held insurer's business, developing successful risk management programs and creating a business model that lends itself to a robust investment performance, strong capital position, and, thanks to established premiums unaffected by market swings, stable profit levels.
UE offers a blend of professional liability products to a unique group of more than 1,160 "member" customers, including schools, colleges, universities and education related organizations, notes Abraham.
"We maintain a lofty standard on providing a high return to our members," Abraham says, "and our mission-doing well while doing good-is critical to our success."
The "doing well while doing good" mission plays forward with loss control programs that include tools that help keep athletes safe, as well as programs for preventing discrimination, binge drinking and sexual assault on campuses across the county.
"We have built a business model that is changing the risk profile of educational institutions," notes Abraham.
Under Abraham's 13 years of leadership, UE has become known as the premier risk management and liability insurance expert, offering in-depth expertise on the unique risks and claims facing education to a member base that boasts a 98% retention rate.
Retaining customers is but one hallmark of Abraham's success. She is also proud of her organization's staff development efforts. In spite of a relatively small staff (110), UE spends considerable time and energy on staff engagement, implementing leadership development programs, mentoring and other special benefit programs that empower employees to do their best.
With a college-age daughter, Abraham describes her leadership journey as a series of long days and short years, which reinforces her awareness of what's required to strike a work/life balance. As a result, she has helped craft employee benefits programs with flexibility in mind. "I worry more about it for my staff, who also struggle with elderly parents and small children," she says.
Abraham's oversight of UE's HR, business and technology programs (she recently led the company's initiative to replace its policy admin/claims system) illustrate her collaborative management style, but she insists: "I drive a hard bargain and show extreme loyalty, and I get it in return."
That's an understatement. Recognized as one of the best places to work in the Washington, D.C. area, UE was also awarded the 2011 Workplace Excellence award by the Alliance for Workplace Excellence, and named a 2011 Health and Wellness Trailblazer by that organization.
Abraham may be the most visible role model for her organization's unique approach to staff empowerment. As part of UE's "profits with purpose" mission, Abraham recently returned from a four-month sabbatical to the Philippines where she investigated micro insurance opportunities for LeapFrog Investments, which invests in businesses that provide insurance to low-income and financial excluded (vulnerable) people in Africa and Asia. "Our unique business development philosophy, a strong leadership team and support from the UE board enabled me to take a four-month leave," she says.
Taking on unique challenges seems to be in Abraham's blood. Appointed the first woman to chair the board of governors of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America from 2009-2010, Abraham notes that, although there are now three females on the board, women are generally under-represented in insurance.
"Growing up in banking and then higher education, I'm aware that insurance lags behind other industries in advancing women in leadership," she says.
Abraham attributes this lag to the industry's slowness to embrace diversity in its broadest sense-its recognition of diversity in leadership styles, gender, age, race, etc. "The insurance industry is used to seeing an older white male as the leader and this image has been reinforced for many years," says Abraham. "Other industries have been faster to move away from these stereotypes, and the tech industry seems more open to young leaders, but insurance has been slower to embrace diversity."
However, that should not stop young women from entering the field, adds Abraham. "The biggest challenge for any young woman in this business is to be comfortable taking risk," Abraham advises. "Each job I've taken was taken because I wasn't sure I could do it, but I have a healthy degree of risk analysis in my DNA, which forces me to take risks, albeit calculated ones."
Loving her job and what her company is able to accomplish makes it easy for her to give advice . "Even if you can't calculate all of it, take the risk. Don't be afraid of failing."
Number of years in the insurance industry: 13
Number of direct reports: 7
UE's total annual revenue: $140 million
Judith Davis - EVP, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, BlueCross BlueShield of SC
The "aha" moment is something not everyone experiences in their career. But five years ago, Judith Davis did, and it was simple, yet powerful. She had just completed her presentation on leadership at a local South Carolina college. The presenter during the luncheon told attendees to write down where they want to be in five years. "I thought, 'I want to be running a company,'" she says. "I came back from that event and went to the [BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina] CEO and told him I really wanted to take on more."
Rewind to the mid-80s, before her aha moment: Davis studied law at The Ohio State University and upon graduating, took an in-house counsel position at Lincoln National, which at the time was a diversified insurance company in Fort Wayne, Ind. "At that time, they had all types of insurance businesses," Davis says. "Right when I had gotten there, the company decided to sell off many parts of the business (health, property/casualty, reinsurance) and focus on the life and annuity business. I spent 11 years buying and selling companies. It was fascinating to see that world and how other companies really work."
Affected in that M&A activity was Davis' husband, who was head of marketing for one of Lincoln's divested companies, so the couple made some moves-one to Colorado and one to Chicago. But in 1995 Davis accepted an offer from BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina (BCBSSC) for general counsel and off to Columbia, S.C., they went.
Eleven years later, in 2006, Davis had her aha moment, and the CEO told her to take on some of the BCBSSC subsidiaries. Davis manages subsidiary holdings Companion Property and Casualty Company and Companion Life Insurance Company and, BCBSSC's most recent acquisition, UCI Medical. She manages the legal operations, state public affairs, corporate communications and public relations for BCBSSC and its subsidiary companies.
Those companies under Davis' direction have provided business diversification for BCBSSC and the opportunity to sell insurance products and administrative services throughout the country, instead of just within South Carolina's borders. "With the nature of the Blues program, you really have to find a way to scale the business to compete with the national players who can diversify their costs geographically."
With diversification comes different culture. Each one of the companies has a leadership development program in which Davis tries to mentor potential female leaders. And within an organization that is 75 percent female, she has many opportunities. Davis dedicates time and effort attracting, developing and retaining talent. "There are so many smart women here," she says. "I feel like it's my job to help them, and find opportunities ways for them to get bigger experiences."
In fact, Davis started an informal luncheon group of 30 senior women across the corporation, where they discuss their careers. Through her interaction with professional women Davis has observed that many "tend to feel the need to be invited, and so they wait as opposed to saying, 'I want to do this.' I tell everyone to volunteer for every assignment, anything anyone else doesn't want. You'll meet other people; you'll get exposure. Those who've done that are really the leaders here."
Helping others succeed and thrive in the organization, she says, is her greatest achievement. "The people I've accrued or managed over the years are excelling, and they have leadership roles. Particularly here at BlueCross, there are a number of managers who came out of the law department or worked with me on a project."
This collaboration plays forward in Davis' management style, as she strives to be the support structure for her nine direct reports. "I really try to find employees who have great leadership and management skills and empower them to do their jobs. I spend 90 percent of my day getting obstacles out of the way for them. It's hard to create that environment where people feel safe making important decisions and know that when some kind of issue pops up that I'll have their back. I'll stand there and say it's my issue; not theirs. It takes a long time for people to feel that safety."
Outside the company Davis involves herself with a number of community nonprofits and events, where she's met women who've inspired her. "The women running those nonprofits are doing five jobs, have no money and are committed. They're phenomenal."
Davis also points to the women working in BCBSSC's IT department as a source of inspiration. "The women in our IT department work harder than anyone else in the company. They're getting so much pressure-pressure that's different than any other area of the company. Things change so fast, and they're pushing hard."
Davis too will continue to push hard-pushing herself and others to succeed and lead.
Number of years in the insurance industry: 27
Number of direct reports: 9
BCBSSC's GWP: $3 billion
Tricia Mackechnie - SVP and CIO Consumer Markets & Enterprise Operations IT, The Hartford
What do you get when you combine a love of math, drive for senior leadership and determination for success? For Tricia Mackechnie, the answer is doing what she loves, and turning challenges into opportunities.
Her education in mathematics naturally lent itself to computer science at a time (late 1980s) when the computer industry was taking off. Mackechnie's path was strategic: By taking on a number of technology roles after college (systems engineer, development, database and systems administration and deep technology, to name a few), she quickly transitioned to her first management role, overseeing technology teams that built applications and solutions for Accenture's financial services clients throughout the Northeast.
Impending motherhood and added experience in financial services led Mackechnie to a position with ING in its strategic initiative and customer service areas.
"I decided a career on the road and motherhood was not going to agree," she says. Mackechnie also knew she wanted to move into a more senior IT or business leadership position. "I didn't have the necessary foundation of operations experience," she says. "So when I first joined The Hartford I ran their back office IT operations for all production and maintenance for the P&C operations."
Once promoted to CIO, Mackechnie helped establish IT as one of The Hartford's core business strategies. "Our goal as part of IT's transformation is to be more integral to the value of the business," she says.
Today, Mackechnie is responsible for providing that value to The Hartford's Consumer Markets (personal lines P&C) and Enterprise Operations through IT.
At the local level, establishing IT's value proposition meant prioritizing measurement of the IT organization's operations, as well as accountability for its success and ROI of large programs. It also meant similar involvement with The Hartford's business side as well as its technology and business partners, a challenge Mackechnie turned into an opportunity.
"Right or wrong, insurance is still a male-dominated field," she says. "Plus, there are not many women in leadership positions who have a technology background, so in working through interactions with various levels within teams, I learned to adjust my communications style. This has required a level of directness that sometimes can be misconstrued, and it's been a challenge to overcome that."
And she has. Leading the company's "workforce strategy" effort, Mackechnie next focused on the macro level, rallying The Hartford's entire IT organization in standardizing the organization's workforce for execution of the company's strategy. "This sets the direction for the IT organization as a whole, in terms of how we leverage our sourcing partners, how we develop talent, how we create and maintain consistent competency and skills and avenues for growth, all of the elements of leadership development," she says. "My work in the past was focused on IT solutions, but this focus included employees and their development and how we as an organization can focus on growth."
Mackechnie's self-described management style-a mixture of honesty, directness and coaching-has paid off. "I try to question my teams to get them to the right answer," she says. "It's communicating the goals we want to achieve, then setting direction versus directing people."
The challenge of building strong leadership teams has also presented opportunities to Mackechnie. Now with a grown step-daughter and a 12-year-old son, she works hard to create a rewarding work/life balance. "You need to make the time to support both home and career. It requires work to do that, and there's nothing easy about it," she says. "Jobs are 24/7 now, and I have enough work to keep me from my family, but I choose not to."
Mackechnie's philosophy mirrors that of The Hartford's: To get the most value from employees, support them personally and professionally. "As you grow in your career, you have opportunities to help someone through a problem, share information and support their growth," she says. Mackechnie does this through The Hartford's Professional Women's Network, CS Sisters, a Northeastern University group that helps women in the sciences, and in her day-to-day life.
"With hard work, dedication and focus, you can achieve anything you want to," she says. "Throughout my career, I've been lucky to have significant support from my husband as well as professional mentors, and this support provided further opportunities to me to play that forward."
Empowering several leaders beneath her, Mackechnie has improved the culture and relationship between business and IT, creating a culture of joint success. Now with the opportunity to build an IT organization for the future, Mackechnie wants women considering a career in insurance to know that a world of opportunities awaits them, too.
"While insurance is an industry that's male dominated, there are enormous opportunities for women to pursue all sorts of roles that enable them to develop skills in business or technology, skills that they may not have considered in the past."
Once in the industry, women need to let their work speak for itself, advises Mackechnie. "Operate with integrity and do the right thing," she says. "While a career is a marathon, be aware that some people want to run to the top, and some people will choose different ways to get ahead. Those who choose the wrong way will have those choices catch up with them. Doing your best work will speak for itself."
Number of years in the insurance industry: 20
Number of direct reports: 8
The Hartford's total annual revenue: $10B
JoAnn Martin - President and CEO, Ameritas Holding Co.
Planning and luck-these are two things JoAnn Martin says helped her land where she is, and hard work and passion has helped her succeed there.
Skills tests in high school indicated that Martin would excel in a career in accounting. After receiving her degree, she took an accounting position at Deloitte and Touche. "It was a great experience, as I got to see many different companies in different industries, and out of all of them I liked insurance the best," she says. "Insurance is an industry that makes a difference in people's lives. So, from my view, I could be an accountant with purpose."
Martin has been making a difference in the industry for the past 27 years at Ameritas Holding Co. She started in audit, proceeded to planning, then to CFO and now remains in executive leadership. "When I say planning and luck, I mean I chose the industry, but it also took a little luck to get the right opportunity at the right time to match my skills." Now, as president and CEO of Ameritas, Martin sets the strategic direction of the organization. Over the past couple of years, she made the strategic decision to focus the sales of insurance products through two of the insurance companies rather than four. One of the two companies will focus on New York business only and the other company will focus on the other 49 states and the District of Columbia. "We are comprised of three companies that represent more than 100 years of history," she says. "Originally we had planned to continue all three companies on their own roads, but the market is the market, and life is very competitive today. We decided to direct our efforts to the simplest structure that we believe benefits the customer the most. It's a challenging transition because we've been issuing business from these two companies for more than 100 years, but it's important to look to the future."
Planning for the well-being of both Ameritas' associates and its customers is difficult in even the best of times, and an important responsibility to Martin-one that she finds exacting. "It's tricky to look to the future and decide where the hockey puck is going to be and then have your team skate to it," Martin says. "It's a tough time; there's a lot of change not only in the economy but in the industry through regulations, environmental issues, low interest rates, customer perception, etc. The challenge is to feel confident that you're doing the right thing for your customers, associates and stakeholders."
Martin's consistent leadership and guidance for the company's multiple businesses has been essential during the economic crisis and downturn. In fact, Ameritas has emerged with more capital than before the downturn.
Martin's knack for financial success is equaled to her passion for people, and is illustrated by her management style. "I believe in collaborative leadership," she says. "The best thing you can do for people is to be a coach as opposed to being a boss. We work together, and it takes all of us to make a successful company. I'm very proud of our people and the impact they're having on our customers, the organization and each other. I'm also proud of our progress in terms of moving our organization forward and advancing people. In the end, it's not what you've done, it's who you've influenced in a positive way."
To date, many individuals have influenced Martin in her career. "I've worked in many different areas with many different people and have had the fortune of having some really good bosses," she says. "I also had the fortune of being involved in many of the company's growth initiatives, and doing new and different things, so I try to look up to a lot of different people. I learn something from everyone I have interactions with. Sometimes it's good; sometimes it's bad, but you do learn."
Variety is what Martin would recommend for young women coming into the industry. "We all come from different backgrounds; we all do different things," she says. "If you have a technology background, you should try to take on projects close to the business. All of us make decisions through the kaleidoscope of our past experiences. My decisions have been from the position of a working mother in a dual career family. It's made me a lot more aware of how work life and home life are intertwined for most of us."
Martin has learned over time how to manage that work/home life. "It's okay to have days that are all work, days that are all home, some days that are all community, and the important thing is to remain in the present," she says. "Many times people who struggle with balance do so because they're trying to do things simultaneously as opposed to really focusing on what it is they're doing at the time. I didn't always do it, but as I started to practice it, I noticed it's an effective way to feel good about many parts of my life."
Number of years in the insurance industry: 27
Number of direct reports: 7
Ameritas' total annual revenue: $2 Billion
Kathy Owen - CIO and SVP of Global Services, UNUM
In 1975 when Kathy Owen graduated college and joined Provident Life and Accident, an Unum Group company, she could not have predicted how change would impact her career. At a time when many in her profession were hopping from one technology opportunity to another, Owen stayed put, managing changes within her insurance organization. And during the past 36 years, those changes have been plentiful.
"I joined Provident from a tech university, but without having direct technology experience, so it was new and interesting," she says. "The organization was willing to train me, and circumstances continued to change around me, which presented challenges and opportunities."
Moving from her initial role as a programmer trainee to senior systems analyst, Owen functioned as lead designer and developer for all field office applications. "Any time you can have direct contact at the point of sale, you gain a better understanding of the customer and the business," she says. "I saw what we did and why we serve. It was a defining moment for me, and I felt ownership of what I was doing."
From that point on, both Unum and Owen have been on a fast track. With a long history of mergers and acquisitions, Unum's M&A pace picked up after she joined the organization, and Owen found that her greatest challenges tapped her greatest strengths.
Owen admits that managing M&A carries with it enormous business challenges, which translate into the ongoing alignment of technology strategies. "During M&A you have to rely on your gut instincts, because you are often stretching beyond what is attainable," she says. "And you reach success by understanding the external expectations, what the company is being held accountable for, and by keeping a focus on the end goal."
For the better part of the last decade, Owen has applied best practices to do just that, leading a significant overhaul in technology that transformed the business model for Unum's technology organization. The goal: Remove the many silos in which products and services were created and supported with their own legacy systems, business processes and organizations.
"Most of the efforts had been in discreet operations around a specific business function," she says. "Managing this much change meant doing the right thing to add value, and realizing that if you can't add value, it was not the right fit anyway. This took courage, and required degrees of acceptance-I needed to make sure key stakeholders felt like stakeholders." With 10,000 employees in 94 locations, this would be no easy task.
In 2007 under Owen's successful leadership, the company launched Simply Unum, a new business model with a technology backbone that covers the insurance chain, from quote and proposal through enrollment and implementation, to ongoing service and the administration of claims. It's simplified administration and self-service capabilities are notable, affecting top- and bottom-line results. The Simply Unum moniker "merged" nicely with UnumProvident Corporation's name change to Unum Group, now noting three primary divisions: Unum US, Unum UK and Colonial Life.
Since the launch, Unum's UK business unit introduced its own business offering on this platform, Unum Select, which enables the company to offer financial protection benefits to workers, many of whom are underserved.
With her successful tenure within the Unum organization, Owen is nevertheless modest, pointing to a collaborative management style that values team development, respect and diversity of thinking. "I am a fairly humble leader, and I never had a particular title or job in mind. I've just been achievement oriented," she says. "To accomplish significant things it takes the work of many. I don't think I have all the answers-the greatest thing I can bring to the table is a vision and a team, then facilitate a process that empowers them."
Owen also attributes her success to being a stable presence within her organization. "People tend to forget about you if you are not constantly in the mix, and in all these years, I have not taken a break from work," she says, "As our two children grew up I had help from family and was able to move up within the organization by choice."
Owen believes in paying her success forward, volunteering with local business/education programs and overseeing Unum's "Tech Nights" for high school seniors and internship program. She also encourages incoming female entrants to the industry to think broadly, and be open to different roles and opportunities. "We are sometimes constrained with preconceived notions," she says. "Think about the real value to the business, so whatever role you have, you can understand how that connects to the company's success."
That said, Owen is wistful about her long tenure at Unum. "I would have loved to have worked in a different company and be able to compare perspectives," she says. "But as a result of all our M&A activities, I've been able to experience different cultures and different types of leadership."
Number of years in the insurance industry: 36
Number of direct reports: 7
Unum's GWP: $5.5 billion
Stats Straight From the Sources
To add some analytic rigor to this year's Women in Insurance Leadership issue, Insurance Networking News, in collaboration with the Association of Professional Insurance Women (APIW), conducted a survey to assess attitudes and opportunities regarding women and leadership within the insurance industry.
The survey was distributed to INN's qualified readers and APIW members. The respondents represent a cross-section of the industry, from various lines of business (property/casualty, multi-line, life, health and reinsurance), and from companies of various sizes ($51-$100 million to $5 billion in premium or more). Respondents also varied in experience, with some 54 percent having spent more than 20 years in the industry.
So how do women in insurance grow professionally? To find out, we queried them on whether they receive the professional development support necessary from their employer, how they network and what they believe will help them in their overall job performance.
