New McKid on the Block

The purpose of this editorial is a simple hello to all of you. I am the new kid on the block at the Insurance Journal.

I may be the new kid at the IJ, but not to the insurance industry. I have worked in the property casualty insurance industry for more than 18 years. In fact, Laura Toops, my predecessor in this space, and I were colleagues at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America where I was director of media relations and spent 10 years covering national news and some years supervising the state-focused media staff. I remember meetings at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (all of those privacy debates gave me premature wrinkles) and working on workers’ compensation, Sarbanes Oxley, producer and company licensing, (remember NARAB?) or other regulatory concerns.

Prior to that, my “business home” was in the Wrigley Building in Chicago where I was media spokesperson on insurance issues in Illinois for almost eight years (no free gum, but a fabulous view of the Chicago River). The Wrigley location was a hub of communication giants, across the street from the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV and in front of the old Chicago Sun-Times building. On the insurance side, Prop 103 had just passed in California and the industry was throwing up its figurative hands in fear of what impact its passage would have.

Going even farther back (I hope you don’t picture me as a stooped, silvered hair woman just yet), I was also a magazine editor for Real Estate Today and two other national publications and worked as a editor/reporter for a weekly newspaper, now owned by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Now you understand the hesitation to call myself the “new kid.” Having admitted to all of this, I am looking forward to the opportunity to meet and get to know much better the agents and brokers. In that regard, I am “new and fresh” to the issues and concerns you believe are most important.

Agents and brokers, please don’t hesitate to contact me with all of the following: story ideas, comments good or bad on my articles, just to say hello, to provide a big picture on an issue, to explain your position on an issue–in fact–for any reason. To my old friends, I offer the same suggestions.

My re-entry into the world of journalism is like a long awaited re-birth to the place where I should be. I did that early on and now I am back home. So with the hope of building new friendships and learning about concerns, I hope you all will be there to give me a friendly push in the right direction through the whole process.

I may be the “new kid” on the Insurance Journal staff, but there is nothing new about the direction I am taking or how proud and happy I am to be a part of the IJ team.