Forward-thinking agent encourages others

2011 PIA National Young Insurance Professional of the Year award
goes to New Jersey's Kristen Scott

By Sue R. A. Honeyman

Kristen M. Scott was surprised five years ago when she was named 2006 New Jersey Young Insurance Professional (NJYIP) Director of the Year. She was even more surprised last year when her PIA chapter named her 2010 NJYIP of the Year. It was great to know her friends and peers appreciated her and the work she does for her chapter.

But this spring, when she learned she'd been chosen 2011 PIA National Young Insurance Professional of the Year, it felt different. "Receiving this award was especially rewarding, since I was judged by individuals who did not know me personally but solely by my achievements and activities associated with NJYIP," she says. This was a new level of success and gratification for her.

The PIA National Young Insurance Professional of the Year award is sponsored by The Rough Notes Company.

At 31, Kristen has risen quickly through the ranks at Chamber Insurance Agency Services in West Orange, New Jersey, the affiliate company of Jamison Insurance Group. Chamber specializes in environmental insurance, workers compensation, business solutions, and commercial property with CAT exposures; and Kristen is an assistant vice president and Environmental Programs manager. She joined the New Jersey Young Insurance Professionals in 2004, right after she got her insurance license—and the Professional Insurance Agents New Jersey (PIANJ) two years later. Kristen's national award is based partly on her work with the NJYIP and PIANJ chapters and partly on her personal achievements for her agency.

As soon as she joined NJYIP, Kristen took on the role of special events chair. But that was only the beginning. She became vice president a year later—serving two one-year terms—then was elected president, again serving two one-year terms. She was immediate past president for 2009-2010 and 2010-2011; was holiday social chair for 2004, 2005 and 2006; and then membership chair for 2009-2010. Concurrently, she has been a Membership/Education/Conference Committee member with the sister organization, PIANJ, since 2006.

In presenting the award, PIA National Vice President/Treasurer Andy Harris said: "Kristen Scott played an integral part in the development of Project Y, a joint effort with PIA of New Jersey. Project Y is a marketing campaign that includes a cutting-edge Web site designed to attract young professionals to a career in the insurance industry."

Although she takes pride in the work she's done on behalf of the NJYIP, Kristen realizes there are certain trends that are hard to overcome. For example, while the association boasts a strong overall membership that generally numbers around 170 young professionals, a much smaller number makes up the core of highly active and engaged volunteers. The focus, therefore, is not simply on attracting new members, but inspiring them to come to committee meetings and take on duties—as she did.

She also notes that people "seem to cycle in and out of a professional organization, and then a new group comes. It's not necessarily a good or bad thing. In the last two years, we've seen a phenomenal group of really young people join." She paused, and then says, "At 31, I'm not a young one any more."

Kristen credits her committee work with helping her mature and conquer her shyness. "Being NJYIP president afforded me the opportunity to give speeches before hundreds of colleagues, mentors and other industry professionals."

Working with Project Y has involved going to university and college classes and career fairs to recruit the next group of young people to an industry Kristen loves. It involves breaking stereotypes that insurance is just homeowners and auto, and carrying this message: You tell us your degree and we'll show you how you can fit. Sports individuals can work in sports insurance, while technology grads can work in the IT side of the business. The chapter encourages young people interested in the industry to place their résumés on the chapter's insurance résumé database, which is available to all PIANJ member agencies. Though she hasn't seen specific figures, Kristen says that NJYIP and PIANJ are confident that reminding agencies of this resource will pay off for both job seekers and employers, especially as the job market improves.

Chamber, her employer, and the Jamison Insurance Group have fully supported her work with the industry organizations. Two of their executives have served as NJYIP president and several more have been very involved with PIANJ. The firm recognizes that this involvement proves valuable by helping to develop a well-rounded insurance individual, enabling networking and relationship building and, more important, by giving back to the insurance community, Kristen says.

Despite her organizational and career success, insurance was not Kristen's career of choice—at least not initially. She had been a competitive gymnast as a child and majored in physical education at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, planning to become a teacher. The right teaching job is not always easy to find, though, so she moved back to Hillsborough, New Jersey, and worked as an administrative assistant in her father's retail agency, Global Associates of Metuchen, New Jersey, while continuing her job search. Eventually, it hit her that she could be as passionate about insurance as she could about teaching—perhaps even more passionate—and an insurance professional was born.

Oddly, her father, Ted Juszczak, had taken a similar career path, majoring in education and looking for a teaching position before being bitten by the insurance bug about 40 years ago. He's now vice president and principal at Global Associates, and a mentor for his daughter.

In October 2009, Kristen married Christopher Scott, a continuous improvement manager at Kraft Foods, Inc. At that time, she changed her personal and professional name from Juszczak to Scott.

Still, sharing an industry with your father is one thing; working in your father's shadow is another. Wanting to forge her own career path, Kristen joined Jamison Insurance Group in May 2003 as an account executive, handling a small-business portfolio of professional liability, management liability and umbrella coverages. The agency, which dates from 1898, has more than 100 employees working in five offices.

John P. Ferreira, executive vice president of Jamison Special Risk and Chamber Insurance Agency Services and Kristen's boss for the past eight years, remembers the impression she made when she arrived.

"We were recruiting people, and she came by referral for an interview. We loved her and hired quickly," says John.

Two years later, Jamison acquired Philadelphia-based Chamber Insurance Agency Services, Inc., the national program administrator for a storage tank liability insurance program. "The transfer of this program at times was overwhelming and Kristen really stepped up to the challenge," John says. Kristen spent three months in Philadelphia learning the systems and procedures for the complex program, then returned to help guide the technology professionals as they built the program from the ground up into the firm's proprietary computer system, he explains.

The acquisition created some real challenges, but Kristen "demonstrated the ability and willingness to take on these challenges and responsibilities with dedication, enthusiasm and professionalism," he adds.

In 2007, she again demonstrated her dedication and commitment to the firm when they acquired a Florida office that previously had handled the storage tank program in the state of Florida.

" I've spent a lot of time in Florida over the past several years developing and changing systems and procedures to mirror our West Orange operations," says Kristen. "I was there reviewing operations, conducting due diligence and training staff with new systems. This was an extraordinary learning experience for me as I was not previously involved with an agency acquisition."

John points out that she'd volunteered to spend several weeks in the new office to evaluate and begin implementing the firm's procedures and training, the sign of a "self-starter eager to learn and grow professionally and one who is always willing to look at the big picture.

"The new procedures and systems implemented in the Florida office did pose some challenges, but Kristen was very instrumental in our success," says John. "As a result of her efforts, we were able to transform the office from high paper volume to completely paperless files. The personnel certainly knew the coverages, but they'd been doing something in the same way for 10 or 15 years, so it was somewhat of a challenge for them to adjust and change over to our systems and incorporate our processes."

It was also a very big learning experience for Kristen, who began to appreciate the work ethic of the staff and also how complicated it can be to lead a cohesive group in a different direction. "They are some of hardest-working people I've ever met. They've handled one product—the tank product—and we have them expanding into a broad array of insurance products and services, including a variety of other environmental insurance products."

That suits Kristen just fine. She says she loves environmental liability insurance "because it is so interesting. The coverage has been around for many years, but we're living in a world of Green sensibility and every time you look, there's another environmental issue," she says. She and her staff are continuously kept busy by a variety of environmental liability submissions and policies.

For example, while British Petroleum's oil spill was undoubtedly a tragedy for so many, it also served to awaken smaller clients to the fact that many commercial policies generally exclude pollution coverage, Kristen notes. Thus, another challenge to be met.

That's the kind of forward thinking that drives this award-winning insurance professional.

The author

Susan R.A. Honeyman, vice president of Word Hive Communications LLC, in New Haven, Connecticut, has spent more than 25 years writing and editing insurance-related stories.