Her Story
About Tammy
My career has been driven by a passion for marketing and building relationships in the workers' compensation industry. Over 16 years, I've traveled extensively across the United States to build national relationships with decision makers at insurance carriers and self-insured employers, which has given me a strong sense of who the key players are and how to influence decisions quickly. I started in healthcare marketing, which led me to workers' compensation, and before that I worked with children's nonprofits. One of my proudest early achievements was serving as Media Relations Director for an international children's nonprofit during the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, where my boss was a four-time Olympic gold medalist and non-practicing orthopedic physician. Despite the challenges of 9/11 happening six months before the Olympics, I secured a four-minute NBC interview that aired right before Sarah Hughes' gold medal figure skating interview, giving us the biggest viewing audience possible. By the end of the Olympics, I received a four-inch binder documenting all the media attention we had generated, more than the organization had ever received. After raising my children, I transitioned to healthcare marketing and then to neurorehab business development, where I developed relationships with centers of excellence like Craig Hospital and Shepherd Center in Atlanta. I had my 'I-have-arrived moment' when I secured two simultaneous Life Flight transfers from Shepherd Center to our Sarasota program. I've always trusted my intuition, which led me to leave a position in December 2019 just before the company was sold in January 2020. After navigating several challenging years with companies facing private equity ownership, leadership changes, and mergers, I found my current position with TriStar Insurance Group just over a year ago, where I finally found the engaged leadership and team-oriented corporate culture I was looking for. I was also newly appointed as President of Kids' Chance of Florida, a nonprofit established in 2015 that provides scholarships to children of severely or fatally injured workers. In the past 10 years, we've awarded over $453,000 in scholarships to over 100 Florida scholars and their families, making a real impact in giving back to the industry.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Tammy
01What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges I see in our industry is that we haven't done a good job recruiting young professionals into insurance because people say it's not sexy. But I really think once you get entrenched in it, there's a lot of value - you get to travel quite a bit, meet with other professionals, and have intellectually stimulating conversations about specific insurance nuances, which I find really rewarding. We're facing physician shortages, which I think is across the board everywhere, and we're seeing a lot of people retiring out of the industry, so all of this industry knowledge is going away. The insurance industry hasn't done succession planning and mentorship well, and hasn't provided that expertise to the rising next generation. We're also seeing technology advancing at such a rapid rate, especially with AI being the big buzzword. I've been to a half a dozen conferences this year and everybody's touchpoint is AI, with so many different perspectives on how it's being utilized. I was initially reluctant to use AI for content creation because I thought it was plagiarism and not authentic, but after talking with colleagues at big multinational companies who use it as a game changer, I've started utilizing it. We're using AI not to replace people but for efficiencies, like having our adjusters and claims handlers record conversations with permission so they're automatically transcribed and dropped into the patient's file instead of trying to take notes.
02What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I've always been compassionate, especially with people that are vulnerable. I feel really strongly that they shouldn't be taken advantage of and that they should have dignity and respect. That's always been front of mind for me, especially in the healthcare industry and workers' compensation, because it's easy for people who have been injured and aren't sure how to navigate the system to feel vulnerable. You want to make sure they're getting the best treatment and care possible, because there are a lot of unreputable organizations out there where the intention is more about profitability than providing quality of care.
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