Parting thoughts

I am very grateful for my long, fulfilling, and yes, exciting career covering the insurance industry. Indeed, thanks to my work at National Underwriter and the Deloitte Center for Financial Services:

I traveled the country and the world, including spending 10 of the most memorable days of my life in India working with my Deloitte research colleagues in Mumbai.
I sat in a Broadway theater watching a demo for insurers showing off all the safety that prevent the chandelier at "Phantom of the Opera" from falling on the audience.
For a feature story on how coverage was placed at Lloyd's of London, I actually "sat on the box" with one syndicate underwriter on the trading floor as he assessed risks brought to him in person by various brokers. Quite the joker, he introduced me either as his psychiatrist treating him for stress caused by all the bad business he'd been writing, or said I was a journalist investigating corruption among Lloyd's brokers like them! (You can't have an experience like that with electronic trading!)
I shook hands with Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger at a Lloyd's dinner in his honor, thanking him personally for not landing on top of my NU office building in Hoboken when he ditched his plane in the Hudson River.
At insurance conferences, I met and chatted amiably with Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, as well as two of my favorite TV actors — Raymond Burr of Perry Mason fame, and Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, who talked tech as the keynote speaker at an ACORD meeting.
I brainstormed the future of business media and made lifelong friends from around the world during a two-week symposium at Stanford University.
I forged a decade-long bond with the brilliant, resilient actors and staff at CO/LAB, a theater group for those with developmental disabilities, as part of Deloitte's annual Impact Day.
But most importantly, I've worked with scores of brilliant, talented, and caring people over the past 42 years, many of whom have become my closest friends. I'd like to acknowledge some of them here (apologizing in advance if I leave anyone out).

At National Underwriter, I thank the current leadership of Patricia Harman, Elana Ashanti Jefferson and Rosalie Donlon, along with earlier NU editors Bill Coffin and Shawn Moynihan, for graciously allowing me to continue to publish a column here for the past 13 years after I switched careers to join Deloitte. And, of course, a big shout out to all my former colleagues when I was NU Editor in Chief, including David Katz, Rick Gilman, Susanne Sclafane, Colleen Mulcahy, Lisa Howard, Lee Gjertsen Malone, Phil Gusman, Steve Piontek, Peggy Walker, Kim Tallon, and the dear departed Tom Maher, who made life under constant deadline pressure not just bearable but fun and exciting.

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