Welcome to Mary 2.0

Where to start?

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I am a native Atlantan, growing up in Sandy Springs. After graduating high school, I headed west to the state of Texas, specifically Southern Methodist University in Dallas. I loved my four years at SMU, participating in Greek life as well as in Program Council, holding officer positions in both. I graduated with a BA in German and a BBA in General Business. I fell into the insurance industry quite accidentally. The only thing I knew about insurance was from a car accident back in high school. I happily joined the Accelerated Management program that Aetna offered and spent 3 years as an adjuster, a hard job but an EXCELLENT learning environment. I had to learn quickly how to investigate and assess liability as well as establish reserves for settlement of claims...and of course a great deal of conflict resolution and how to deal with difficult people. It was here that I had my first introduction to Risk Management software as we switched from green adjuster notes (paper) to eCARMA.​

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I knew adjusting wasn't for me, but what next? Off to graduate school. UGA had (and still has) a top ranked Risk Management and Insurance Program within their business school, which would allow me to take advantage of the foundation of insurance knowledge I had built. Plus they offered me a full scholarship, so I was off to Athens, GA. While there, Professor Dowling announced that UGA wanted to establish a graduate level exchange program in Germany...given my bachelor's degree, I thought this was a no brainer. From Athens to Erlangen for a year. 

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​When I returned from that adventure, I had an offer for a position back in Dallas, this time as an Information Manager in a Risk Management Department for a professional staffing firm. I was exposed again to a RMIS (eCARMA) but the perspective changed from an adjuster to that of consolidator of data and analyst. The company's biggest exposure was in Workers Comp and we ran actuarial numbers twice a year to reallocate premium costs based on claim costs and payroll by job class code. The RMIS couldn't handle the complexity, so I did most work in excel, creating spreadsheets with increasingly complex formulas.

 

Now we have a slight veering off course. Consider this a small intermission. I entered into the entrepreneurship space and a whole different type of Risk Management, opening and running a bakery with my sister-in-law. 

 

While a lot of hard work and fun, after three years I was ready to return to my RMIS roots. I landed at STARS/CS STARS in 2000 when it was a fledgling company within the Marsh brokerage world. I stayed there for 11 years serving in a variety of roles: leading implementations, managing a team, starting up a help desk support model, driving improved processes as Director of Quality and Risk Management. I enjoyed my time at STARS but felt like I was stagnating. Luckily a start up called Origami Risk just happened to be looking to hire as I was starting to look around at options.

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From 2011 through 2023 I worked at Origami Risk. I was Employee #15. It was a bit of the wild wild West in the beginning years, but a great place to work. We grew quickly. After just a few years, there was a need to create teams. I was one of three persons chosen to be the first team leads. I served in that capacity for almost the entire rest of my career at Origami, including a stint as the Director of Service for our International Operations. I ended my career there as a Principal Solution Architect in 2023 with a lovely semi-retirement party to send me off.

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If you're still reading (and I hope you are), let me tell you where I am now! I took a few months off to clear my head...and decided I still wanted to work. My gut told me there was a need/market for my unique set of skills, so I started up my own boutique consulting house.

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If you become a client, you are not a number. You will never have to file a ticket. I am here to provide creative sustainable solutions and support you as you manage your risks.

 

If you like what you've read and want to know more about how to engage me, see below