Managing a team of Senior Injury Adjusters, I provide guidance as they navigate the world of represented and litigated injury claims. Since beginning this position I have taken my team from being a loose collection of people with the same job description to being a tightly knit group who consistently reach settlement with their Plaintiff’s Counsel week after week. Staying abreast of the most recent jurisprudence, maintaining intimate knowledge of the rules of court and remaining intellectually curious about all aspects of my job has allowed me to gain credibility among my peers and subordinates. My results speak for themselves and speak also to a model of leadership that gains collaboration and inspires people to action.

Providing guidance and mentorship to a team of injury adjusters. I provide sober second thought to adjuster assessments, guidance in defending customer policies and evaluate the relevant contextual information that drives adjuster decision making processes. Coaching negotiating strategy and assessing risk on more complex files in order to meet Corporate goals within the insurance framework. Monitoring and redistributing workload based on skill, experience and complexity consistent with our Corporate Strategy. Ultimately, I exist to empower our adjusters to meet customer expectations, while minimizing overall claims cost, in an effort to keep insurance rates low. This implies paying out claims efficiently and within the tolerances of the Corporation, while ensuring customers continue to receive the support they need to recover their lives after a vehicle accident.

Administering claims, assessing risk and negotiating settlements with customers. These tasks require deft handling in order to navigate a rigid framework of entitlements amidst a sea of customer expectation and eager legal firms. I work with an array of complex claims involving catastrophic accidents, under-insured motorists, wage loss, children and prolongued rehabilitation-- files that require a solid understanding of policy and of how to communicate their benefits to customers. Meeting customer expectation is often harried by the realities of the claim; and in this this respect risk assessments must be revised continually as new information is brought forth. Meanwhile, demands must be tempered through objective and rational explanation in a way that promotes customer confidence in ICBC.

Being a military instructor is a core skill set of any Senior Non-Commissioned Officer in the army, and I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve taught dozens of courses, ranging from recruit to advanced skills and tactics. Recently, I’ve been doing this on weekends as I completed my university degree. I take people from all walks of life, who’ve chosen to serve and train them to do complex things in complex environments. Being an instructor is a profound responsibility. I am the first true interaction most recruits have with army life and it is my job to teach them all the skills that will allow them to be successful soldiers in a way that ensures they want to continue the challenge of being a soldier. I am typically responsible for sets of up to 12 students, planning their training, monitoring their progress, assessing performance and communicating these details, along with recommendations to higher leadership. It is also my job to mentor junior leaders, coach them in their instructional techniques and develop their leadership.

“Problem Solver” might be more appropriate, because frequently my responsibilities began where someone asked: “how do we do that?” Examples would include “Sergeant, we have a senior officer deploying to Afghanistan, he needs to be trained up for the position- how do we do that?”; “Sergeant, we have a vast array of disaster preparedness equipment; we need to be able to deploy it in an emergency how do we do that?” The appropriate response was always “Ma’am, I’ll handle it.” Reporting directly to a Captain and a Sergeant-Major, this position required me to assign responsibilities to my staff, meet with key personnel and liaise with outside distributors and suppliers; all to ensure the success of each project. I was responsible for inventory, maintenance and procurement of all equipment in the organization, from pencils and computers, to weapons and vehicles. I streamlined the process of equipment distribution, consolidated our tracking system and refined our paperwork processes. My largest project was setting up an offsite distribution center to a training school at the Pacific Regional Training Centre in Chilliwack, in support of military courses being run there. At the beginning there was a desk and a chair, by the end of week two there were 15 staff, a fleet of military vehicles, and all the equipment necessary to allow 120 personnel to conduct army training. This was a high paced environment that involved a lot of trust, awareness of regulations and laws, as well as attention to finances.

Working in an office environment at the military equivalent of a head office, I was responsible for finding personnel to fill national and international vacancies. This meant finding instructors for various training centers around the country as well as personnel to deploy on UN and NATO missions in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, the Golan Heights and Afghanistan. Often high priority, these positions came on short notice (sometimes as little as 30 days) and required creative solutions. In one instance I needed to send a Captain to Ontario for 12 weeks, however, she was new to the province and had only 4 days to find someone to take care of her Bassett Hound before she left. In order to achieve the needed objective I volunteered to look after her dog for the duration, alleviating some of the Captain’s stress and using a personal approach to problem solving. In 2004, the city of Kelowna was threatened by raging forest fires throughout the Okanagan valley. Thousands of homes were evacuated and the military in BC was asked to assist. It was my responsibility to find the nearly 300 personnel and equipment, already dispersed throughout the country on training courses and exercises. I consolidated them and brought them back to BC over the course of a single weekend in order to deploy to Kelowna.