Driven to Teach and Armed with Knowledge

Chris Christian, CIC, RPLU, has, in her own words, “a compulsion to teach,” to go with her 26 years of insurance experience. Christian’s passion for teaching began in the Marine Corps.

“One of the things you learn in the Marine Corps is how to teach classes. In non-commission officer school, you learn to teach, you learn to present; so that kind of got me started…but I had nothing to teach for a while.”

Christian began her insurance career in 1985 with a retail agency. After six years, she moved to the carrier side; opening the San Diego branch office of RLI Corp. Even then, inspired by her experience in the marines in the late ’70s, and the inspiration of a few instructors, she had a desire to teach.

“When I was taking my CIC classes, Patty Carlson and Laurie Zangwill from the Insurance Skills Center at that time, were teaching a couple of the institutes I attended,” Christian explains. “I was very, very impressed with them, and I was a very young insurance person at the time, and young chronologically. I looked at what they were doing and just the whole process of learning about insurance and I said to myself, ‘Self, when I grow up, I wanna be like them.'”

As Christian gained knowledge, she looked for teaching opportunities. She got her opportunity in 1998, and has taught various continuing education courses ever since. On July 7, 21, 28, and August 4, Christian is putting her teaching talent to work for the Academy of Insurance.

Christian teaches students the “how to’s” of identifying professional liability exposures on July 7. On July 21 and 28, Christian leads students through a two-part class titled, “How to Read a Professional Liability Policy.”

How to match professional liability coverage to the insured’s exposures is the focus of Christian’s August 4 class. This class focuses on sorting through what is really covered on a policy and what is not.

“The most important thing that I like to communicate through all these classes is… where your regular business, your bread and butter, is declining, due to insureds going out of business and insurance revenues and rating base going down, the professional liability lines of business are a great cross-selling tool and a great way to continue to bring in revenue,” she says.

“There are a lot of professionals out there that don’t have insurance, or don’t have proper insurance, and it’s a good foot in the door to be able to go into a prospect and talk knowledgeably about their exposures.”

For further information on Christian’s courses, visit: www.ijacademy.com.

Topics Training Development