2013 40 Under 40: Eddie Flodberg
Midwest Region Reprints
Area president
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.
Age: 30
Eddie Flodberg came into the insurance brokerage industry in 2005, recognized the industry suited his talents and personality, and used those attributes to quickly move up the ranks.
Mr. Flodberg en-tered the industry through Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.'s intern program after being recruited out of Purdue University. He was excited to be working for a company he thought “was going in the right direction.”
Mr. Flodberg has moved in the right direction, too, this year being named area president and branch manager of Gallagher's St. Louis office.
After joining Gallagher full time in 2006, Mr. Flodberg initially focused on public sector and the K-12 education business. “Certainly K-12 schools were my certain niche that I began calling on and I began working on right out of the box,” he said.
As a newcomer to the brokerage business, Mr. Flodberg found one key to success was communications.
“In any sales, particularly at a younger age, you need to build the trust of your potential client or existing buyer,” he said. “What I have always tried to do ... is to try to outperform. And I think one of the keys to that is communications.”
Only four months after coming aboard Gallagher, Mr. Flodberg played an instrumental role in the formation of the Rochester, Ill.-based Prairie State Insurance Cooperative scholastic pool. Bob Pegg, executive director of PSIC, remembers Mr. Flodberg as displaying an uncommon maturity for his age.
“Ed was so quick in acclimating himself to working with people who were twice his age and more in an environment that requires a fair amount of sophistication,” Mr. Pegg said. “It says a lot about Ed that he was able to do that so quickly out of college.”
Going forward, Mr. Flodberg is excited about the prospects for making Gallagher's St. Louis office “a dominant shop here in St. Louis.”
