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Zurich's head of benefits Sarah Staggs considers big picture and small details

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Zurich's head of benefits Sarah Staggs considers big picture and small details

While Sarah Staggs, head of benefits at Zurich North America, can explain the “big picture” impact of benefit costs on the insurer's bottom line, she has the ability to also get “granular” when it comes to explaining minute details to her team members and other employees.

Ms. Staggs said she learned both techniques from her training as a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools system, where she worked after graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts in social studies.

She said she was later attracted to benefits management because of its focus on education.

Ms. Staggs has two adult daughters, both of whom are pursuing doctorates in their respective fields. Her daughter Emily is living in Montana studying infectious diseases among large mammals, while her daughter Kirsten is studying epidemiology, focusing on the effect of the environment on human health.

Meanwhile, Ms. Staggs says she and her husband, Mark Almberg, consider themselves to be “social scientists.”

“We appreciate science, the concept of making a hypothesis and testing it to find out whether it's right or wrong, and then looking at the data and evidence to see where it takes you,” she said.

The couple, who live in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on Chicago's north side, also recently became grandparents when their daughter Emily and her husband, Michael O'Connell, gave birth to a daughter, Maeve, on Feb. 10.

“Sometimes when you work with benefits people, they just don't really think about the company impact as much. But Sarah does,” observed Brian Little, head of human resources for the Schaumburg, Illinois-based North American unit of Swiss insurer Zurich Insurance Group Ltd. and Ms. Stagg's supervisor. “Sarah's also good at explaining to leadership that "It's not just about numbers; it's about people and employees.' “

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