2019 Women to Watch: Krista Glenn
Posted On: Dec. 2, 2019 12:00 AM CST
Krista Glenn
Chief claims officer
IAT Insurance Group Inc.
Raleigh, North Carolina
Age: 51
Krista Glenn has accomplished a lot in three years since she joined IAT Insurance Group Inc. Tasked with restructuring the claims department, she met the challenge head-on.
“It’s been a complete rebuild of claims,” Ms. Glenn said. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based insurer “comprises a number of companies that have come together over time, all with their own way of handling claims. Part of my challenge was to have one united IAT claims group and bring all of the individual teams together.”
Ms. Glenn had not planned on a career in insurance. She graduated early from law school, which meant that the district attorney jobs she was interested in were not yet available.
A friend with a law degree who was working in insurance claims suggested Ms. Glenn join her. “The job was at (American International Group Inc.) in the environmental claims department. And while I had no idea what environmental claims were at the time, I found that I liked it more than I thought I would,” she said. “I didn’t intend to spend my career in claims, but it’s been great for me and I’ve been in the industry since 1993.”
After AIG, she spent several years at Cigna Corp. before spending more than a decade at Ace Ltd.
Patricia Henry, retired head of Chubb Ltd.’s global government affairs group, worked with Ms. Glenn in the early 1990s as claims handlers in complex asbestos and toxic tort claims.
“I managed the group, and Krista quickly established herself to be one of the smartest, hardest-working people in the group,” she said. “She organized information-sharing among her peer group so that everyone did better, and she took on leadership well beyond her years of experience.”
As a working mom since the beginning of her career, Ms. Glenn has striven to help women find balance while moving forward in their careers. “I’ve worked to help them understand that you’re not going to be 100% of everything to everybody every day, but you have to find a way to balance that out.”