Award-winning risk manager Millie Workman dies
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Millie Workman, a former Risk Manager of the Year and longtime risk management educator, died at her home in Plano, Texas, Jan. 29.
Well-known in the risk management community, Ms. Workman worked in the insurance sector before moving over the insurance buyer side in the 1980s. In the 2000s, she joined the International Risk Management Institute Inc. where she developed certification programs, contributed to the organization’s conference programming and managed the creation of continuing education courses.
Ms. Workman, 76, was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, and majored in biology at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. After graduating in 1969, she joined Crump London Underwriters in Memphis as an underwriting trainee. She went on to work at various brokers and agencies before moving into risk management at Care Inns Inc. in 1983.
In 1989, she joined Belz Enterprises, a Memphis-based real estate management and development company that owns the Peabody Hotel Group. In her time at Belz, she implemented changes that slashed the company’s workers compensation losses and reduced the medical costs of its benefits program, among other things. For her achievements, she was named Risk Manager of the Year in 1992.
In 1996, she joined residential plumbing products manufacturer Mueller Industries Inc. as director of risk management and human resources, and in 2004 she joined Baptist Memorial Health Care Corp. as director of risk financing.
Ms. Workman had long been involved with risk management education efforts – she was president of the Memphis Chapter of the Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc. when she worked at Belz and was president of the CPCU Society in 2005 – and in 2006 she joined IRMI in Dallas, where she later became director of training and education before retiring last year.
Among her other awards, Ms. Workman was inducted into the Tennessee Insurance Hall of Fame in 2002 and in 2006 she was one of the inaugural Business Insurance Women to Watch.
