2023 Women to Watch Awards Americas EMEA
Rachel Cushing Senior vice president, head of professional liability products, financial lines
Chubb Ltd.
Whitehouse Station, New Jersey
An early prediction that Rachel Cushing was headed for leadership can be found in “embarrassing” old home movies of her writing and directing plays, ordering siblings, cousins and kids in her Cape Cod, Massachusetts, neighborhood to stand here and say this.
They still talk about it, she said, adding, “Those videos are extremely embarrassing — and funny.”
Between admiration for a neighbor who was a lawyer and her mother, who struggled alone financially to raise her and her siblings, Ms. Cushing said an interest in justice and the financial security of a career in law helped set her on her career path.
“I can remember being like seven or eight years old, and most people don’t know what they want to be, and I would say that I wanted to be a lawyer, and then I kind of stuck with that,” she said.
After high school, she attended the University of New Hampshire and later the Roger Williams University School of Law. She was hired as an associate attorney at Graham Curtin P.A., where she practiced for five years, focusing mostly on insurance defense. With an appetite for the sector, she joined Zurich Insurance Group in 2011 as claims counsel in the financial lines department. One year later she accepted a position in Chubb Ltd.’s claims department.
While Ms. Cushing says she enjoys the many facets of insurance, leadership is what drives her.
“I love leading a team,” she said. “I have an amazing team of experienced people that have so much industry knowledge. I learn from them every day, too. I love watching the team be challenged, meet that challenge, and then excel and jointly achieve a goal.”
Jenny Fraser, an assistant vice president at Amwins Group Inc., who worked alongside Ms. Cushing for several years while at Chubb, said Ms. Cushing’s legal background translated into a “unique perspective” for the insurance products side.
“She was somebody that we would go to for authority and just as a great resource,” she said.
Louise Esola
