2022 Women to Watch Awards Americas EMEA
Leah Cooper Managing director, global consumer technology (international)
Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc.
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Leah Cooper says she’s a big believer in destiny.
“You are where you’re supposed to be; somehow you end up where you’re supposed to be in this world. And I tend to go with the flow,” she said.
For her, in 1997, that was a supply closet in Unum Corp.’s customer service department, which had a training program in which new hires would spend several weeks learning different facets of insurance. Given nothing to do, as the department was waiting on IT to set up a new system, she volunteered to organize the office supplies.
When she asked for something else to do, someone mentioned “databases.”
“Well, they’re just reports, how hard can that be?” she said, acknowledging, “I didn’t know a thing about databases. I didn’t know where the data was stored; I didn’t know how it was stored.
“A project came up where we had to create a technological solution in a week, and so that was when I really dug my heels in and I said, all right, give me a couple of books, give me a week, don’t bother me. That’s how it all started.”
After taking some classes, and a little self-teaching, she had found her niche.
Today, Ms. Cooper heads a team of 100, running Sedgwick’s technology labs and all the client-facing technology offerings, including platforms for workers compensation claim inquiry, intake and online claims reporting.
In some ways, she’s still organizing.
“The data science programs that we’re seeing today are truly transformational,” she said, adding that programs now enable the industry to predict what happens next throughout the life cycle of a claim, or predict when someone needs intervention. “The predictive modeling that we’re seeing on medical-related claims today allows us to know so much,” she said.
Jason Landrum, global chief information officer at Sedgwick, said Ms. Cooper “works tirelessly to drive technology innovation forward” and “does a great job working with our operational areas and customers on solving business problems that our industry faces with new technology products.”
