2021 Women to Watch Awards Americas EMEA
Catherine Mulligan Global head of cyber, reinsurance solutions
Aon Reinsurance Solutions, a unit of Aon PLC
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
After deciding against a teaching career and lacking the funds to attend law school, Catherine Mulligan was looking for a place to put her education to good use.
Where else but the insurance business for a woman who majored in English and women’s studies at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.?
“The insurance industry ended up affording me a great opportunity to apply my critical thinking ability in a diverse set of ways,” she said.
She started as an underwriter in the late 1990s with a focus on technology risks at Chubb Ltd. She has worked as a broker and as head of professional liability at Zurich North America. Since 2017, she has led the cyber practice group for Aon’s reinsurance solutions.
Critical thinking serves her well in her current role, Ms. Mulligan said, “because we are thinking about portfolio-level problems and broader strategies. It’s important for me to be able to pull together themes and trends, not only on what’s happening currently but in a forward-looking way for our clients.”
Her education also left her unexpectedly prepared for her efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace. “I was a women’s studies major, and no one thought it would play out in the long term,” she joked.
“Catherine is a woman of conviction,” said Kathleen Savio, chief transformation officer at Zurich Insurance Group. “She holds deep-seated perspectives on the business topics that are important to our industry and also on a number of social topics — women in business, in particular.”
While the ratio of men and women in the insurance business is nearly equal, inequities begin to appear above entry-level positions, Ms. Mulligan said. “For white women, the data show it is more of a slow slide” up to the level of senior vice president, with a “much sharper drop” for women of color, she said.
Addressing these inequities calls for attracting and retaining talent within an opportunity-rich and “collaborative environment that creates a feeling of inclusion,” she said.
