Rachel Thuerk | Age: 40 Director of risk management

Vicinity Energy

Boston

Rachel Thuerk’s undergraduate degree was in mechanical engineering, but after graduating she had a change of heart. “Once I finished that, I said, ‘I would very much like to not be an engineer.’” Her next step was Monster.com.

“I put my resume up and got a call from a recruiter saying they were hiring for a role in a training program at an insurance brokerage,” she said. That, she said, was a “no-brainer” and she accepted the brokerage’s offer.

“I stayed at that brokerage for five years,” Ms. Thuerk said. “I liked it so much that I decided to get a master’s degree in risk management from St. John’s University.”

She then moved from the brokerage to working in risk management for Harvard University, where she stayed for nearly seven years before moving to her current position at Vicinity Energy.

Insurance “is a very stable industry and I’m lucky to be in it,” she said. “I’ve been at Vicinity for four years this coming January, and I’ve been in the industry for 17 years.”

Her favorite part of the job is “risk-control engineering, getting to walk through the power plants where it’s my job to insure them.” This, she said, helps her to have a better understanding of the business “than sitting in my office and having the reports sent to me.”

She has also become “an insurance evangelist.”

“I belong to a moms’ career networking group in the area. If they are looking for something else to do, my answer is always insurance,” Ms. Thuerk said. “There is insurance for everything.”

Elias Sakellakis, managing director of Aon Risk Services Southwest Inc. said that when she worked as a broker Ms. Thuerk was able to significantly improve the company’s response rate.

And as a risk manager, working with Aon, Ms. Thuerk and her team were able to dramatically simplify and revise the property and casualty insurance programs, ultimately reducing the broker service fee.

Caroline McDonald