2022 Women to Watch Awards Americas EMEA
Debbie Peters Regional director, central
Aon PLC
Birmingham, England
Debbie Peters spent years building up her insurance and client services expertise in a niche sector of the business, and her ability to transfer her skills into wider fields has allowed her to take a much broader leadership role.
It took her awhile to get into the business initially, though. Leaving college at 18, she did a variety of jobs, including working in credit management at Hewlett Packard Co., before joining Sedgwick PLC’s trade credit insurance department in the mid-1990s.
After working at several other brokers, she joined Aon in 2009 and held positions of increasing seniority in its credit insurance business, rising to new business development leader for the line in the United Kingdom.
With more than two decades of experience in trade credit, in 2019 she took the opportunity to assume a wider management role leading Aon’s commercial risk operations in its Birmingham office.
“The U.K. role got me very well networked within the business and involved with larger clients, so when the Birmingham job came up it was a challenge really to step outside of something I’d been doing for 20 plus years to do something completely different and to really test my leadership skills and learn something new,” she said.
Her success in that role led to her current position as a regional leader for the brokerage.
Ms. Peters has been a model to other women in her decision to pursue a broader role, said Jane Kielty, chief commercial officer at Aon.
“Debbie has been an example to other females within the Aon organization and externally when she took the very brave move outside of her area of expertise to take a wider and much larger leadership role,” Ms. Kielty said in an email.
Outside of her insurance brokerage responsibilities, Ms. Peters is involved in mentoring and various initiatives to increase diversity at Aon, including the company’s social mobility group.
“Social mobility is really important to me, so that people don’t feel intimidated because of their background and can feel free to express who they are and take pride in what they’ve achieved,” she said.
