Melissa Menard | Age: 48 Senior vice president, health care practice

Brown & Brown Inc.

Boston

Melissa Menard jokes that her career as an underwriter began after she was kicked out of accounting in her first job with Liberty Mutual Holding Co. Inc. more than 20 years ago.

Her manager at the time said she asked a lot of questions and encouraged her to try underwriting. She set up informational interviews for Ms. Menard with the underwriting team, and the rest is history.

Ms. Menard said that manager, with whom she still speaks, helped position her for success and has been a leadership example to her ever since.

“I think about what people have done well in leading me, and I try to pay that forward and mirror that behavior with the teams I manage,” she said.

Ms. Menard held a variety of leadership positions in the industry before joining Beecher Carlson’s health care practice three years ago to drive sales. Brown & Brown, which bought Beecher in 2013, rebranded the unit earlier this year to Brown & Brown Risk Solutions.

In June 2021, she was voted in as the executive director of the Rhode Island Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Association, the health care practice’s largest client.

After the death of George Floyd in 2020, she helped launch Brown & Brown’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council, which is largely focused on diverse talent recruitment. Her mother, who she said has been her greatest mentor and inspiration because of the challenges she faced as a banker at a time when women — particularly Black women — generally didn’t hold such positions, also inspired her to be part of the solution.

“I felt an obligation to serve as that kind of role model for other people,” she said. “Having women leaders is important, if for no other reason than it brings a different lens and a different perspective.”

Andy O’Brien, partner at Construction Risk Partners, who has known Ms. Menard since they worked together at Liberty Mutual, said, “Melissa is fearless, and she sets an example for the women around her. She has the rare ability to engage a room and people skills you really can’t teach.”