Pamela J. Newman: Insurance Advocate’s 2015 Insurance Professional of the Year

Broad Vision, Cultivated Appreciation for Risk Itself and Incredibly Sophisticated Client Service Have Spelled Success for Aon’s Pamela J. Newman

By Frederick Wertz

The Insurance Advocate is proud to name Dr. Pamela J. Newman, President and CEO of The Newman Team at Aon Corporation, our 2015 Person of the Year. Dr. Newman has been a leading presence in the industry for years, as she has consistently proven that superior client service can make all the difference…and does.

Dr. Pamela J. Newman has cultivated a deep fascination with the evolving nature of risk and relishes the opportunity each day to study the businesses of her clients in order to help them navigate the increasing chaos of the modern world. Her team at Aon, which she has built from the ground up, has an industry-wide reputation for client service excellence, just as passionate about the people and their enterprises as their leader is.

Dr. Newman’s unique ability to serve her clients has vaulted her to the top of the ladder among producers in the insurance industry.

Although Dr. Newman’s ability to think critically, research exhaustively and paint analytical pictures of her clients’ businesses is instrumental to her success, what most often separates her from the pack of global insurance brokers is her deep affinity for people and relationships.

Dr. Newman is perhaps most talented at conducting business at the intersection of her lifestyle and approach to living. For Pamela, her business life and personal life don’t have much of a distinction – “it’s simply life,” she will tell you – and Dr. Newman is passionate about it. Insurance Advocate readers will enjoy this exploration of Dr. Newman’s approach to the business and her recipe for success.

You can’t even begin to understand Pamela J. Newman’s success without exploring the makeup of The Newman Team at Aon. This 12-member team is tasked with harnessing the expertise of the 66,000 people at Aon in order to deliver the firm’s full capabilities to their clients. Newman admits that “We don’t know all 66,000 people at Aon, but we do know how to find the right person at the right moment with the intellectual property in their head for what the client needs.”

Acting as a central nervous system for Aon is a key capability of The Newman Team. Dr. Newman clearly insists upon continuous improvement in this area. In fact, The Newman Team includes Martha Blackman, an Account Specialist with Aon who is also earning a graduate degree in knowledge management from Columbia. Blackman has performed knowledge audits for the Team and oversees organizing people and resources for their clients.

The Newman Team prides itself on being able to find the perfect person at Aon to address a client’s needs, and understanding those needs in the first place is another way The Newman Team excels. The Team strives to achieve a deep connection with each client and to delve into their specific enterprise and its business sector. This eagerness to be immersed in the world of their clients, combined with a knack for creativity, has consistently separated The Newman Team from competitors.

Shane Hogan, a recent addition to The Newman Team, remembers that he “had heard about the creativity of this Team with a lot of clients and the prospects that they were working with, and that’s one of the things that attracted me to this group.” Since joining the Team, he has been impressed with the out-of-the-box ideas the Team routinely produces, and noted that this kind of approach really resonates with clients. He continued, “When you’re in front of a client and they see the energy and the creativity, that translates to success in this business.”

The Team’s chemistry is evident even in a group interview session, held in what Dr. Newman refers to as “The War Room” – a corner office high above Water Street with a large, solid wooden table fit for serious battle planning. As one Team member answers a question, another chimes in with a recent example illustrating the concept. Dr. Newman then suggests a third member deliver their take on the example mentioned. This game of verbal volleyball happens so smoothly that it is obvious the Team is well practiced at this kind of collaboration and brainstorming.

At a time when many in the insurance industry are struggling to find their value proposition, Newman has cultivated a team with an obvious one. Her expertise and team’s creativity is intensely focused on fully understanding the business of each client, allowing a tailored approach that is difficult to match. Newman possesses a tenacious approach to knowledge acquisition:  “When studying up on the client I will go out and read as much as I can about their business and industry – you have to be researching and understanding constantly.”

Thanks to her thorough analysis and Team’s expertise, Dr. Newman routinely brings a value proposition of what an insurance broker does much higher than her competition. All too often members of the insurance industry rely on third parties to gather information and conduct inspections. By taking steps to become an expert in the needs of the individual and the organization, Newman and those who use her approach, leverage their deep knowledge to proactively provide solutions and point out risks that the client may not even be aware exist.

“It’s about figuring out the specific risks for each client – it varies widely, and that’s why you need to get to know the business inside and out,” says Dr. Newman. This immersive approach to client relationships also comes from a deep concern for the individual person. Dr. Newman acknowledges that a big part of her business is not just writing policies, but minimizing risk. To truly succeed in this area, one needs a high degree of empathy with each individual client.

Executive Vice President of Aon Risk Solutions, James O’Neill, comments that things Newman routinely does for her clients – thank you notes, handwritten letters, pre-meeting agendas and post-meeting minutes – are becoming more rare in the industry. “People frankly don’t have the time, but she makes it.”

And all her efforts have paid off. O’Neill comments that Newman “puts on blinders, and doesn’t think so much about the consequences of her competition – more so about what value proposition we’re going to add to the customer. The by-product is this great collateral damage – the battleship of The Newman Team leaves a big wake.”

This disruption is due to her singular focus on client relations and service. He adds that “She is just over the top on client service. If it’s something to do with the customer, it has to be done now, and it has to be done right. Everything has to be validated – it can’t be what we think is the best effort. She’s relentless.”

A key aspect to Dr. Newman’s devotion to her clients is her and the Team’s readiness in the case of an emergency. Dr. Newman understands that she is needed most when something unexpected occurs, and takes extra steps to make sure her clients aren’t left twisting in the wind. She aims to help her clients decide what needs to be done in the management of the issue at the moment it’s occurring, and also know whose expertise will come in handy immediately.

There is a clear attitude among her and her team that shows the human element plays no small role in this dedication. Dr. Newman relates the story of a client in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. After getting in touch with all clients in the danger zone, it became apparent that one general manager of a client company was having a particularly rough time. Worried about his mental state during this time of widespread death and destruction, Dr. Newman sent two Team members to Florida who then rented a car, stocked up on gas, and drove to New Orleans. They set up temporary headquarters in a trailer for several days in order to help him, and other clients, get back on their feet.

The Newman Team has also remained dedicated to their clients in the face of tragedy and disaster of their own. Their current Manhattan office, located right next to South Street Seaport, experienced some of the most damaging flooding of Superstorm Sandy. But that didn’t stop Martha Blackman from wading through a flooded lobby, up 34 flights of stairs in order to retrieve the Team’s laptops. Once the computers were distributed back in Dr. Newman’s apartment, the Team immediately compiled a list of their clients and began calling them one by one to find out how they could help.

Prior to their office on Water Street, Aon was located at the World Trade Center. Dr. Newman was out of the state when the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11th 2001, but Aon suffered tragic losses that day. Despite unimaginable grief, Dr. Newman made sure all of her clients were contacted the very next day: “We did what we had to do and focused outward, because that’s the better thing to do.”

Perhaps the most central theme to Dr. Newman’s success is her ability to blend with ease aspects of her professional and personal life. Dr. Newman maintains a smooth continuum between her professional life, her lifestyle and her enormous set of relations, gracefully blending all three. She admits there isn’t much distinction along this continuum for her: “It’s all very congruent for me in everything I do. There’s no business life and personal life, it’s just all my day.”

The gracefulness with which Dr. Newman interacts with her Team members, colleagues – and even a visiting high school intern, Jeremy, who is present during the interview – reveals that she values the person first and the professional relationship second. As she answers one of my questions about time management, an idea pops into her head – she pauses to give Jeremy a useful exercise he can execute to help him establish goals and manage time. Sure, he is related to a client of hers, but at this moment that’s irrelevant – Jeremy is here to learn, and Dr. Newman will not pass up the opportunity to teach.

Her approach to living is clearly highly relationship based – after speaking with her for only a few minutes, it becomes obvious that Dr. Newman has cultivated an unfathomably huge network of relationships both inside and outside the insurance industry. She boasts an impressive resume of “extracurriculars” — she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of the Police Athletic League, Economic Club of NY and the Associate Committee of the Juilliard School, to name a few of the dozens of organizations she participates in. For the most part, she credits relationships and fortuitous timing with getting her involved in many of these organizations.

Dr. Newman admittedly has business in mind in some cases – in her industry, maintaining an expertise in foreign relations, for instance, is key to understanding the dynamics of global risk. Others, such as the Stella Adler School of Acting, originate from personal passions of Dr. Newman. Undoubtedly, her ability to establish relationships has been central to her professional success. Being well-practiced at seamlessly integrating the personal with the professional is a key driver of success in today’s insurance industry – the more subtle you can be in this area, the more you will succeed.

Her interpersonal skills and business acumen clearly contribute to her enormous success, and although her academic background is foundational, it may not be obvious. In her doctoral dissertation, earned at the University of Michigan, she studied the campaigns of nine U.S. Senators running for re-election, correctly predicting a shift towards professionally-run campaigns.

Dr. Newman is quick to recognize the impact her studies have had on her career: “I went to school and studied these things, and much more than people realize what I learned in school has really paid off. When Martha and I sit in this room, as we often do, and work through a strategy – we work off of the premise that research shows there’s a primacy effect in the dynamic of every meeting – people will remember what is said at the beginning, and they’ll remember what is said at the end. But all that stuff in the middle, you don’t tend to remember. So if you’re going to get a message to someone, you have to get it to them at the beginning and end.” This kind of analysis seems to pervade much of Dr. Newman’s thinking, and she has no shortage of academic knowledge.

Having co-authored two textbooks (Organizational Communication and Behind Closed Doors: A Guide to Effective Meetings) Dr. Newman continues to write at least one book annually. Several years ago, she began authoring books to give out as a creative holiday present. Her writing in these books, usually aimed at sharing her wisdom, experience and enthusiasm for living with her readers, exhibits her deep desire to participate in the transfer of knowledge – not too unlike her role managing The Newman Team.

One final area that Dr. Newman has succeeded in is her influence on others, particularly the members of The Newman Team. The effect she has on her team is clear in the way they listen intently whenever she speaks her mind, but the members of The Newman Team won’t be shy about their loyalty to Dr. Newman if you ask them. Nancy Montalvo, an Assistant Vice President at Aon Risk Solutions and member of The Newman Team relates that “She has open door policies – you can just come in and talk to her whether it’s work related or whether it’s personal. She’s very family oriented and she respects that we have a life outside of work too. In all my 22 years of working in the insurance industry, I’ve never been so happy to work with such a team.”

Shane Hogan, who had identified The Newman Team as his ideal place to work seven years before actually joining, is particularly excited to finally be able to take advantage of Dr. Newman’s tutelage: “I’m sure you’ve heard before that this is a people business and I believe that to be fundamentally important to success. I think that the whole idea of a team, and having a leader of a team who brings out the best in everyone – that really resonates with clients. When you’re in front of a client and they see the energy and the creativity, that translates to success in this business. And I think that Dr. Newman is responsible for a lot of that. Bringing out the best quality in people so that when you’re in front of a client or buyer, that resonates with them.”

The quality most central to her success – her ability to blend her personal, social and professional lives gracefully, avoiding the clumsy collision of these two spheres that plagues many inside and out of the insurance industry, is illustrated in every single relationship she maintains, whether it’s with a Fortune 100 CEO or a visiting high school intern. It comes down to the simple fact that Pamela J. Newman loves people. Her deep consideration for those around her has allowed her to get the most out of her team and clients and has turned her into an executive very worthy of emulation … and of Insurance Advocate’s top citation for an insurance professional.