Insurance exec turned jewelry designer and human rights activist

“I just had a real passion for this, and felt like, quite frankly, that God was taking me a different way”

Insurance exec turned jewelry designer and human rights activist

People

By Sam Boyer

A former top insurance executive at Lloyd’s of London North America and the Navigators Group, LoriAnn Lowery-Biggers now designs jewelry and helps fight human trafficking and child abuse.

Talk about a change in direction. Since largely leaving the insurance world – although she still remains active on several insurance boards in a non-executive capacity – Lowery-Biggers has mostly split her life between her diamond jewelry company and her various non-profits.

When Insurance Business spoke with Lowery-Biggers, she had just arrived home from Sydney, Australia, where she’d attended a conference for a global NGO fighting human trafficking. She spoke about leaving her insurance job to focus on her other passions.

“I decided that I really wanted to focus on more charitable, NGO-type things,” she said. “I was [already] very involved with some of the refugee initiatives and was extremely involved in a number of child protection [groups]. I just had a real passion for this, and felt like, quite frankly, that God was taking me a different way.”

Lowery-Biggers is now on the boards of Prevent Child Abuse America; the A21 Campaign, an anti-human trafficking charity; PropelWomen; Equip and Empower; and Global Advance.

In her charitable capacity, she has visited the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and elsewhere in the Americas in defense of civil liberties and for the protection of abused and exploited women and children.

And then, in a quite different direction, and what Lowery-Biggers calls her third “passion”, is jewelry. She is the CEO and co-founder of BellaVaughan, a global diamond and design company.

Having begun designing her own jewelry a number of years ago – with her partner who would become her co-founder in BellaVaughan – she made a leap of faith.

“It really started because various people in the industry would ask me, ‘where did you get that piece, my wife has a birthday coming up,’ or whatever the case may be,” she explained. “So we started designing and manufacturing one-offs for them, and then it grew and grew and grew. It was a bit of a side gig, a bit of a hobby, I would say.”

But what started as a hobby, with Lowery-Biggers designing pieces on planes between insurance engagements, morphed into something much larger when BellaVaughan was picked up by a global distribution company.

“It was the right time for me to transition. It’s an amazing thing, when you say ‘yes’ to something and determine you’re going to take the jump … things really tend to work out for the best.”

Lowery-Biggers, a sixth-generation Texan, moved back to Dallas from New York in 2008, where she lives with her husband.


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