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“When I first moved to California, I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I decided to try insurance or banking,” says Susan Preston, founder and president of Professional Program Insurance Brokerage [PPIB]. “These industries seemed to have opportunities to move up. Luckily, CSE Insurance Company gave me a job 38 years ago.”
For her first two months on the job, Preston fielded questions about homeowner’s and auto insurance for CSE before moving on to Blodgett & Associates, where she learned commercial insurance. When the firm needed someone to service churches, Preston took on that role (her main qualification was being a minister’s daughter), thus becoming the firm’s first-ever female broker/agent and subsequently vice president of sales. In 1993, Preston parted ways with Blodgett & Associates so she could establish PPIB. “Unusual programs were always my interest long before it became the fashionable choice it is today,” she says. “I took my tattoo, beauty and tanning clients and left the ‘vanilla’ business. Twenty-four years later, many clients are still with PPIB.”
Preston recognizes the endless potential in the insurance industry – after all, she has been able to reinvent herself many times over the course of her career. “There is no need to get stuck in a rut doing the same things year after year,” she says. “PPIB has programs for circuses, pyrotechnics, dispensaries, cryotherapy, e-cig products liability and body piercing, just to name a few. I have come a long way from insuring churches. If the insurance industry could get the message to young people that there are many exciting ways to go, prospective employees would be knocking at our doors.”
