Susan comes well-equipped to help Joyn revolutionize commercial insurance, with a background that includes product management roles at Marsh and Blackboard Insurance, as well as management consulting roles at IBM. At Marsh, she was responsible for managing several client initiatives, like a motor vehicle insurance platform, a rewards app that connects multiple insurance products, and a. professional liability platform. And at Blackboard Insurance, she managed the development of the company’s new technology-enabled commercial underwriting platform.
Susan also has a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Marketing from New York University’s Stern School of Business and has earned her Certified Scrum Master (CSM) designation. She was born in Chicago but spent half of her life in Seoul, Korea.
What’s your role at Joyn?
I’m joining Joyn as a Senior Product Manager, where I will drive the development of the company’s workflow and underwriting platform. I’ll be working with the business team to understand the requirements and work with designers to create the initial mockup. Then, I’ll create user stories to capture them so engineers can begin coding.
Once the results are delivered, I’ll test the system to make sure the results meet or exceed our expectations. This all contributes to Joyn’s success by creating an underwriting platform that drives efficiency, accuracy, and revenue. The underwriting platform is such an important piece of what we are doing because so many of the pain points that brokers and their customers loathe about the insurance process stem from inefficiencies that can be solved by bringing technology into the process. Whether it’s making submissions easy and transparent, providing real-time functionality, automating what we can, or using data to make underwriting better, we strongly believe in using technology to solve these legacy problems.
What attracted you to Joyn?
Whether you’re looking at ways to improve insurance from the carrier side, the policy holder side, or anywhere in between, the insurance industry, especially in the commercial space, is just ripe with untapped potential to leverage technology and make things better. So the mission and the problems Joyn is setting out to solve are ones that I believe in and I know are achievable.
I have also previously worked with many of the awesome people who are part of Joyn and I know I will be working with a team of talented, intelligent, and kind people. I firmly believe that success can only be achieved when the right people and culture exist, so when you have that opportunity, you have to take it.
Tell us about your passions and motivations outside of Joyn.
I love, love, love traveling! I usually make several international trips each year (before the pandemic), which requires a lot of research and planning—so it really is like a hobby because even if I’ve just finished a trip, I’m starting the process for the next one. I love planning itineraries, including activities, food, and backup plans. I also love reading news and blogs about cities I haven’t been to so I’m in the loop and can experience them like a local. I am also a new mother, so I’ve spent the past year learning about my new life as a parent.
