ACWORTH, GA, April 17, 2025 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Michael D. "Mike" Friedman has been selected for inclusion in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into consideration during the selection process.

Mr. Friedman is a distinguished veteran of the employee benefits segment of the commercial insurance industry. He currently serves as senior vice president/client relationship executive for McGriff, a Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC Company. With an impressive career spanning nearly 40 years, he has developed a profound expertise in understanding products, financial aspects, rate development, renewal projections, and calculations, specializing in companies ranging from 100 to 20,000 employees and 50,000 members. His dedication to his field is evident through his involvement in industry-related organizations such as the International Society of Certified Employee Benefits Specialists (ISCEBS) where he is a member of the Metro Atlanta chapter and Worldwide Employee Benefits Network (WEB) for whom he currently serves as the sponsorship chair for the Atlanta chapter.

Before joining McGriff, Mr. Friedman held the position of vice president/team lead of employee benefits at USI Insurance Services in Memphis, Tennessee; Columbia, South Carolina; and San Antonio, Texas from 2013 to 2024. During his time there, he demonstrated exceptional leadership by working closely with benefits producers and account managers, assisting their development and overall success while simultaneously managing books of business in excess of $2.5 million. Within six months of his arrival in San Antonio in February 2020, he led the transformation from a weak and struggling service team to a very strong team under the cloud of the Covid pandemic. This freed the benefits producers to concentrate on prospecting and selling new business without the worry of simultaneously servicing their accounts. One of his proudest achievements to date was recruiting to USI a producer with no previous large group, self-funding experience and mentoring him to expert status in a very short eighteen months. That producer was the top employee benefits producer in the Memphis office for five consecutive years and, today, is the local practice leader in Memphis. During his time with USI, Mr. Friedman was a three-time winner of the USI Summit Award, in 2014, 2020, and 2021.

From 2007 to 2013, Mr. Friedman served as an account manager at Coventry Healthcare of Tennessee/Louisiana. During his tenure at Coventry, he distinguished himself as an informal leader and the company policy subject matter expert. Mike was named Team Member of the Year in 2012, after the regional vice president stated in an executive meeting that "Mike is the Memphis office." Prior to that role, he was a new business manager at CIGNA Healthcare in Memphis, from 2004 to 2007 and the regional sales director at Sagamore Health Network (now part of Cigna Healthcare) in Indianapolis, from 2002 to 2004. His earlier career included positions as a senior account representative at Principal Financial Group in 2021 and 2022 and as an account executive at Maxicare Indiana, Inc. where he continued to demonstrate his talent as an informal leader of his lesser experienced associates. He began his career in 1987 as an employee benefits consultant trainee with Wausau Insurance Companies earning three promotions over the next 11 years, attaining the title of senior employee benefit consultant in 1996, the same year he earned his professional designations. Mr. Friedman actually began his tenure at Wausau working in the mailroom while completing his education by taking evening classes at the university.

Mr. Friedman's academic background includes a Bachelor of Science in business administration with a focus on management and operations from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, from where he graduated in December 1987. He holds several professional designations, including the Certified Employee Benefits Specialist (CEBS), Group Benefit Associate (GBA), and Retirement Plans Associate (RPA), each sponsored by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which he earned in 1996. Additionally, he is certified as a Georgia resident agent for life, health, and accident & sickness insurance and non-resident agent in approximately a dozen other states.

Beyond his professional accomplishments, Mr. Friedman has demonstrated his interest in civic-minded organizations. He has been a volunteer photographer for Find a Grave (findagrave.com) since 2006 and ongoing financial donor to the Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., (statueofliberty.org), Anti-Defamation League (adl.org) and Jewish Genealogy (jewishgen.org). He is a past volunteer for the Italian Genealogy Group (ItalianGen.org), a past donor to the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center, and past sponsor of three children through African Vision of Hope (africanvisionofhope.org).

His corporate community involvement included the Horn Lake (MS) Mayor's Youth Council, Gibson County (TN) Race for the Cure, and USI Gives Back.

In his personal life, Mr. Friedman cherishes time spent with family and traveling across the country during baseball season with a longtime friend.

About Marquis Who's Who®:
Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who's Who in America®, Marquis Who's Who® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field of endeavor, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Who's Who in America® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. The suite of Marquis® publications can be viewed at the official Marquis Who's Who® website, www.marquiswhoswho.com.

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