DES MOINES — When he was in a leadership position at Aflac Insurance, Fred Crawford would say the company, with its successful commercial branding — yes, that duck — was blessed with “raw material” not many companies have. It was up to the company’s managers to make something with that raw material.

Crawford says he now feels the same way about the Vaughan Institute at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. And about Iowa — a state known throughout the nation for its thought leadership in insurance and innovation, Crawford said.

That raw material is what Crawford, a UI MBA alum and the former president and chief operating office of Aflac, will be thinking about this as Tippie’s first executive in residence.

“We’ve been blessed in the state of Iowa. We’ve been blessed with a lot of great raw material,” Crawford said recently during an interview. “The issue is how best to leverage that raw material to take it to another level.”

Crawford will serve as executive in residence through the 2026 spring semester.

“I’m very excited about it,” Crawford said. “I’m brand-new to it, and I’m now immersing myself and understanding the inner workings of a business school at a university and respected faculty, and how you leverage this raw material that we have here at the university to advance the ball for the Vaughan Institute.”

The executive in residence position is largely voluntary. Crawford will be paid $15,000, a UI spokesman said. Crawford also is a board member for the UI Center for Advancement.

Crawford, who recently retired from Aflac, also held executive leadership positions at CNO Financial Group and Lincoln Financial Group. A native of Palatine, Ill., he graduated from Indiana State University and earned his MBA from UI’s Tippie College of Business in 1987. While at Iowa, he taught marketing at Tippie and was an assistant coach for the Hawkeyes men’s and women’s track and field teams.

Iowa specialty

Few places are better than Iowa, a hub for insurance companies, for students to learn about insurance, Crawford said.

Iowa is second in the nation in insurance and finance employment per capita, according to a March 2022 economic impact study from Muller Economics for the Iowa Insurance Institute.

It’s first in the country in insurance industry output as a percent of GDP, according to figures from the state’s economic development agency.

The state has 7,000 insurance and finance companies with nearly 95,000 employees, according to the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

“You know, I was born and raised in Chicago, and in my career I’ve worked for insurance companies in Philadelphia and Indianapolis and most recently, Aflac, which is located down south of Atlanta, in Columbus, Ga.,” Crawford said. “All of those companies having national footprint, and in the case of Aflac, international, with major operations in Japan.”

“To a person, across the country, when you mention the state of Iowa and insurance, they view Iowa as a special place that has created and incubated a lot of thought leaders in the insurance space, everything from the companies that are domiciled here to even thought leadership as it relates to regulatory landscape and now, most recently, innovation.”

Crawford said it goes back to his belief that Iowa has the “raw materials” upon which UI’s Tippie College and the Vaughan Institute must capitalize.

“You have the raw material associated with the University of Iowa and its background in business and actuarial studies and its reputation. You’ve got the raw material of the state of Iowa as one of the most respected, I would say easily top-five respected states. when it comes to insurance from all aspects of it,” he said.

And then you have now the Vaughan Institute, which has created a reputation in of itself for excellence around insurance,” he said.

“And so the issue becomes, as we move forward, how do we work together to leverage that raw material to take it to another level? That’s part of what I feel like I’ve been brought into to help others in doing.”

Risk management as a career

One of Crawford’s primary roles at Tippie will be working on curriculum in the college’s risk management and insurance program and creating a new professional development program for specialists in the risk management and insurance industry, according to UI.

Risk management in insurance means businesses making smart decisions about projects by looking at what might go wrong and coming up with strategies that help them control possible downsides, according to Tippie’s Vaughan Institute.

The field encompasses thinking about and projecting trends in climate change, cybersecurity, health, financial markets, and even pandemics — basically every aspect of people’s lives and the economy, the Vaughan Institute notes.

The career pays well, too, with salaries in the insurance industry $42,000 higher than salaries in noninsurance fields.

“The Vaughan Institute plays a primary role in connecting that (risk management in insurance) ecosystem to the student experience, the faculty experience, and the achievement of a degree” in risk management insurance, or RMI, Crawford said.

“The way I personally like to think about it, and we think about it, is that when an individual graduates from the University of Iowa with an RMI degree, not only do they graduate with a bona fide and highly ranked nationally RMI degree, but they also graduate having a lot of experiences intertwined with the broader insurance ecosystem and risk management ecosystem by virtue of the Vaughan Institute,” Crawford said.

“So, we think that makes for a great student experience, a great faculty enhancement experience,” Crawford said. “It makes our students much more marketable and naturally able to hit the ground running when now moving into industry.”

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