Declaration of Independents: Miles Lee

• By: williamjones
• July 1, 2026

Miles Lee

Transportation insurance broker

McGriff

Savannah, Georgia

A graduate of the University of Mississippi, Miles Lee set a clear path for his career upon earning his degree in risk management and insurance. After attending a Young Agents Committee (YAC) event in Athens, Georgia—where he met carriers, other agents and wholesalers—Lee learned that political advocacy was one of the best ways he could give back.

“I think advocacy and fundraising were never more prevalent or needed than they were for the fight at the Capitol [for tort reform],” Lee says. “During that time, I realized that insurance is top of mind for everybody—it doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner or an individual who buys homeowners and personal auto insurance.”

Winning the 2025 Young Agent Of The Year Award?

It was an honor to even be considered and nominated, and a true surprise to be chosen as the winner. It’s more than recognizing me as the chairman of Georgia YAC; it just goes to show that we have a really good group of people in Georgia who work their tails off for our committee. That’s what this award is about—recognizing the work and the jobs that they did throughout the year. I was super excited that Georgia was recognized for that, because it was a big year.

Record Charity Fundraising?

It was under my leadership, but it had very little to do with me. The charity I picked was the Catch-A-Dream Foundation, based in Starkville, Mississippi. The group takes kids with life-threatening illnesses on an all-expenses-paid hunting or fishing adventure of a lifetime. Our golf tournament and fundraising committee created new sponsorship opportunities and stretched every dollar so that we could provide the most to Catch-A-Dream, ultimately raising roughly $78,000.

Advocating For Tort Reform?

During the tort reform battle, it was talking to clients, sharing client testimonies with legislators, and informing them how to help through the national or state-level political action committees, because that’s one way it would directly impact the insurance industry.

Insurance costs are going up faster than inflation a lot of times, so I took that as a great time to educate and inform clients, individuals and friends about what’s going on: “Here’s the behind-the-scenes of why your costs are continuing to skyrocket.”

YAC involvement?

I first got involved with the YAC through my cousin, Jimbo Floyd, with Turner, Wood & Smith in Gainesville, Georgia. He’s an immediate past chairman of the Independent Insurance Agents of Georgia board. We got to serve in leadership positions at the same time, which was just how the chips fell. He was still involved with the Georgia YAC and invited me to an event they were holding in Athens.

After that, I got connected with a lot of folks in the group, and then a year or two later, I was asked to join the board and served on the board for a couple of years, and then was nominated and voted to run through the chairs of secretary, treasurer, vice chair, chair and now I’m the immediate past chairman.

I’m almost 35 years old now, so I’ve still got several years before I age out and I look forward to staying involved in the group and helping them continue to grow.

InsurPac fundraising?

As a board, we all agreed that we were going to set the bar at a meaningful minimum donation level that we wanted our board to contribute. At the end of the day, it’s not going to break the bank, but it shows our commitment as a board and as a committee. When we did that, we really started seeing individual contribution levels increase.

It wasn’t anything I did, it wasn’t anything that I said. It was just that, as a board and as leaders of our group, our actions set the bar and set the standard. We got a really good response from young agents all over the state who aren’t on the board.

Every time we were together, we shared where these dollars went and how they impacted the industry. Last year, that was a little bit easier to explain because we were fighting for tort reform.

YAC charitable golf tournament?

The Catch-A-Dream Foundation was a group that my dad was very involved in since 2009, and I started doing some volunteer work in 2019. It’s a very impactful organization for my family and me.

We raised close to $80,000 for the charity through numerous ways, but one of the big things was at our sales and leadership conference we put up a personalized video during our luncheon that went through the details of Catch-A-Dream and learned about their mission and vision. 

Bringing that back to my kind of leadership mentality—if you’re bought in and are sold on it, you love it and know it and you express that, the hop is, it’s going to trickle down to everybody.

What do you love about insurance?

Insurance is still very much relationship-driven, so when you have the opportunity to build that relationship with your client or even somebody brand new that you hope to become a client one day, makes our job fun.

I also work in a niche industry within the insurance industry, so understanding the daily challenges clients and others face—and them realizing how the economic decision that was made will impact the transportation and logistics industry—is important.

Talking to them and understanding, because something happened in the world, it’s going to impact the supply chain for the United States, which is going to impact their business. The relationship, and fully understanding their business, is what I truly enjoy.

Olivia Overman is IA content editor.