Declaration of Independents

Randy Wentworth

Personal Lines and Claims Manager
Chalmers Insurance Group
Maine and New Hampshire

Randy Wentworth, 44, is a 1987 graduate of InVEST, the Big “I” career awareness program for high school and college students. Insurance doesn’t have the hottest reputation among young people, but the former medical technician and nursing student is working to change that.

Biggest InVEST takeaways?

As a student, I was most interested in the business skills I was learning, thinking I would use them in medical management or hospital administration. I planned to study nursing in college. [InVEST taught me] the basic skills you need to enter the insurance work force—business skills and terminology taught through real-life experiences, not just textbooks. Our teacher made sure we were exposed to real life. There was a lot of role playing as agent and customer. We did mock interviews, wrote a business plan and “started” our own agencies.

What’s the plan?

To establish job shadowing and InVEST at schools in towns where Chalmers has offices. For us, the InVEST school-to-work concept has yielded a number of long-term employees. InVEST funds the program and the curriculum is already done, so teachers don’t have the start-up work. A serious industry issue is finding talent to replace people retiring. Like a good sports program, we need to set up a great feeder network, and InVEST is that.