Rosa Royo is the Director of Worker’s Compensation and Loss Prevention at Miami-Dade County Public Schools. A graduate of Barry University, Ms. Royo has been a Risk Manager for over 30 years and has specialized in Worker’s Compensation for the last 20 years. She is employed by Miami-Dade County Public Schools and supervises a high-volume customer-service-driven worker’s compensation program. In 2016, she relaunched the Rebuilding Me program to include providing athletic trainers, meditation, and cooking demonstrations to the district’s transportation yards, resulting in a reduction in claims of 61% over three years. In 2018 and 2022, Ms. Royo was recognized by Risk and Insurance magazine as a Risk All-Star. In 2019 she was a Comp Laude honorable mention and a Business Insurance Woman To Watch. She was awarded the Rosa Royo Legacy Award in 2023 by Bloom magazine. Under her leadership, the program was honored with its second Theodore Roosevelt (Teddy) award in 2023. In today’s episode of the In The Know podcast, Chris Hampshire and Rosa discuss the role that effective risk management plays in one of the nation’s largest school systems, the importance of incentives and education in employee engagement, and key components of the bright future of the insurance industry.

Key Takeaways

• Rosa highlights the journey that led to her mission-driven work.

• The most appealing part of engaging in the worker's comp industry.

• Rosa’s approach to determining key challenges in one of the nation’s largest school districts.

• Incentives are not the reason people come to Rosa’s programs, but they definitely helped pique employee interest.

• Identifying specific solutions in a larger picture program with reports and data.

• The evolving role of data in making better decisions in the risk management space.

• Tactics for effectively getting the voice of the risk management department heard.

• Rosa’s take on the evolution of Florida’s worker's compensation laws.

• Rosa reflects on her achievements as the 2023 Teddy Award winner.

• A school administrator’s take on DEI in the insurance industry.

• Ideas for attracting new talent to the insurance industry through more effective storytelling.

• A five-year look at the future of the insurance industry.

• Rosa reflects on the lessons she has learned from the early days of her career.

Quotes

• “I am a strong believer that if there’s a problem… effectuate change.”

• “That was the point when I said, ‘I need to change this. Something needs to happen.’” 

• “We need to take these programs to the people.”

• “This is an industry that has really tackled diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

• “This is a great industry. There is so much opportunity for everybody.”