Higginbotham elevates trio

Higginbotham elevates trio | Insurance Business America

Benefits

Higginbotham elevates trio

Stalwart handing off day-to-day oversight to two leaders

Benefits

By
Terry Gangcuangco

Higginbotham has made three executive promotions within its financial services division.

Michael Parks is now president of financial services, while Koby Hackradt and Carter English will serve as chief operations officer and chief business officer, respectively, of employee benefits.

A stalwart at Higginbotham for nearly 35 years, Parks will transition from leading employee benefits to focusing on overarching executive strategies across various departments.

“Michael is a big-picture thinker,” stated Rusty Reid, chairman and chief executive of Higginbotham. “He can look at every side of a decision and figure out exactly where and how things should fit together.

“As the company grows and moves forward, we need his keen mind working ‘on the business’ more than ‘in the business’, so we’ve moved him up and expanded his role. That gave us the opportunity to tap a pair of great new leaders to fill his previous post managing day-to-day operations in employee benefits.”

Hackradt, who previously held the position of managing partner, has been with Higginbotham for more than 14 years.

Commenting on his new role, he said: “Employee benefits service is such a vital part of the company, and we owe that to Michael Parks. With the company also growing from a single-state shop to 16 states and counting, day-to-day management of those services has become an enormous task.

“That Michael was able to build a team under him and hand over responsibility when the time was right says so much about his character, his foresight, and his leadership.”

English, also promoted from managing partner, now oversees revenues and sales in his new capacity as chief business officer.

“We’re filling big shoes in a rapidly growing company, so Koby’s going to be handling operations while I look after revenue and sales growth,” English highlighted. “He’s got all things facing accounts — account management and servicing, and our value-added services — while I’ve got all things facing producers — sales, growth, and carrier relations.

“It’s a team effort, which works great for us as we both have a background in football and football coaching.”

He also had nothing but nice words for Parks: “Michael has always been a mentor to me and Koby. Now he’s handed the employee benefits keys off to us, and we are determined to make him proud. Hopefully in the next 20 or 30 years, we’ll get to do the same for the next batch of leaders here at Higginbotham.”

The newly promoted executives all hail from Texas.

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