Sunday, December 5, 2010

2010 Anuual Christmas Celebration


A time of year to celebrate. We celebrate the year gone past. We anticipate the year coming up. We take time to leave the work behind and just celebrate the friends, colleagues and partnerships we’ve made.

This is what the 2010 LAAIA Christmas Celebration was all about.

We enjoyed the cocktail hour with live music and lots of laughs.

The always elegant, Rudy Valdes-Diaz CPCU, emceed the dinner program, where we took time to present our annual Man of the Year and Woman of the Year awards.

For the Woman of the Year of award we recognized Marsha Watson. Marsha is Outreach Manager at Citizens and before that at FPRCJUA. For over 14 years she has been assisting over 8,000 agents with issues related to doing business with the largest insurer in the state of Florida. She helps provide training for agent across the state, assistance during the appointment process and help on a daily basis to agents with many questions and if she can’t help you she will go out of her way to find someone who can. She has worked very closely with the LAAIA all these years. Marsha’s favorite pass time lately is being a grandmother, the latest addition arrived just before Labor Day 2010.

For the Man of the Year award we recognized our very own Past President, Nestor Rivero, for his unfailing dedication to improving the insurance industry. He showed it be by teaching highschools students about insurance, to raise awareness of our industry through the InVest program. By his many trips to Tallahassee to sit with legislators to help them see the needs of the consumer, and how the independent agency system is the best way to educate consumers and help them reach their goals. Or by his dedication to the LAAIA and it’s message “United We Serve as a Voice for Independent Insurance Agents”. Nestor, exemplifies the true meaning of “Serve” in our motto.

The highlight of our event was the annual presentation to the Jackson Memorial Foundation of the check for $5,000 from our Toys For Children raffle campaign. Santa was their with the gift for the children. Thank you to our Gold Sponsor for the raffle, Fidelity National for helping us make some very special children smile.



We would also like to thank the sponsor without whom the Christmas Celebration would not be possible:

GOLD SPONSORS

AFCO Premium Finance



United Automobile Insurance Company


SILVER SPONSOR

Security Premium Finance Inc


BRONZE SPONSOR



AmTrust

Finally, we’d like to mention those associate members who went above and beyond and sent separate donations to the Jackson Memorial Foundation along side us QQ Solutions Inc and AccuAuto.