Vikki L. Pryor
President and Chief Executive Officer, SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance Co., New York, N.Y.
Vikki L. Pryor’s personal motto, “you can achieve your dreams,” is the same one that drives her company, SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance Co. As president and CEO, she has indeed led the charge, halting the company’s decade-long decline. Today, SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance has about $17 billion in insurance in force, assets of $1.5 billion, $120 million in surplus capital and nearly 400,000 policy holders. Customer satisfaction is at an all-time high—it reached 97.2 percent in 2004—and the company has enjoyed an average annual sales growth of 22 percent since Pryor signed on in 1999.
She has also implemented several community-service initiatives at SBLI, including contributions to the Alzheimer’s Association, America’s Second Harvest, Habitat for Humanity International and the American Diabetes Association.
Pryor previously was the senior vice president of operations at Oxford Health Plans, senior vice president at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts and director of Allstate Insurance Co. She is also a former trial lawyer who worked in the Office of the Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service.
Even with such stellar professional achievements, parenting her son, now 17, is “my biggest contribution to the world,” she says. “I have learned more about myself because of him.”
The world has much to say about Pryor. A respected speaker and writer, she has received a great deal of recognition for her corporate and private endeavors. For example, The Minority Bar Association of Western New York awarded her the President’s Award for her community leadership and Girl Scouts of America gave her its Leading Women Award.
Pryor received both a bachelor’s and a law degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also received an honorary doctorate of human letters from Sacred Heard University.
In her spare time she enjoys traveling and hitting a few rounds on the golf course.
