Suzanne LaForge of Advantage: Small Business, Inc. receives the 2012 Entrpreneur of the Year Award from the Marlborough Regional Chamber of Commerce!
The health insurance industry is roiling with change from healthcare reform and inter-industry competition. With the advent of state exchanges like the Massachusetts Health Connector – now called the Marketplace – some thought insurance brokers would become obsolete. What’s emerged, however, is a need for small business consulting and implementation to ensure good coverage, best value, and compliance with the rapid-fire changes coming at the state and federal levels.
Suzanne LaForge is in her third year growing Advantage: Small Business, Inc., providing health insurance, supplemental gap insurance and related products and services to clients from Rhode Island to New Hampshire. Her focus as a benefits specialist is helping small business owners introduce health insurance and related benefits if they want to, or reduce the cost of what they currently offer where possible.
Suzanne’s geographic center is Marlborough, having moved her office and family here in October of 2013. Suzanne has lived in the area for over 30 years, including on Main Street in Marlborough, during her previous career with Digital Equipment Corporation>Compaq>Hewlett Packard. Suzanne has survived enough corporate acquisitions for a lifetime.
Suzanne is a member of the New England Employee Benefits Council. She is certified to sell health insurance at the Chamber of Commerce program (MACCE) lower rates, available to Chamber member Massachusetts businesses under 50 employees. Suzanne is licensed to broker health, disability, gap, catastrophic and life insurance in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island.
Currently, Suzanne is serving as president of the Marlborough BNI chapter of Business Networking International and serves as a Director on the Marlborough Regional Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. Suzanne’s educational background includes a BA from Delta State University in her home state of Mississippi; an MA in ministry from St. John’s Seminary in Brighton MA; business and marketing curricula at Insead and Harvard University. Suzanne credits 33 years of doing business with the best and brightest as the education that renders a whole from the parts in understanding interactions with other people. Delightfully, every day brings more of those people into the picture – through the Chamber, BNI, clients, insurance carriers, and healthcare providers. Overseas living, which Suzanne enjoyed working for Digital from1986 – 1990 in Hong Kong – creates global education all its own.
Suzanne has a daughter Daria attending the University of South Carolina and a son Cameron, a senior at Marlborough High School. The family is active at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Marlborough.
Please visit to learn more: www.advantagesmallbusiness.us