Robelynn Abadie’s Inspiring Rise to the Life Insurance Industry’s Highest Honor

Robelynn Abadie, CAP, CHRS, LUTCF, CSA, RFC, RDA, a “legendary figure in the insurance and financial services industry,” according to NAIFA Immediate Past President Tom Michel, LACP, received the 2021 John Newton Russell Memorial Award at the NAIFA Belong Event.

The award is the highest honor accorded by the insurance industry to a living individual who has rendered outstanding services to the institution of life insurance. Abadie described the honor of receiving the award as the “most meaningful” of her career.

“I sat in the audience for at least 25 years watching the John Newton Russell Memorial Award recipients accept this honor and listened intently to their stories — early legends like Tom Wolff, Ben Feldman and Norman Levine,” she said in her acceptance speech. “The event always filled the room with excitement, and everyone dressed formally for the affair. It was a highlight for me to attend and sit amongst the giants of our profession. And for me to now be a part of this list of legends is extraordinary.”

Abadie said that before she became an insurance professional, she left an abusive marriage and found herself with no home, car, money or job and no college degree.

At the time she was recruited into the business in 1978, she was a single mother with two children under the age of five. She discovered she was talented as an insurance professional, but her new career did have its challenges.

“I soon realized that the insurance industry had relatively few female mentors and none for me locally,” she said. “I was in a very successful agency with 29 men and no other women. My manager, Warren Fountain, had me sign NALU [now NAIFA] membership papers the day I signed my contract and took me to my first local meeting. He encouraged me to get active.”

Abadie reached out to NAIFA’s national leadership and helped organize the Women Life Underwriters Conference, a group devoted to the support and mentoring of women in the industry.

“It provided me the opportunity to meet other women who helped me through some very tough times,” she said. “They gave me great hope and supported me when I thought my possibilities were limited.”

The conference eventually became Women in Insurance and Financial Services (WIFS), an association that thrives to this day. Among her many other accomplishments, Abadie was selected as the 2003 National President of WIFS.

She was also the 2009 National President of the Association of Health Insurance Advisors (AHIA), a conference of NAIFA. During the tumultuous health care reform efforts, she represented over half a million agents and advisors in Washington, D.C., at the Health & Employee Benefits Alliance on Capitol Hill. In 2010, Abadie was elected President of the Million Dollar Round Table Foundation in Chicago, an international foundation serving members in 74 countries. The Founder and Owner of Abadie Financial Services, LLC, an insurance and financial services agency in Baton Rouge, LA, she enjoyed more than four decades of success as an agent and advisor.

“Robelynn has served and continues to serve as a champion for women in our industry,” said Tom Michel. “She is someone all of us can look up to.”