Christine Berry wears many hats. She is the Kim Sledge Endowed Chair and Professor of Risk Management and Insurance, director of the Small Business Risk Management Institute, and program coordinator for Risk Management and Insurance in the College of Business and Social Sciences.

After a five-month search process, her husband, Dr. Ronald Berry, was named the ninth president of the University of Louisiana Monroe, and with that announcement, Christine Berry, Ph.D., added First Lady to her long list of titles.

During the presidential candidate interview process, Berry stated, “When people ask me where I’m from, I say, Monroe, Louisiana, and I didn’t always know how to answer that question. I’ve lived in 11 different states and for no more than six-and-a-half years until I came to Monroe. I am going on my 20th year now, so Monroe is home and ULM is family.”

Where are you from?

“Where are you from?” is a difficult question for Berry to answer.

Christine Taylor Berry moved around a lot as a child and young adult. Berry’s father was a railroader, and she and her family lived in 11 different states, usually only staying in one place for one or two years.

Berry was born in West Virginia and moved to Kentucky when she was two years old, so her earliest memories were in Kentucky. From Kentucky, the family moved to Toledo, Ohio. At the end of third grade, her father told their family they were moving to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the town where the Groundhog Day tradition takes place.

Berry remembers telling her friends she was moving again. “It’s hard to keep friends when they know you are moving,” she stated.

But just before her family moved to Punxsutawney, her father was transferred to Michigan, and they lived there for eight months.

Years ago, if people asked me where I’m from, I would usually say Cincinnati because that is where I went to high school.

“Michigan was really fun because my family had a cabin in Canada, and we were closer to the cabin in Michigan. One of the best parts of my childhood was going to this cabin every summer. You actually had to boat an hour to it in northern Ontario. No electricity, outhouses. It was really a fishing camp, but we used it as a family vacation spot,” said Berry.

From Michigan, the family moved to Maryland for 10 months, then to Cincinnati, Ohio. “Years ago, if people asked me where I’m from, I would usually say Cincinnati because that is where I went to high school,” stated Berry. In high school, Berry was involved in the marching band and orchestra. “I was very much into music. I played handbells for our church choir. I was in the marching band and orchestra. I played the flute, piccolo, and even cymbals one year, and most of my friends were in the marching band.”

Berry’s family was avid sports fans, with season tickets to the Cincinnati Reds and Purdue football. Theme parks were also a big part of her childhood.

“I was a huge Cincinnati Reds fan ever since we lived in Kentucky. I loved going to baseball games and King’s Island. I am a huge amusement park buff, and now Ron and I are season pass holders at Walt Disney World and Universal Studios,” stated Berry.

“School has always been an anchor for me” Because Berry’s family moved so frequently, keeping friends was difficult. “School was my identity,” stated Berry.

In the middle of her senior year of high school, after living in Cincinnati for six-and-a-half years, Berry’s father is transferred to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Berry attended a large high school in Pittsburgh. The best thing about the move was the variety of course offerings at this high school.

“I buried myself in classes,” she said. “I remember taking political science, psychology, and a literature class called satire and death, and French. School has always been an anchor for me.” After the move, college applications were not a priority. It was the spring of Berry’s senior year when she and her father toured the campus of West Virginia University, where she enrolled the following fall.

She felt at home on WVU’s campus and loved the courses she took there. “ I loved being a part of college,” Berry said.

Berry started out as a political science major thinking she would attend law school. She then switched to psychology, and eventually ended up majoring in finance.

“Honestly, I didn’t like my finance classes much, but at WVU there was an insurance track, and I loved my insurance classes,” said Berry. “It was the perfect mix of money, law, psychology, and how people behave and manage risk, and I just fell in love with that.”

Terry Rose, Ph.D., was Berry’s professor in the finance program, and he was doing a presentation on the “Cost of Oncology” for the WVU medical school. He gave Berry and her classmates an assignment to do a research paper on the cost of oncology.

“He loved my paper and encouraged me to go to grad school,” stated Berry.

After graduating from WVU with her bachelor’s degree in finance, Berry enrolled in the doctoral program for risk management and insurance at Florida State University.

Like most doctoral students, her original concept for her dissertation changed. She ended up researching the impact of attorney representation on worker’s compensation claims.

After graduating with her Ph.D., Berry moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota, to begin teaching as a faculty member at St. Cloud State University.

Faculty to private industry

Berry was a faculty member at St. Cloud State University for two years. While there, she had the opportunity to teach social and health insurance and property and liability insurance.

“At some point, I got a call from a headhunter looking for someone to work with this reinsurance broker on special projects, and I was like ‘what about me?’ I had always been fascinated by reinsurance,” stated Berry.

Reinsurance is similar to a lender selling a mortgage. The policyholder will still have a policy with the original insurance company, but the company sells off a portion of the exposure to a different company to diversify risk.

“This is done constantly in the industry,” Berry said.

Berry left her faculty position to work for E.W. Blanch and Benfield Group in Minnesota and later in Dallas, Texas.

“I went from a nice little office to a cubicle, and no one called me ‘doctor,’ and I was like ‘what did I do?’” Berry laughed.

At E.W. Blanch and Benfield, Berry led an internationally recognized reinsurance training program. Berry helped develop courses and professional development for insurance and reinsurance employees.

Finding “home” at ULM

While at E.W. Blanch, Berry visited many different campuses as a guest lecturer, one of those campuses was ULM.

In 2001, a faculty member from ULM called Berry and asked if she was interested in taking over the Risk Management and Insurance program. She accepted, and in August 2001, Berry moved to Monroe from Dallas with her one-year-old son Michael.

“I moved here not knowing a soul, with a one-year-old,” said Berry, “I could not find a good daycare, and someone mentioned the co-op, now the Emily Williamson Laboratory School. That’s where Michael went, and we loved it there.”

Berry felt the pressure of being a mother, faculty member, and program coordinator, along with the other responsibilities she had and having to juggle everything at the same time.

“One of the biggest problems I find is that women are socialized to believe we have to do everything,” Berry said.

Berry and President Dr. Ronald Berry met during her interview process. She remembers when she was moving into her office and bringing boxes upstairs, Ronald volunteered help.

“My dad was helping me move and he said to me, ‘He seems really nice,’ and I was like ‘no, but he might be a good babysitter,’” laughed Berry.

Their first date was Sept. 14, 2001, and they were married two years later in the summer of 2003.

“We went to a justice of the peace. This was my second marriage, so we wanted something small. The justice of the peace was also in a tile store. Fortunately, the tile store had a display with a small fireplace mantel so it was a good place to take pictures” recalled Berry.

In 2004, the Berrys had a year of highs and lows. She was pregnant with their daughter Alea, and Ronald’s beloved mother fell ill and passed away before she got to meet Alea.

“Fortunately, his mother got to see him get married,” Berry said tearfully.

A month after Alea was born, Ronald Berry started as dean of the College of Business Administration.

Over the years, the Berrys have had the opportunity to leave Monroe to pursue other positions in leadership at different institutions. They chose to stay because “Monroe had become like home and ULM was where we belonged,” stated Berry.

I have never worked as hard as I do as the program director of the RMI program and I have never loved a job more than this job. I am dedicated to the RMI program and serving our students.

Professor, program coordinator, First Lady Berry has grown Risk Management and Insurance into a nationally recognized program with students securing extremely competitive internships and jobs all over the world, from Baton Rouge to Houston, Texas, to London, England.

Since 2015, the Risk Management and Insurance program has grown enrollment from 69 students to its current enrollment of about 125. Students have gotten jobs post-graduation at AmWINS Group, Inc., CRC Inc., Liberty Mutual Insurance, All Risks, Louisiana Worker’s Comp Corp., and many more.

“I have never worked as hard as I do as the program director of the RMI program and I have never loved a job more than this job. I am dedicated to the RMI program and serving our students,” Berry stated, “I think it’s so important to think about the whole student and not guide them down a path you set, but help them set the right path for them while giving them the tools to do it.”

Berry will continue teaching and leading the RMI program but is looking forward to her role as First Lady.

“I really look forward to getting out and telling the story of ULM and meeting alumni and hearing their stories. I want to learn more about all of our other academic programs at ULM,” said Berry, “Ron and I are a team and we are ready to serve ULM and the entire Northeast Louisiana region.”