In the first in a weekly series profiling the hard-working people who make Bermuda's economy tick, XL Re's rising star Laurie Orchard speaks with Alex Wright

Achieving the right life/work balance is what top businesswoman Laurie Orchard is all about.

For the 35-year-old naturalised Bermudian, who is assistant vice-president of operations at XL Re Ltd., juggles her day job with being a wife, mother and athlete.

But Ms Orchard, who oversees the underwriting, legal and actuarial side of the business at XL, takes it all in her stride.

Ms Orchard started out in reinsurance as a temporary assistant with Stockton Reinsurance after following her husband Myles from her home in Ontario, Canada to Bermuda.

"My husband, who is Bermudian, was in the reinsurance business already and suggested I try it," she said. "The temporary position was a good one because I really wanted to find out what the industry was about and what I wanted to do."

Stockton were branching out into reinsurance at the time and Ms Orchard, who has a degree in English Literature and Psychology, was thrown in at the deep end working with the three men who founded the company and had to either sink or swim.

"It was all hands on deck," she explained. "I did everything from office management and answering phones to the underwriting, actuarial and legal side of the business."

Ms Orchard left Stockton and moved to Commercial Risk Reinsurance, where she focused on contract writing, the legal and marketing side of things, but she admitted that while she found it interesting, she always longed to be working on the business side.

Her next job was working for Renaissance Reinsurance with strategic partners before joining XL, where she is today still doing the same role, but with a much wider scope, liaising with the company's strategic partners, as well as ensuring operational efficiency, working in relationship management, leading key projects and implementing new strategies and methods to improve business and support issues in Bermuda, Australia, Singapore, London and Dublin, reporting to president and CEO Greg Hendrick.

She is also a mentor to several of her colleagues at XL and others in the reinsurance industry and reckons she has gone full circle from what she started out doing in the industry.

"It is absolutely suiting me - what my job today entails is sort of what I started out with," she said. "I feel like I have come full circle and now is where I want to be - I really need the understanding of the different areas to do the job that I do - I really enjoy it."

In addition to her work for XL, Ms Orchard has significantly contributed to promoting education, conduct and ethics within the Bermuda market through her volunteer activities, including at the Bermuda Insurance Institute (BII), which she has been actively involved with for the past seven years.

She is currently serving as vice-president of the BII and won the organisation's 2006 Young Reinsurance Person of the Year award jointly with Theresa Dunlop of OIL Insurance Ltd., as well as sitting as chairperson on the BII education committee and the Bermuda Insurance Market Exam Committee and ensuring the provision of educational reinsurance and insurance seminars and courses.

But one of the most important parts of her career is maintaining the correct life/work balance.

"When I started I was working and studying and newly married and running in the World Championships and I had a passion for all of these things, so I went full out doing them," she said. "But that is when I took a step back from racing - I had finished my exams, so I focused on my marriage and career first and sports and social life second.

"I have a new baby who is five months old and it is taking a lot of my time, so the sports and social life are really just a stress relief and to keep me healthy. As long as you set your priorities and they are coming from the heart you are going to keep yourself in check."

And Ms Orchard, who represented Bermuda in triathlon at three World Championships, believes you can apply a lot of the same principles used in sport in business and vice versa.

"When I was racing seriously I knew when I had had a good race and I had done my homework and lot of races are big and long, so you can't just show up and expect to do well if you haven't prepared properly and, likewise, in business, you can't just expect to turn up in a high position, so there is definitely a successive progression that you need to follow in both," she said.

"One of the things that is key is understanding where my strengths lie because every underwriter and lawyer is going to be different due to their own attributes because knowing your own niche is very important."

Another subject she reckons is continually evolving is that of equality in the workplace between men and women, with Government statistics revealing that men's earning potential is still greater on than women's on average and the total number of men in top jobs is larger than that of women.

"Historically it has been that this used to be a men's business, but the number of women studying to get higher professional positions is increasing more and more and you are seeing women getting to higher levels now," she said. "It used to be the case that a woman's place was a home for so many years and it is not just going to change overnight, but I still firmly believe it depends on the individual and unique benefits an employee brings to the company as to who gets the job."

Ms Orchard has seen the Bermudian versus guest worker debate from both sides of the divide, having qualified as a Bermudian three years ago after living in the country for 10 years.

"I have been a spouse of a Bermudian for 13 years, so I can't ever say I felt I was like a guest worker, apart from the first year when I was still acclimatising to the place, but my entire adult life was spent as a Bermudian and I have always been treated that way," she said. "I think Bermudians need to understand that having ex-pats workers here at higher levels provide them with an opportunity to learn more than if they had not had access to those people."

Ms Orchard believes she still has another good international competition left in her and if her sporting ambitions match her impressive career progression then there is no doubting she will get to the top.