When Joyce Dobervich isn't singing jazz in her spare time — she used to sing at a jazz club in Minneapolis — she's focusing on benefits. The President of Sage Benefit Group Inc. riffs off on what she's learned in the business.

Stay courageous. I got into the business after spending several years in the biotech/med device arena. As you can imagine, payer relations and reimbursement are a significant factor for any med device/biotech company's successful market adoption. At some point in my career I became curious about the big picture of health care: Who pays for health care, how much does it really cost and who gets what? After studying medical savings accounts and consumer driven responses to health care inflation, I decided to become a broker.

Stay calm. My agency came to life in 2006. We initially focused on small group and educating brokers on the intricacies of instituting HRAs with HSA-compatible plans. I had been teaching a CE course in Texas up until 2011. When PPACA took flight, I basically abandoned ship overnight. The flux and cost associated with trying to stay current with the capricious implementation of PPACA was too exhausting for me. I'm sure many brokers have been in this position. I decided to stay calm and seek opportunity. Reinventing Sage Benefit Group hasn't been easy, especially when you decide to move from small group to large group. Today we've secured four “big“ clients. I'm very passionate about preserving the integrity of plan assets in the spirit of ERISA and was appointed, along with my partner, Ron Dobervich, by the 6th District Court in Michigan to analyze claims data pertaining to a summary judgment against a carrier convicted of selfdealing.