Susan Stegman, MD

Dr. Susan Stegman is a Vice President Medical Director in the Underwriting department at Northwestern Mutual. In 2005 while still working as an internal medicine physician in private practice, she began her insurance medicine career as a part-time medical director at Ohio National Financial Services. Over the next 10 years she worked in similar roles at Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance and Nationwide Insurance, working directly with underwriters to assess mortality risk on life insurance applicants.

In 2015, Dr. Stegman left private practice for a full-time medical director position with Equitable (formerly AXA) where in addition to production duties, she also presented to in-house and industry underwriter groups on numerous medical topics and was a member of the Empowerment committee. In 2017 she served on the American Academy of Insurance Medicine Annual Meeting planning committee and attained board certification in Insurance Medicine.

In 2019 Dr. Stegman joined Northwestern Mutual as a Vice President Medical Director and expanded her skills to include disability underwriting as well as disability and long-term care claims evaluations. She continues to serve as a presenter for underwriter training, having recently given talks on obstructive sleep apnea and mood disorders. During the pandemic Dr. Stegman organized a departmental Steps Challenge to encourage employees to exercise regularly. Recently, she compiled research for a position paper related to the impact of climate change on the U.S. insured population. In addition, she is a member of the ACLI Risk Classification committee and is the Program Chair for the 2024 ACLI Medical Section Annual Conference.

Susan graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts in pre-professional studies and government and obtained her medical degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She has been married for 33 years to her husband Scott and has 3 grown children who now live in Chicago, Salt Lake City and Washington D.C.