Mike Alexander steps into president role at Jewelers Mutual

Heather Graves

Staff

August 25, 2025

NEENAH – Growing up, Mike Alexander said his childhood took him from Delaware to Europe and back again – a global upbringing that shaped the leader he is today.

As he steps into his new role as president of Jewelers Mutual Group, Alexander – now a seasoned professional – said he continues to lean on those experiences.

“I’m an incredibly fortunate individual, and I want to make the most of this,” he said. “[I] am really looking forward to working with folks hand in hand to take the companies to the next level.”

Educational, professional background

Alexander earned bachelor’s degrees in history and geography, as well as a master’s degree in geography from the University of Delaware. 

He said he got his feet wet in the insurance realm at National General Insurance (formerly GMAC Insurance) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“I started out in P&L (profit and loss) management over six to eight states,” he said. “I quickly got acclimated to the GMAC way of doing business. I had a really great experience there as a product manager, overseeing product and pricing for my entire region of states.”

Alexander said learning the financials of the business and collaborating with groups cross-functionally to drive initiatives across the organization in his first role with National Sales and Strategy at National General “was an incredible experience.”

Alexander said his last role with the company was as senior vice president of sales and strategy – where then “I oversaw the entire distribution of the entire organization.”

“That’s a whole different world,” he said. “It is understanding how you drive top-line [growth] through an organization, how you motivate sales leaders, drive profitable growth and how you diversify business models. That gave me a really unique insight, added experience that, when I look back, was a key component to my growth and development as a professional.”

Before joining the Jewelers Mutual team in 2015 as the senior vice president of commercial lines, Alexander said his connection with the company and its leadership started before he even moved to Wisconsin.

“In my last role at National General Insurance, Scott Murphy, who is our CEO, was my mentor,” he said. “Scott is the one who brought me to North Carolina originally.”

When Murphy was hired for the CEO role with Jewelers Mutual, Alexander said “he and I had a conversation.”

“He said, ‘Mike, I’d love for you to join me up in Neenah, Wisconsin,” he said. “At first I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. You want me to go from North Carolina up to Wisconsin?’”

However, Alexander said Murphy continued to talk to him about the role – encouraging him to transition out of the “private equity-type/stock-based company” side of the industry to a mutual company.

“He said, ‘They are the 800-pound gorilla in the jewelry space,’” he said. “At first, I was like, ‘I didn’t even know what that means – jewelry insurance?’”

Those conversations, Alexander said, continued, and Murphy continued to share details about the company with him.

“I started asking him a bunch of questions, and he started telling me about the company,” he said. “What Scott did was he opened up the door and let me peek [into] what was Jewelers Mutual. How they were positioned in the marketplace. What products they were offering. And he and I sat there and white boarded the endless opportunities for innovation.”

As he continued to ponder the offer and the potential relocation of his family from North Carolina to Neenah, Alexander said he “felt like this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“That’s what attracted me to the organization,” he said. “Saying, ‘Hey, listen, we can come in here, do some really cool things and hopefully we can set the company up for the next 103 years – I joined when the company was 103 years old, and I’ve been here for 10 years.’”

When he made the move to Jewelers Mutual, Alexander said “we started working our way down the priority list.”

“[Focusing on] things we thought would have the greatest impact for Jewelers Mutual and all of our policyholders – and I’ve never looked back,” he said. “It’s probably been one of the best moves I’ve ever made. It’s an incredible company. There are incredible people here. This is an incredible industry. We have incredible partnerships, and I’m incredibly lucky to be part of this journey.”

Joining Jewelers Mutual as senior vice president of commercial lines, Alexander said, provided him with an opportunity to “get to know, appreciate and understand our jewelers.”

“It [helped] me understand how they perceive Jewelers Mutual, and how we interact – not just with the jewelers themselves, but the industry as a whole,” he said.

Very quickly, Alexander said his responsibilities at Jewelers Mutual expanded to the other side of the business as well.

“Our CEO gave me access to our other side of the business, which was our personal lines division and our personal jewelry insurance product,” he said. “And I’ve had the privilege of leading that for about eight years.”

Furthermore, Alexander said he also began overseeing “all our non-insurance entities” – including research and development, shipping and the warranty, care and appraisal program.

“I’ve really worked with our teams to spearhead those initiatives and launch those out into the industry, and they’ve been very, very successful from that perspective,” he said. “And I also lead mergers and acquisitions – which is a very critical portion of accelerating our strategy.”

Transitioning roles

Looking back at the experiences he’s had – both at National General Insurance and Jewelers Mutual – Alexander said the strategy, innovation and culture development opportunities “have really prepared me for the role I’m entering today.”

“As president, one of the big things I’ll be doing is overseeing the execution of our strategy across all phases of our business – working closely with the executive teams to drive profitable growth,” he said. “As well as maintaining all the operational-type responsibilities that go along with the role.”

An aspect of the role that he is looking forward to, Alexander said, is “I’m going to call it the cross-functional coordination – across data, technology and then our customer experience.”

“It’s the intersection of those three things, taking our business to the next level – when we think about how we need to prepare for the future,” he said.

Alexander said Jewelers Mutual has a “highly successful business model” in place, but in his new role as president, he aims to extend a larger focus on the needs of customers.

“The biggest priority is staying incredibly close to our customers, understanding their needs and providing value to our customers,” he said. “We have to look closely at that coordination between data and technology and moving that as close to the customer as we can, to provide those exceptional customer experiences.”

Lastly, Alexander said he aims to focus on finding additional ways to give back to the industry, as well as Jewelers Mutual partners and customers. 

“Really thinking about those enterprise-wide initiatives and continuing to support the customers through all those avenues,” he said.

Having had the opportunity to lead a variety of different teams across all aspects of the business, as well as through periods of growth and change, Alexander said, has helped shape his leadership philosophy and will help the transition into the role as president “go really smoothly.”

“I have a close relationship with our CEO – we’re so in tune and lockstep to how we see the business and how we see it evolving and changing,” he said. “So, I think for an organization, that makes for a very seamless transition.”

In the new role, Alexander said he “obviously needs to rethink” how he shapes his individual organization to help prepare himself and the team for that anticipated future growth.

“[That will include] taking a closer look at the [company’s] overall strategy and continuing to figure out how we execute [that] across all phases of our business,” he said.

Proud of growth, ready for more

As he embarks on his new role with the company, Alexander said he’s proud of what the Jewelers Mutual team has been able to accomplish thus far.

“I think what we’ve done here at this organization, how we set it up, how we made sure this company is going to thrive for the next 110 years,” he said. “That’s really what this is all about. It’s incredibly rewarding.”

Alexander said having a part in helping evolve, reinvent and diversify the company “is a source of great satisfaction.”

“We’re not dictated by a shareholder,” he said. “We’re not dictated by private owners – of ‘I want this or I want that.’ We listen to our customers, we listen to our partners and then we go after that, and we give back to the industry in that way.”

For him, Alexander said it feels like Jewelers Mutual has been “doing this the right way.”

“It’s been incredible to see the employee engagement, the connection with the industry and the success that has followed,” he said.

Since joining Jewelers Mutual, Murphy said Alexander has constantly made his mark by developing innovative customer solutions, delivering strong business results and inspiring those around him.

“I have full confidence in Mike’s leadership and capabilities,” he said. “And [I] am certain that, with him in this role, we are well positioned to execute our strategy and drive continued success.”