EKCEP, Colonial Claims Internship Makes Career Change Possible for Floyd Countian Marianna Conn

After spending more than two decades as a paralegal, Marianna Conn decided it was time for a career change, and thanks to assistance from an employer-driven internship through Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP), that change recently became a reality. 

Conn spent a lot of time preparing to step onto a different career path, and specifically began looking for a way to get her foot in the door of the insurance industry as a claims adjuster. In 2021 she came across an ad promoting a new program that would prepare Eastern Kentuckians for just such a career. By the time she saw the ad, however, it was too late and the program's inaugural cohort had filled. Fortunately, though, it would not be the last chance she would have.  

“I was looking to get into claims, and specifically flood claims,” Conn says, adding that she first began preparing for a career in insurance in 2018. “I had pursued this endeavor on my own and got a lot of the training I needed, but there were still some things I was lacking as far as being able to get experience in the field.” 

The training program was first announced in May 2021 when EKCEP and Colonial Claims—a nationwide insurance claims adjuster company—developed a new remote, paid internship program that would not only assist Eastern Kentuckians in becoming insurance claims adjusters but offer opportunities for new jobs with the company. This new internship program, Conn thought, might be what she needed to help her get the experience to launch a new career.  

For Conn, it was an opportunity too good to pass up, so she applied when EKCEP and Colonial Claims announced their second internship program in June 2022. She worked with the expert career staff at Harlan Kentucky Career Center JobSight to get her paperwork and eligibility in order, and in just a few days gained acceptance into the program as one of a dozen new interns 

“I needed a mentor,” Conn says. “I found that with Colonial and EKCEP and was given the opportunity to join the internship program.” 

Conn was doing well in the program when in late September Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida as a category 4 storm, causing an estimated $50 billion in property damage. She says when the storm made landfall, her instructors changed their program in response, and it was soon after that she gained her first experience at claims adjusting. 

“The hurricane hit, and they moved into a different mode of teaching and trying to prepare everyone to begin working a lot quicker than was anticipated,” Conn says.  

And for Conn, especially, who wanted to begin working on claims in the field, Ian presented an opportunity to begin working sooner than she was expecting. She exited the internship and traveled to Florida to begin field work for Colonial Claims not long after the storm. 

Conn says she was nervous at first about the experience of traveling from Floyd County to Florida to begin her work, but she was fortunate at the same time to have her colleagues with Colonial Claims to lean on when she needed them. 

“No one can reiterate and stress enough how much that you have got to reach out for help, to use your resources [when they’re needed],” she says.  

By early November, Conn had returned to Eastern Kentucky, and says she’s currently planning for the career she first started working toward in 2018.  

“For me it was emotional and rewarding,” she says. “It was emotional because it was something that I had worked so hard for. In the blink of an eye it became a reality, and without this program I would not have been able to do that on my own.” 

EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about us at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.