Michelle Lorenz

Background

About Michelle Lorenz

I LOVED my career & my insureds, who nicknamed me "Crane Girl." I’ve spent 25 years in the legal & E&S insurance fields, most of which has been managing catastrophic injury cases for the Crane & Rigging Industry. I'm proud of the partnerships I've built with brokers, engineers, lawyers & insureds across the US. Together, we brought niche expertise & customized risk management to a high risk industry, and together we transformed 200%+ loss ratios to highly successful programs year after year. In addition to my life as “Crane Girl," I became involved in ALS advocacy after I bred several dogs with the canine version of ALS called degenerative myelopathy. That evolved into co-founding a 501(c)(3) to advocate for people with ALS. My work with the ALS community has been the most purposeful work of my life. ALS is 100% fatal & PALS die within 2-5 yrs average. In 160 yrs of the disease, there have been no disease modifying treatments. The FDA's lack of urgency & regulatory flexibility have left people without hope when promising therapies are stuck in clinical trials. This must change. The NIH needs additional resources & pharma needs additional incentives to invest in research in rare diseases like ALS. We must create an easier mechanism to a path for drug approval. The NIH is forecasting the incidence of ALS will increase by 69% by 2040. It along with the CDC & ATSDR must do a better job of tracking the incidence of ALS and investigating causation. It is not enough to treat dying patients, we must halt this disease before it starts killing neurons. DOD must increase research into the reasons for the increased prevalence risk in post-9/11 veterans. A new study out of Military Medicine found risk to pilots & tactial ops officers was as much as 10x higher. Things such as burn pits, diesel fuel, permethrin treated uniforms, BMAA in the Middle East soil, industrial toxins like TCE, PFAS, concussions & hypoxia are atop the list of hypothesized associations. As Gen Mikolajcik advocated, we must equip our Vets with a "medical arsenal" to allow them to battle ALS. When not working, my mission includes helping transform the foster care system & spreading knowledge about trauma-informed care. I fostered a high risk child & quickly realized how the justice & educational systems are woefully inadequate to protect the most vulnerable of our children. But most of all, I love working with smart people who lead with their hearts. There is never a wrong time to lead with the right ethics.