Feature Spotlight #100 - Susan Stewart-Magaña

The Woman Behind the Stories.

One hundred women.

One hundred careers, journeys, lessons, risks, reinventions, heartbreaks, victories, and voices.

For ninety-nine HER.Spotlights, Susan Stewart-Magaña has been the woman behind the words. The one asking the questions. Listening for the story underneath the résumé. Finding the thread that makes each woman different. Then quietly stepping back so someone else could have the spotlight.

But there was really only one way to mark number 100.

This time, we turn the spotlight around.

Because before there was Her.Collective, before Her.magazine, Her.Ignite, the chapters, and the events, and one hundred women whose stories have now been shared, there was simply a woman building a career in an industry she never planned to enter.

And perhaps that is exactly where this story should begin.

She Didn't Choose Title. Title Chose Her.

Susan's title story began almost by accident. Fresh out of college, she was working in the mortgage department of a bank when she began meeting title representatives who would stop by the office. They encouraged her to consider the title side of the business, and eventually she took the chance.

Her first title job was with SunWest Title, now Backman Title, in St. George, Utah. She still credits DJ and Spring Johnson for taking a chance on her and giving her the opportunity to learn the business from the ground up.

She learned the foundational pieces of title examining and escrow processing, but what would eventually define Susan's career was not simply understanding the transaction.

It was understanding the people inside it.

In 2006, another leap took her to Colorado, where Bridget Langkamp and Leo Hebert once again took a chance on the newcomer. Bridget taught her the language of the business, the discipline required to succeed in sales, and perhaps most importantly, how to become an authentic partner to clients rather than simply another salesperson. Those lessons stuck.

So did the relationships.

More than 25 years later, Susan will tell you that the people are still what have kept her in this industry.

Finding Her Voice.

Susan's career continued to grow, but confidence did not always grow at the same speed.

As a younger woman in sales, she often felt she had to work harder to be taken as seriously as older or male colleagues. Instead of allowing that to harden her, she built credibility the slow way.

Consistency. Reliability. Knowledge. Showing up.

Then came leadership.

In 2013, Susan stepped into a Vice President of Sales and Marketing role for First Integrity Title Company in Colorado. She will also readily admit that becoming a leader taught her just how much she still had to learn.

Managing people exposed her to different personalities, perspectives, insecurities, ambitions, fears, and communication styles. She began to understand that leadership was less about having the loudest voice in the room and far more about learning how to listen to everyone else in it. That realization changed her.

She became fascinated with helping people recognize their own potential. She loved brainstorming ideas with employees, developing their confidence, and helping them see possibilities for their careers that perhaps they had not seen themselves.

And somewhere along the way, she discovered another part of herself.

The Teacher.

Susan began teaching and presenting, eventually accomplishing a longtime personal goal of becoming a college professor. For five years, she taught marketing at Regis University's business college. The accomplishment meant even more because of what it took to get there.

Susan completed graduate school in the middle of a divorce, while raising three young daughters and navigating a new life as a single mother. There was no perfect season to chase the goal. There was simply the decision to keep going. That season became one of the foundations of the woman and leader she would become. As she puts it, this is where she learned deeply this pillar for her life:

"Just keep showing up with a smile, no matter how scared, unsure, or tired you feel."

Don't Let the Hard Days Win.

If Susan could offer one piece of advice to a woman beginning her title career today, it would not be about sales strategy, networking, leadership, or even title insurance.

It would be this:

"Don't let the hard days win!"

Because there will be hard days.

There will be seasons when you question whether you belong. Seasons when you wonder whether your work matters. Times when the promotion does not happen, the idea does not land, the relationships change, the opportunity disappears, or life outside the office suddenly becomes far heavier than the career inside it.

Susan knows those seasons intimately.

Her philosophy has become remarkably simple.

Keep going.

Keep showing up.

Keep doing the work.

Eventually, the tiny wins begin stacking on top of one another. Confidence begins replacing fear. Experience begins replacing uncertainty. And sometimes, years later, you find yourself sitting at your desk after a conversation with a client and realize something in that quiet that is truly profound: I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

A Career Built on Reinvention.

One of the most interesting parts of Susan's title story is that there has never been just one version of it. She spent sixteen years on the agency side of the business before moving into national underwriting, where Donna Anderson became another influential mentor. Donna's calm confidence and deep knowledge helped Susan navigate an entirely different side of the industry. Susan learned how to look at the business through the eyes of both the agent and the underwriter.

Different roles. Different companies. Different chapters.

But the common denominator has always been the same. . .

Susan loves helping title agents grow, protect what they have built, and become better at what they do.

When Life Changes in an Instant.

Today, Susan’s journey has evolved again, but this chapter came in a way she never could have prepared for.

In the spring of 2026, her husband, Jerome, suffered a sudden, life changing medical emergency that landed him in the ICU and ultimately required multiple surgeries and an extended hospitalization. In an instant, Susan went from wife and partner to caregiver, advocate, decision maker, and the person responsible for stepping into the business Jerome had spent years building.

There was no transition plan. No training period. No time to get ready.

While sitting beside her husband in the hospital and navigating some of the most frightening days of their lives, Susan also picked up his phone, opened his computer, learned his systems, called his clients, managed renewals, worked with carriers, and began learning the complexities of Select Specialty Insurance Services, a business dedicated exclusively to protecting title agencies.

She learned it in the fire.

And she kept moving.

Not because she was fearless. Not because it was easy. And certainly not because she had all the answers. She did it because sometimes life puts you in a moment where the people you love need you to step forward, and there is simply no other choice.

These are the moments that reveal what really matters.

Titles, accolades, and carefully mapped career plans suddenly become very small. Showing up becomes everything. Fighting for your husband becomes everything. Protecting what he worked so hard to build becomes everything. Taking care of the clients and people who trusted him becomes everything.

Somewhere inside that extraordinary season, Susan also discovered a new perspective on the work itself. E&O, cyber, wire fraud, and business insurance were no longer simply policies and coverage limits. She understood, in a deeply personal way, what it means to protect a lifeline. Behind every title agency is someone's livelihood, employees who depend on it, families supported by it, and years of sacrifice invested in building it.

Susan never would have chosen the circumstances that brought her into this chapter of her career. But when life demanded that she step into the fire, she took the reins, stood beside her husband, protected their SSIS team and what they had built, and kept moving forward.

Because sometimes the most important chapters of our lives are not the ones we planned.

They are the ones that show us exactly who we are when everything changes.

Heart First. love rt.

 and choose it outloud!

Ask Susan about the symbol that follows her everywhere and the answer is easy: Heart.

There are hearts in her jewelry, her rings, her tattoos, her email signature, and even on her ring fingernail. It is not simply something she likes, It’s a reminder:

Always come from the heart.

That philosophy has become the compass for how Susan tries to lead, communicate, and live. She believes everyone deserves to be heard, not simply the loudest person in the room, the most popular person, or the person whose opinion matches ours.

She believes listening can change the entire energy of a difficult conversation.

She believes character is revealed just as much by how we speak about people when they are absent as how we treat them when they are standing in front of us.

And she believes strength does not have to be loud.

Some of Susan's most important leadership lessons came from learning to pause, listen, choose her words carefully, establish boundaries, and remain steady when circumstances around her were anything but steady.

Her guiding principles from The Four Agreements have stayed with her throughout her career, particularly the commitment to be impeccable with her word and not assume she knows another person's story.

The Why Got Bigger.

Susan's original why was deeply personal: Her three daughters.

For nearly a decade as a single mother, failure simply was not an option. She wanted her girls to see that life could change unexpectedly and still become something beautiful. That fear did not mean stop. That difficult circumstances did not get to write the ending.

Her job was to keep showing up.

Over time, however, her why expanded. She remembered the younger version of herself

who needed encouragement. The woman with an idea who sometimes needed someone to say, try it. The emerging leader who needed a trusted voice saying, you can do this.

Susan wanted to become that voice for someone else. And eventually, that desire became something much bigger.

And Then Came Her.collective.

Her.Collective did not begin because Susan wanted to build another professional organization. . . It began because she saw something missing.

She saw extraordinary women throughout the title industry doing meaningful work, building companies, raising families, surviving difficult seasons, mentoring others, leading teams, reinventing themselves, and quietly changing the industry. Yet so many of their stories were never being told. Susan knew what it felt like to wonder whether your voice mattered. So, she created a place where someone else's could.

Her.Collective became an extension of something she had been doing throughout her career all along. Connecting people. Teaching. Encouraging. Creating opportunities. Seeing potential. And sometimes simply giving another woman the confidence to step forward and be seen.

The HER.Spotlight became one of the purest expressions of that mission. Week after week, Susan became the pen behind another woman's story. And somewhere between Spotlight number one and Spotlight number 100, something remarkable happened.

Those individual stories became a collective history of women in title.

Not simply executives.

Not simply success stories.

Women at different stages, from different markets, companies, backgrounds, and career paths, each reminding the next woman that there is more than one way to belong here.

Her People, Her Village.

For all the things Susan has built, she is quick to point toward the people who have built her.

Her three daughters remain at the center of her world, affectionately referred to as her "little broke besties." They have been beside her through every strange, wonderful, difficult, and spontaneous chapter of life and always been her biggest cheerleaders.

Her siblings remain a constant source of support. As the youngest of seven and having lost both parents, those relationships carry an even deeper meaning.

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Then there are the friendships. Susan has a village that supports her and her family in so many ways. From the friends close to home in Houston to Cleveland to Colorado and Utah, her friends are lifelong. Some that have survived decades. In fact, nine best friends from high school who still travel together and remain active in one another's lives.

And then there is her rock… her Jerome. Her husband, cheerleader, adventure partner, coach of possibilities, and one of the people who helped Susan see something in herself that she had sometimes been too timid to acknowledge out loud.

His relentless optimism, discipline, warmth, and ability to make people feel comfortable have profoundly influenced her. And through an extraordinarily difficult change in his health, she has watched those qualities remain. That example has only strengthened something Susan already believed.

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We do not always get to choose what happens next.

But we do get to choose how we show up for it.

Her lifelong advice is now more solid then ever:

Fall in love with your life. Buy the coffee that makes you smile, Go for hikes in nature, Eat good food, Wear what makes you feel confident, Take the trip, Experience all of life, purposely create these small moments that make you fall in love with your life. You do have a choice to choose, so, choose gratitude, happiness, & heart. and choose it out loud! 

Still Choosing Possibility.

There is a certain irony in calling Susan Stewart-Magaña "fearless." Because fearless does not mean she has never been afraid.

She has.

She was afraid when she moved somewhere new. Afraid when she walked into rooms where she felt inexperienced. Afraid when she raised three girls on her own. Afraid when she went back to school. Afraid when she stepped into leadership. Afraid when she taught her first class. Afraid when she put her own ideas into the world.

Courage was never the absence of those feelings. It was deciding they were not in charge.

At eighteen, Susan left home and went to college in Hawaii. Looking back, she considers that one of the most important decisions of her young life because it taught her she could step into the unknown alone and discover something extraordinary on the other side.

She has been repeating some version of that decision ever since.Try it. Go. Speak. Teach. Move. Build. Begin again.

One Hundred Stories Later.

So what does the woman behind HER.Spotlight want her own legacy to be?

Not the loudest voice. Not the biggest title. Not even the organization she founded. She hopes to be remembered as a voice of possibility.

Someone who believed in people.

Someone who created room for others to be seen and heard.

Someone naturally quiet and introverted who chose, again and again, to step forward anyway.

Someone who tried to bring class, kindness, curiosity, hard work, integrity, and heart into the rooms she entered. Someone who did not wait for somebody else to create the thing she wished existed. She rolled up her sleeves and started building it herself.

And maybe that is what makes Susan the right woman for HER.Spotlight number #100. Not because her story is bigger than the ninety-nine that came before hers. But because she believed all one hundred were worth telling.

One hundred women.

One hundred stories.

One powerful reminder that every woman's journey matters.

And to the women who will become Spotlights 101, 102, 150, 200 and beyond, Susan leaves the same invitation she has been quietly extending since the beginning: Just be you!

Authentically you.

Bravely you.

Uniquely you.

Out loud.

Let the noise fall away. Trust the process. Keep showing up.

And always, always...

come from the heart. ♡

We are truly honored to share Susan’s story for this very special 100th Her.Spotlight. Her courage to keep showing up, her heart for lifting others, and her belief that every woman’s story deserves to be seen and heard are at the very heart of Her.Collective.

Thank you, Susan, for leading with heart, creating space for others to shine, and reminding us that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is simply believe in what is possible and begin. The title industry is better because you chose to build something bigger than yourself.

*To Connect with Susan: Susan@selectspecialtyinsurance.com I LinkedIn I Facebook I Instagram