Dennis Mobley

Dennis Mobley

Communication and all that encompasses are a daily and necessary part of my job. I’m a translator. I take complicated business and insurance language and talk to my folks in ways they can understand. When I’m at my best, I do so with love and compassion and understanding.

Name: 

Dennis Mobley

MSU Degrees:

BA in Psychology, minor in English, 1995

MA in English, with a creative writing (poetry) concentration, 2002

Favorite memories of being an undergraduate English major: 

While I wasn’t an Undergrad in English, I did minor in English, and after graduating in 1995 and a few years out West in Yellowstone and Montana, I came back to MSU for Grad School in English with an emphasis in my own writing. My favorite memories involved the people of the English Department as well as my students. I studied around fellow students from all over the country as well as my friend Simon Ryle, from England. This diversity of thought and background was really neat and helped develop an interesting and fun culture in the Department. Don’t be confused—we worked really hard but in interesting and thoughtful ways.

Current Position: 

Manager of the Employee Benefits Department

Organization: 

SouthGroup Insurance (based in Ridgeland, MS)

 

When you graduated with a degree in English from MSU, what were your plans for your future? 

I graduated from the English Dept with a Master’s in English and Alternate Route Educational Licensure. I believed I was headed for a career teaching and coaching at the high school level.

 

Has your career path mostly realized those early plans, or have you discovered new plans and goals along the way? 

It wasn’t long before my career took a severe right turn. I had interviewed for several teaching positions in the Columbus, New Hope, Caledonia areas with no immediate results. Fate intervened, and I ended up working with my mom in the Insurance Business. We worked together as Agents for nearly 20 years, and I moved over to SouthGroup to head up their Benefits department. SouthGroup is one of the last, major insurance agencies which is still locally owned, and it feels like home.

 

What is your current occupation, and what does your work mostly consist of? 

I’m an Insurance Agent on the employee benefit side of the business. It’s heavily administrative. At the same time, I take complicated insurance concepts that are difficult and painful for most Mississippi employees to understand and break it down to simple, plain, and honest language, helping my folks navigate an increasingly complex and costly medical marketplace the best way I know how. It’s not easy, but I enjoy my job and make good money doing it.

 

Which skills that you learned as an English major do you use most in your job? 

Communication and all that encompasses are a daily and necessary part of my job. I’m a translator. I take complicated business and insurance language and talk to my folks in ways they can understand. When I’m at my best, I do so with love and compassion and understanding. Folks ain’t (sic) that healthy these days for a variety of reasons, and helping them navigate an often sales-and-money-driven medical marketplace is a significant challenge. One of main communication vehicles I use is a newsletter that I email to all of the businesses we insure. My voice coming through that newsletter helps create intimacy between me and my clients in a significant way, and for that to happen on a mass scale is quite valuable. That writing voice was crafted at MSU as well as not being afraid to truly be myself in front of others.

 

What additional skills did you need to learn in order to do your job, and how did you learn them? 

I learn everyday as a part of my job and my career path. Luckily, I had a really good teacher. My mom is dead and gone now, but I still walk in her footsteps every day. She taught me how to be un-forgettable. I don’t know whether I’m “there” or not. But she’s the most interesting and talked-about person that I’ve ever been around, and nobody else is really close. Make no mistake, there’s a significant sales component to my job, and the ability to engage with people and develop relationships is a tremendous part of it. If they think about insurance, and I’m the first name that pops into their head, I’ve done something right.

 

Are there common misconceptions about your career field, which current English majors might share, that you have learned the truth about? 

I don’t know what people think of when they think of insurance, but my gosh, what a people business it is. I know that when I’m thoughtful, honest, and willing to learn, my business prospects are unlimited. We live in a time period in this country where there is more unlimited economic opportunity to every single person than ever before on the face of this earth. I truly believe that. And I had to forget a lot of things I picked up along the way so that I could take advantage of my potential, and I hope young students and students-to-be at MSU know that, and I further hope they absolutely don’t listen to the prophets of doom who tell them the whole world is against them or it’s a “rigged game” or some of that foolishness. I almost bought into that kind of point of view. But I started listening to better folks along the way, and it transformed my life.

 

In what ways does your career enrich your life and help you to achieve your personal as well as your professional goals?  

I’ll say this, I’m an Insurance Agent to the bone. I work a whole lot harder than I ever thought I would, but many people trust me and need the knowledge and the perspective that I have developed over my career. It’s beautiful. I get to help a lot of folks. I’ll tell a quick story—Mama died about 2 years ago, and later that year, I was at an enrollment meeting in Bude MS (look it up—Franklin County). There was a lady there who had been a client of Mama’s for many years. To the extent of my knowledge, they had never met in person. All of their communication had been phone, fax, and email. When I saw her and told her about Mama dying, she immediately started crying, and we had a real moment together. That’s the kind of legacy I want to leave in my business life—that someone whom I had never personally met would be touched by my eventual death. That’s un-forgettable. That’s who I want to be when I grow up.

 

What advice do you have for undergraduate English majors right now who might want to follow the career path you did? 

Never, ever, ever let anyone tell you that there’s not unlimited opportunity in this country. People who are willing to work hard and TRULY learn a craft will always be valued in their work life. If you try something and fail, try again. Don’t be afraid to fail. Zig Ziglar used to say that a big shot is just a little shot who kept on shooting. So you just keep on shooting. That’s all I’m doing—just keeping on shooting.

 

[Updated October 2025]