Donald Roderick McLennan (October 27, 1873 – October 14, 1944) was born in Duluth

Duluth, Minnesota

Duluth is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Saint Louis County. The fourth largest city in Minnesota, Duluth had a total population of 86,265 in the 2010 census. Duluth is also the second largest city that is located on Lake Superior after Thunder Bay, Ontario,...

, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, son of William Lillingston McLennan and Julia MacLeod. He was the co-founder

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

 of the insurance broker

Insurance broker

An insurance broker finds sources for contracts of insurance on behalf of their customers. The three largest insurance brokers in the world, by revenue, are Aon, Marsh & McLennan, and Willis Group Holdings.-Purpose of insurance brokers:...

age firm Burroughs, Marsh & McLennan in 1905, which was renamed Marsh & McLennan in 1906 after the retirement of Mr. D. W. Burroughs. McLennan served as the Chairman of the Board

Chair (official)

The chairman is the highest officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office is typically elected or appointed by the members of the group. The chairman presides over meetings of the assembled group and conducts its business in an...

 from 1935 until his death in 1944 in Lake Forest, Illinois

Lake Forest, Illinois

Lake Forest is an affluent city located in Lake County, Illinois, United States. The city is south of Waukegan along the shore of Lake Michigan, and is a part of the Chicago metropolitan area and the North Shore. Lake Forest was founded around Lake Forest College and was laid out as a town in...

. At the time of his death, the firm had offices in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, San Francisco, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, and twenty other cities. In 2007, Marsh & McLennan Companies had over 57,000 employees and annual revenues of $12.07 billion.

Professional life

Donald McLennan and co-founder Henry Marsh introduced the "concept of a broker acting as a buyer of insurance representing the client, rather than as a seller of insurance." Marsh and McLennan helped to pioneer the concept of risk management.

In 1894, Donald McLennan began his insurance career at Stryker, Manley & Buck (formerly Kimberly, Stryker & Manley est.1881) in Duluth, MN; Soon after, he became a partner in C.H. Graves & Co., which shortly was consolidated with his former firm to become the Graves-Manley Agency. McLennan was a vice-president, and shortly thereafter, the firm became the McLennan-Manley Agency.

In the early 1900s, McLennan established a standard for thorough research in assessing risk: he spent 30 consecutive nights on a sleeper train, traveling coast to coast across the U.S., to inspect the operations of the railroad lines. By 1917, the year the United States entered World War I, Marsh & McLennan had established offices throughout the country. During the war, McLennan became responsible for the allocation and regulation of building materials for purposes other than those directly related to the war effort. For the duration of the war, no U.S. company could build an industrial plant without McLennan's approval. In this way McLennan acquired many business contacts throughout the United States, enhancing Marsh & McLennan's reputation in the postwar period. While McLennan was the Chairman of the company, Marsh & McLennan expanded its business into the consulting industry in 1938.

Over the course of his life, McLennan sat on the boards of the American Sugar Refining Company

American Sugar Refining Company

The American Sugar Refining Company was the largest American business unit in the sugar refining industry in the early 1900s.-Establishment:...

, the Evergreen Mines Company, Armour & Company, the First National Bank of Lake Forest, the Pennsylvania Railroad

Pennsylvania Railroad

The Pennsylvania Railroad was an American Class I railroad, founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the "Pennsy", the PRR was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

, the Peoples Gas, Light and Coke Company, the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company

Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company

The Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was at one time the seventh-largest bank in the United States as measured by deposits with approximately $40 billion in assets. In 1984, Continental Illinois became the largest ever bank failure in U.S. history, when a run on the bank led to...

, the Pullman Company

Pullman Company

The Pullman Palace Car Company, founded by George Pullman, manufactured railroad cars in the mid-to-late 19th century through the early decades of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. Pullman developed the sleeping car which carried his name into the 1980s...

, Pullman, Inc., the Chicago Corporation, and the Empire Securities Company.

Personal life

McLennan was married on February 14, 1906 to Katherine Cole Noyes of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, (daughter of George Henry Noyes and Agnes Allis Haskell) with whom he had three sons - Donald Roderick McLennan, Jr, George Noyes McLennan, and William Lillingston McLennan (father of author Scotty McLennan

Scotty McLennan

The Reverend William L. McLennan, Jr. — better known as "Scotty McLennan" — was born on November 21, 1948, son of William L. McLennan and Alice Polk Warner. He is an ordained minister, lawyer, professor, published author, public speaker and senior administrator at Stanford University...

). He also had three daughters - Jane McLennan (wife of Woodbury Swan Ober), Margaret McLennan (wife of John Boit Morse), and Katherine McLennan (wife of Keith Spalding Brown).