About
Craig DeRoche was born on October 4, 1970 to Paul and Anne DeRoche. He has two brothers, Paul and Kirk. Craig married Stacey (Zoellner), the love of his life on May 9, 1998. Craig and Stacey have three young daughters; Carley, Zoe & Phoebe.
Craig attended public schools including Utica and Plymouth before graduating from Walled Lake Western in 1988. He graduated Central Michigan University after 3 years with a BS in Business Administration with a major in Finance in the Summer of 1991.
Craig has made a professional career in the insurance business. He has worked for three insurance carriers and owned an insurance agency. Craig’s current focus is on insurance consulting, marketing agreements and technology for major carriers and agencies in multiple states and multiple lines of coverage.
In the insurance business, Craig has been an innovator on a number of levels. In 1994 he began his first online quoting service for insurance policies using Prodigy, as consumers had yet to embrace the internet. In the late nineties, he created the market for loss portfolio transfers in Michigan, and successfully sold excess and reinsurance policies to large employers and groups of public and private entities throughout the Midwest.
Outside of friends, family and business associates, Craig is most well known publicly for his political involvement. This started with a simple phone call for a job on a political campaign in 1990. Craig was working the overnight shift at a hotel to pay for college, and the campaign needed someone from 7:00am until noon. There was always food at the headquarters so it was the perfect job before heading to his classes.
Craig was immersed with current and former state leaders who all encouraged him to continue his involvement. He did, and rose quickly with every undertaking. Craig made himself the pledge that his government service would never be the source of his income, and balanced growing businesses while serving in a number of roles.
In 1992, Craig was awarded one of the first fellowships to the Michigan Political Leadership Program at Michigan State University. In 1996 Craig chaired the commission that wrote the vision statement the City of Novi for the next 25 years and served as Vice Chairman of their Economic Development Committee. In 1997 he was elected to the City Council and re-elected in 1999.
In 2002, Craig was elected State Representative. In 2004, his colleagues uninamously elected him Speaker of the House for Michigan. At the time he was the youngest in Michigan’s history and youngest house speaker in the country.
In his nineteen years of involvement in politics, Craig has helped hundreds of people get elected to office and to become successful in bringing a positive change to their community, school or state.