This is a picture of Deputy Insurance Commissioner Anne Melissa Dowling
Anne Melissa Dowling Uma Ramiah / CT Mirror

Anne Melissa Dowling, who led the Connecticut Insurance Department on an acting basis since late last year, said Monday that she will leave the agency.

Dowling previously served as deputy commissioner and ran the agency’s day-to-day operations while the previous commissioner, Thomas B. Leonardi, traveled extensively. She was considered a possible replacement for Leonardi, but on Friday, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy named another candidate, former Cigna lobbyist Katharine L. Wade, to lead the department.

Dowling said she would “deeply miss the team at CID and am so proud of all that they stand for.”

“It has been a wonderful experience and one that afforded me the opportunity to meet passionate and dedicated people,” she said.

Dowling represented the insurance department on the board of Access Health CT, the state’s health insurance exchange. She joined the agency in 2011 after a career in the private sector that included leadership posts at MassMutual, Connecticut Mutual and Travelers.

Wade begins at the department Tuesday. It was not clear Monday whether Dowling will be replaced in the department or who will represent the agency on the exchange board.

Arielle Levin Becker covered health care for The Connecticut Mirror. She previously worked for The Hartford Courant, most recently as its health reporter, and has also covered small towns, courts and education in Connecticut and New Jersey. She was a finalist in 2009 for the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists, a recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the third-place winner in 2013 for an in-depth piece on caregivers from the National Association of Health Journalists. She is a 2004 graduate of Yale University.

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