III - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chief Insurance Officer for the Insurance Information Institute
- Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society
Dale Porfilio joined The Institutes in 2021 to serve as Chief Insurance Officer for the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) and President of the Insurance Research Council (IRC). In these roles, he leads the research and education activities of both organizations, working closely with Triple-I and IRC subject-matter experts to develop data-driven industry insights and analyses. He also serves as a media spokesperson on thought-leadership matters and delivers board-level presentations at industry events and to Triple-I and IRC member companies.
Dale previously was senior vice president and corporate chief actuary at Genworth Financial, where he was responsible for the actuarial practice for all product lines and countries. Before that he was vice president and chief actuary at Kemper Corp., where he was responsible for pricing, reserving, predictive modeling, catastrophe management, and product management. He began his career at Allstate, working on pricing, product, research, and catastrophe risk modeling.
Dale is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS), Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA), and summa cum laude graduate of DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind. He and his wife, Carol, reside in Chicago, Ill., and are parents of three adult daughters.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President of Crum & Forster 's Structured
Daniel L. Sussman is senior vice president of Crum & Forster's Structured Products Group with a focus on a range of surety and credit risk products.
Prior to joining Crum & Forster, Sussman spent eight years at Ironshore, founding and serving as president of Ironshore's Global Credit and Political Risk unit. Sussman also served in a series of capacities culminating as XL Capital's CEO of Financial Lines, one of XL's strategic reporting segments, with broad responsibilities across a wide range of credit products, alternative risk transfer specialty products and funding solutions. Prior to XL, he was in private practice associated with Clifford Chance and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Sussman received his BA from Harvard College, his M.A. and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and his B.C.L. from Oxford University.
Job Titles:
- Associate Vice President
- Environmental Defense Fund
Before joining EDF, Dr. Kousky was Executive Director at the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where she founded and directed the Policy Incubator. Her research examines multiple aspects of disaster insurance markets, disaster finance, climate risk management, and policy approaches for increasing resilience. She has published numerous articles, reports, and book chapters on the economics and policy of climate risk and disaster insurance markets, and is routinely cited in media outlets including NPR, The New York Times, and The Financial Times, among many others.
Kousky also is the vice-chair of the California Climate Insurance Working Group, a university fellow at Resources for the Future, and a member of the Roundtable on Risk and Resilience of Extreme Events at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She has a BS in Earth Systems from Stanford University and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Meteorology at San José State University and Director of the NSF I / UCRC Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center
Dr. Craig Clements is a Professor of Meteorology at San José State University and Director of the NSF I/UCRC Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center. He leads research on fire weather, extreme fire behavior, fire-atmosphere interactions, and conducting wildfire field experiments. Dr. Clements has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and teaches courses in Fire Weather, Wildfire Science, Mountain Meteorology, Climate Change, and Meteorological Instrumentation. He received his PhD in Geophysics from the University of Houston, his MS in Meteorology from the University of Utah, and a BS degree in Geography from the University of Nevada. His research is often featured in the media including PBS NOVA, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Time, CNN, and Scientific American.
Job Titles:
- James G. Dinan Professor Emeritus
Dr. Howard C. Kunreuther is the James G. Dinan Professor Emeritus in the Operations, Information and Decisions department at the Wharton School and the Co-Director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center.
Dr. Kunreuther has a long-standing interest in ways that society can better manage low-probability, high-consequence events related to technological and natural hazards. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Distinguished Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, and served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Kunreuther received the 2015 Shin Research Excellence Award from the Geneva Association and the International Insurance Society in recognition of his outstanding work on the role of public-private partnerships in mitigating and managing risks.
His recent books include The Future of Risk Management (with R. Meyer and E. O, Michel-Kerjan), Managing Catastrophic Risk: How Companies are Coping with Disruption (with M. Useem), The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters (with R. Meyer), Insurance and Behavioral Economics: Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry (with M. Pauly and S. McMorrow) and At War with the Weather (with E. O. Michel-Kerjan).
Dr. Kunreuther holds an A.B. from Bates College and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. in Economics.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Alabama Center for Insurance Information and Research
Dr. Lars Powell is Director of the Alabama Center for Insurance Information and Research (ACIIR) at the University of Alabama. ACIIR identifies and solves risk and insurance problems with research and education. Dr. Powell has previously worked in both academic and industry roles.
Dr. Powell's primary research interests include loss mitigation, insurer capitalization, and the effects of regulation on insurance markets. His work has appeared in several top academic and practitioner journals. His work has appeared in several academic and practitioner journals and is past president of the Risk Theory Society, former editor of the Journal of Insurance Regulation, a founding board member emeritus of Arkansas Mutual Insurance Company, and a recipient of the National Association Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) Service Award.
He earned undergraduate degrees from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in Risk Management and Insurance from the University of Georgia.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Faculty of the School of Risk Management
Dr. Mark J. Browne is the Chair of the Faculty of the School of Risk Management in the Tobin College of Business at St. John's University, where he is the Robert Clements Distinguished Chair in Risk Management and Insurance. In addition, he is an associate member of the Munich Risk Insurance Center at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and a member of the International Research Advisory Board of the Risk and Insurance Research Center at National Chengchi University in Taiwan.
Dr. Browne's expertise focuses on risk management, insurance, and employee benefits. Prior to St. John's University, he was the Gerald D. Stephens CPCU Chair in Risk Management and Insurance in the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was president of the American Risk and Insurance Association, the Risk Theory Society and the European Group of Risk and Insurance Economists. His research has appeared in many publications, including the Journal of Risk and Insurance, of which he is an associate editor, the Journal of Insurance Regulation, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, the Journal of Legal Studies and the CPCU Journal. He is a frequent commentator in the media including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Dr. Browne received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Martin F. Grace is the Harry A. Cochran Professor of Risk, Insurance and Healthcare Management at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. Prior to Temple, he was at Georgia State University where he was the James S. Kemper Jr. Professor of Risk Management, a Georgia Regents, and served as the Chair of the Risk Management and Insurance Department.
Dr. Grace's research interests include tort reform, catastrophe financing, industrial organization, and regulation and taxation of the insurance industry. He was president of the Risk Theory Society and serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Risk and Insurance. He has published more than 70 professional and scholarly papers and book chapters; consulted with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, state regulators, and industry associations; and testified before the U.S. Congress on the future of insurance regulation as part of the Dodd-Frank Act.
Dr. Grace holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of New Hampshire, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics and a J.D. from the University of Florida.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of the American Risk
Dr. Born is a member of the board of the American Risk and Insurance Association and serves on the editorial board of the Risk Management and Insurance Review and of the Journal of Insurance Issues. She is the Chair of the Florida Panhandle District Long Term Care Ombudsman Council.
Dr. Phil Klotzbach is a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University where he has been for the past 17 years. He was co-author on the Atlantic basin hurricane forecasts with Dr. William Gray through 2005 and became the first author on the seasonal hurricane forecasts in 2006. Dr. Klotzbach developed the two-week forecasts currently being issued during the peak months of the hurricane season between August-October.
Dr. Klotzbach has published over two dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Climate and Weather and Forecasting. He is frequently consulted by the media and has been quoted regularly on the Weather Channel, Forbes, The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Klotzbach holds a B.Sc. in Geography from Bridgewater State College and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University.
Dr. Robert E. Hoyt is the Dudley L. Moore, Jr. Chair and Professor of Risk Management and Insurance in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia where he teaches corporate and enterprise risk management and serves as the Department Head for Insurance, Legal Studies, and Real Estate. He was Interim Dean of the Terry College in 2007 and has been on the University of Georgia faculty since 1988.
Before that, he was a Fulbright visiting professor of Risk Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, a Swiss Re Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Munich, and a Gen Re visiting scholar at the University of Cologne. He is past president of the American Risk and Insurance Association, past president of the Risk Theory Society, past president of the Southern Risk and Insurance Association, and a member of the International Insurance Society, the Risk and Insurance Management Society, the Western Risk and Insurance Association, and the American Finance Association. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Insurance Regulation and of the Risk Management and Insurance Review.
Dr. Hoyt is a recipient of the University of Georgia's Richard B. Russell Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Terry College's Outstanding Service Award, the Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Outstanding Research Award. He holds a degree in Actuarial Science from the University of Nebraska and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Risk and Insurance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he was an S.S. Huebner Fellow. He holds the professional designations of CLU and ChFC.
Dr. Robert W. Klein was an Associate Professor of Risk Management and Insurance and Director of the Center of Risk Management and Insurance Research at Georgia State University from 1996-2018. He is currently a consultant in risk management and insurance and an Affiliate Senior Research Fellow at Temple University.
Dr. Klein is a leading expert on insurance regulation and markets with over 30 years of experience as a regulator and an academic researcher. He has published extensively on various topics on insurance and its regulation, including the structure and performance of insurance markets, solvency regulation, monitoring competition, price regulation, catastrophe risk, urban insurance, workers compensation, life insurance, and international insurance regulation. He also has testified frequently at legislative and regulatory hearings on significant issues affecting insurance consumers and the industry.
Dr. Klein received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University.
Job Titles:
- Applied Data Science, LLC
- Founder and CEO of Applied Data Science
Dr. Roy E. Lowrance is the founder and CEO of Applied Data Science and an advisor to venture capital firms on artificial intelligence with 40 years of experience in strategy development, information technology and academia.
Professor Scott J. Shackelford is the Provost Professor of Business Law and Ethics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. He serves as the Executive Director of the Ostrom Workshop and the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. He is also an Affiliated Scholar at both the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Stanford's Center for Internet and Society.
Professor Shackelford has written more than 100 articles, book chapters, essays, and op-eds for diverse publications. Similarly, Professor Shackelford's research has been covered by an array of outlets, including Politico, NPR, CNN, Forbes, Time, the Washington Post, and the LA Times. He is the author of The Internet of Things: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2020), Governing New Frontiers in the Information Age: Toward Cyber Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Managing Cyber Attacks in International Law, Business, and Relations: In Search of Cyber Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2014). He is also the lead editor of the first volume dedicated to cyber peace entitled Cyber Peace: Charting a Path Toward a Sustainable, Stable, and Secure Cyberspace (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Both Professor Shackelford's academic work and teaching have been recognized with numerous awards, including a Harvard University Research Fellowship, a Stanford University Hoover Institution National Fellowship, a Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study Distinguished Fellowship, the 2014 Indiana University Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, the 2015 Elinor Ostrom Award, and the 2022 Poets & Quants Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors Award.
Dr. Stephen Mildenhall is Faculty and Director of Insurance Data Analytics in the School of Risk Management, Insurance and Actuarial Science at St. John's University's Peter J. Tobin College of Business.
Dr. Mildenhall was Global CEO of Analytics for Aon and head of Aon Benfield Analytics where he helped found and establish Aon's Singapore Center for Innovation and Analytics and led a team of over 500 professionals in actuarial science, catastrophe modeling, accounting and financial modeling. Prior to Aon, he was vice president of Actuarial Pricing for Kemper Insurance and began his career at CNA.
Dr. Mildenhall is a frequent speaker and published author on risk theory, the intersection of insurance and finance, and the application of probability and statistics to reserving and rate making problems. He is a fellow and Board and Audit Committee member of Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), a board member of the CAS Institute, an associate of the Society of Actuaries, and a member of the Risk Theory Society. He served on the ARIA Board of Directors from 2013-2016 and was a member of the CAS Committee on the Theory of Risk and its chairman from 2008-2010.
He holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Warwick, England, and a MA and Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago. He is a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst, Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics, and a Catastrophe Risk Management Professional.
Job Titles:
- Insurance Information Institute ( Retired ) View Bio Hi - Res Headshots
Steven N. Weisbart became a Non-Resident Scholar upon retiring from the Insurance Information Institute in 2020.
A thought leader in economics and insurance, Dr. Weisbart's current research interests are in retirement and pensions, although at the Triple-I he frequently presented on property/casualty insurance topics. Recent research includes the insurance protection gap and the impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. economy and P/C industry. He is a frequent speaker at industry and regulatory forums and commentator for CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Fox Business, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Businessweek.
From 2005 to 2020, Dr. Weisbart was Senior Vice President & Chief Economist of the Triple-I. In this role, he oversaw economic research and analysis, preparing studies in support of the organization's communications mission, speaking to media and conducting briefings for member companies, industry organizations, and policymakers.
Before Triple-I, he was Vice President at TIAA and, before that, Associate Professor of Insurance in the Department of Risk Management and Insurance in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. More recently he was Adjunct Faculty at the School of Risk Management, Insurance, and Actuarial Science in the Tobin College of Business at St. John's University.
He is the author and co-author of four books published in the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Journal of Financial Service Professionals, the CPCU Journal, The Geneva Reports, and Best's Review. He serves on the editorial board of the Risk Management and Insurance Review and was previously an Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Service Professionals. He is a member of ARIA, AES, and the Society of Financial Service Professionals.
Dr. Weisbart received his Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an S.S. Huebner Foundation Fellow, and his B.A. in English from Cornell University. Dr. Weisbart holds the Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) credential.
Dr. Tyler Leverty is the Gerald D. Stephens CPCU Distinguished Chair in Risk Management and Insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a senior editor of the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the past president of the Risk Theory Society, and the vice president of the American Risk and Insurance Association.
His research interests are in the economics of insurance markets, insurance company operations, and public policy issues in insurance. His research has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, and the Journal of Banking and Finance, among others. Dr. Leverty has received recognition for both his teaching and research, including the Inspired Learning Chair at the Wisconsin School of Business, the Tippie College of Business Collegiate Teaching Award, the Casualty Actuarial Society Best Non-Life Paper Award, and the State Farm Companies Doctoral Dissertation Award.
He received a B.A. in History and Economics from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in Risk Management and Insurance from Georgia State University.
Job Titles:
- Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Environment at Northern Illinois University
- Professor
Dr. Victor Gensini is a professor in the Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Environment at Northern Illinois University. His research umbrella covers a wide range of topics related to severe weather, particularly the relationship between severe convective storms and climate change by utilizing dynamical downscaling. His current focus is examining weather and climate dynamics that explain variability in the frequency of extreme weather (e.g., hail, tornadoes, heavy rain, heat waves) and analyzing ways to forecast these events at sub-seasonal to seasonal time scales.
Job Titles:
- Director - Strategic Communication
Janet Ruiz is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and was appointed as the Insurance Information Institute's (Triple-I) Director, Strategic Communication, in January 2019. Ruiz joined the Triple-I in January 2015 as the organization's California representative, bringing with her 25 years of experience in the insurance industry. She worked for 16 years at State Farm Insurance (underwriting, management, public affairs) and nine years with Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, the 150-year-old insurance company that specialized in entertainment, commercial and high net worth homeowners insurance. At Fireman's Fund, she was responsible for external communications, including strategic communication planning and media relations.
Ruiz has a bachelor's degree in business administration from Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey. She earned a chartered property and casualty underwriter designation (CPCU) and an associate's designation in management from the Insurance Institute of America.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Analyst
- Senior Research Analyst at the Insurance Information Institute
Jeff Dunsavage is Senior Research Analyst at the Insurance Information Institute. In this role, he investigates and writes on a wide range of issues and topics relevant to risk and insurance.
A business writer and editor with experience spanning industries from insurance and banking to metals and telecom, Jeff has worked for Standard & Poor's, AM Best, MetLife and Verisk Analytics. He has worked in diverse capacities, including editorial and publications management; media relations and marketing; and communication around operational metrics and process improvement.
In all these roles, Jeff's focus has been on transforming data and expertise into compelling stories intended to drive business strategy and support decision making.
Jeff has a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., and an M.A. in Corporate and Organizational Communication from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Chair of Risk Management
- Editor for the Journal of Risk
Joan T. Schmit is the American Family Insurance Distinguished Chair of Risk Management in the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has been on the faculty since 1988. Schmit also serves as an affiliate faculty member in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and in the insurance program at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Prior to joining the faculty at UW-Madison, Professor Schmit spent four years on the faculty at the University of South Carolina following completion of her Ph.D. at Indiana University. She received her BBA and MBA from the Wisconsin School of Business and holds both the CPCU and ARM designations.
Professor Schmit served as the Chair of the Risk and Insurance Department in the Wisconsin School of Business from 2014-2022. From 2008 to 2012, Professor Schmit served in the Dean's office, holding the positions of Senior Associate Dean, Vice Dean, and Interim Dean.
Professor Schmit has published extensively in insurance and legal journals. Among her areas of expertise include insurance regulation, enterprise risk management, and the interaction of law and economics in an insurance and risk management context. She is a Past President of the American Risk and Insurance Association as well as the Risk Theory Society.
Joan is a lead with the Creative Destruction Lab-Risk, focusing on the Risk stream. With a goal of "transforming society's ability to manage risk," the stream is designed for seed-stage organizations with ventures focused on risk. More is found here: https://www.creativedestructionlab.com/streams/risk/
Additionally, Joan serves as an Editor for the Journal of Risk and Insurance and is active in the International Insurance Society. She also holds the designation of Research Fellow with the China Center for Insurance and Social Security Research at Peking University.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Media Relations for the Insurance Information Institute
- Vice President, Media Relations
Loretta Worters is vice president of media relations for the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), focusing her work on improving understanding of key insurance issues across all industry stakeholders including media, consumers, insurers, producers and regulators.
As a national spokesperson for the property/casualty insurance industry, Ms. Worters is frequently quoted in leading publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Washington Post and Forbes, among others, and appears regularly on television networks including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, CNN and FOX.
Ms. Worters handles major strategic issues confronting the insurance industry. She serves as the insurance industry's chief crisis communications officer, developing and implementing disaster communications plans and working with national media during such catastrophes as the COVID-19 pandemic, civil riots, hurricanes, wildfires and terrorism. She develops articles, thought leadership pieces, editorial content, product launches as well as business insurance campaigns.
Ms. Worters has worked to promote women's financial literacy through women's organizations including the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the National Network to End Domestic Violence. She served as a board member on the Allstate Foundation's domestic violence program (formerly Purple Purse®) and helped develop two publications as part of Allstate's Readiness Series, Creating Long-Term Financial Success and Financial Strategies for Immigrant and Refugee Women. She is currently a board member of the Northeast Region of the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation, which helps communities and enriches lives by uniting the collective strengths of the insurance industry in providing grants, volunteer service and leadership.
Ms. Worters headed up the Community Outreach Program directed by former Vice President Al Gore, which resulted in her writing the industry publication, Empowering Communities.
Ms. Worters has authored articles that have appeared in numerous publications including Carrier Management, The Geneva Association, The John Liner Review, National Underwriter, Professional Agent magazine, Risk & Insurance Economics has contributed to the book NOLO's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home and has been a guest blogger for Equifax's Finance and Small Business blogs. She also makes presentations and provides public relations counsel to industry associations and companies both nationally and internationally.
Prior to Triple-I, she worked for Scandinavian Airlines and Dean Witter Reynolds. She holds an M.A. in Communications from the New School and a B.A. in Journalism. She is a member of the Public Relations Society of America.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Office of Risk Management and Insurance Research
Lynne McChristian is the Director of the Office of Risk Management and Insurance Research and a senior instructor in insurance and enterprise risk management at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Prior academic credentials include Faculty and Executive Director of the Center for Risk Management Education & Research at Florida State University, Visiting Professor of Mass Communication at the University of South Florida, and teaching positions at San Antonio College and St. Mary's University, both in Texas. McChristian's business experience includes 14 years at USAA in Florida and Texas with responsibilities for external communication, including strategic communication, and marketing for the life insurance business. She was a public relations manager for a Florida-based workers compensation insurance company and has worked in real estate marketing, public relations, and in television news.
McChristian has a B.A. in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. in Mass Communication from the University of Arkansas. She holds the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) professional accreditation and the associate's designation in management (AIM) from the Insurance Institute of America.
Job Titles:
- Social Media and Brand Design Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Director - Corporate Communications
- Insurance Information Institute 's ( Triple - I ) Director, Corporate Communications
Mark Friedlander was appointed as the Insurance Information Institute's ( Triple-I) Director, Corporate Communications in February 2020. Based in St. Johns County, Fla., Friedlander's responsibilities include spearheading member company support and media relations in Florida, as well as national media relations and other corporate initiatives. He joined the Triple-I in July 2019 as its Florida Communications Consultant. Friedlander's vast industry experience includes a 13-year tenure as head of corporate communications and assistant secretary at Jacksonville, Fla.-domiciled The Main Street America Group, a super-regional property/casualty carrier. In this role, he spearheaded all internal and external communications, media relations, customer marketing and social media.
Friedlander's extensive background also includes senior marketing and communications roles at Prudential Financial, HSBC Holdings plc and Arthur Andersen LLP. He also served as a communications consultant at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. Additionally, Friedlander has held leadership positions within insurance trade organizations, including board chair of the Insurance Marketing & Communications Association and key roles on the Trusted Choice Company Partner Advisory Board and Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America's Agency Best Practices Program. Friedlander began his career as a sports writer and editor, covering the National Football League and Big Ten Conference, as well as a sports marketer supporting PGA Tour sponsors. He earned his bachelor's degree in journalism/public relations at The Ohio State University.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Analyst
- Senior Research Analyst at the Insurance Information Institute
Mary Sams is Senior Research Analyst at the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), one of the leading sources for insurance industry data and thought leadership. With three decades of experience, Mary is a respected and proven leader in all aspects of customer research, statistical analysis, predictive modeling, and data driven insights.
Prior to joining Triple-I in late 2021, Mary was AVP of Customer Experience at Zurich, a top global insurer. During her 11 years with Zurich, she facilitated research that was key to the growth and development of industry-leading customer segmentation and helped elevate the "Voice of the Customer" through her creation of NPS feedback loops. Throughout Mary's career, she has been adept at training and educating businesses in finserv and insurance in predictive modeling and segmentation. From 1998 to 2010, as VP and Partner of Audience Identification, Inc., Mary delivered crucial analysis and models for United MileagePlus, Visa member banks, US Bank, and the American Bar Endowment, among others.
Mary is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology. She enjoys all types of college sports especially college football. Mother of two adult children, she is in the process of reorganizing her free time to focus on reading for fun. She is enjoying a new genre: environmental fiction.
Michael Menapace, Esq., is an insurance lawyer, counselor, and law school professor. He is a partner in Wiggin and Dana LLP's insurance, cybersecurity, and class action practices where he advises insurers on policy construction, coverage, compliance, and regulatory issues.
Menapace began his legal career in the insurance and reinsurance practice group of a major international law firm. He often represents stock, mutual, and captive insurers on their dealings with state regulators, including proceedings concerning rates, applications for acquisition of control, and market conduct exams. He is admitted to practice in Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts.
Menapace teaches insurance law at the School of Law at Quinnipiac University, is a frequent speaker at industry events on insurance issues, and the author and editor of authoritative books, articles and commentary. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee as an invited expert on insurance and cyber security, is a vice-chair of the ABA TIPS Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Committee and chairs the ARIAS-U.S. Technology Committee.
Job Titles:
- Communications Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Chief Economist and Data Scientist
Dr. Michel Léonard, CBE, leads the Triple-I's Economics and Analytics Department. He is responsible for providing analysis and insight on industry economics and business performance, as well as other forward-looking, data driven insurance insights.
Michel brings more than twenty years of insurance experience to Triple-I, including senior and leadership positions as Chief Economist for Trade Credit and Political Risk at Aon; Chief Economist at Jardine Lloyd Thompson; Chief Economist and Data Scientist at Alliant; and Chief Data Scientist at MaKro LLC. In these roles, he worked closely with underwriters, brokers and risk managers to model risk exposures for property-casualty and specialty lines such as credit, political risk, business interruption and cyber.
Michel also currently serves as adjunct faculty at New York University's Economics Department. Previous academic appointments include Adjunct Faculty in NYU's Center for Data Science and Adjunct Faculty at Columbia University's Data Science Institute and Statistics Department. He was the recipient of a grant from the Spencer Educational Foundation to develop a course in data analytics for insurance. In these capacities, Michel provides a key link between the Triple-I, its Non-Resident Scholars and academia.
Michel holds a Bachelors of Arts from McGill University, a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard University, and a Masters of Arts and Doctorate of Philosophy in Political Economy from the University of Virginia, focusing on qualitative and quantitative risk modeling. He is a member of the Insurance Research Council Advisory Board.
Job Titles:
- Director - Media Relations
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- President
Job Titles:
- Assistant Teaching Professor of Social Data Science
- Social Scientist
Seth Rachlin is a social scientist, business leader, and entrepreneur currently active as a researcher and teaching professor. His research and teaching focuses on the challenges posed to social, economic, and political institutions by innovations in technology and by climate change.
Prior to turning to academia, Dr. Rachlin enjoyed a 30-year career in the consulting industry. He founded, built, and negotiated the sale of two companies to publicly traded entities. He served as a senior executive for a global systems integrator. And he has provided strategic counsel to more than 100 Fortune 500, middle market and early-stage companies in the insurance and technology sectors.
Dr. Rachlin is currently Assistant Teaching Professor of Social Data Science in the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Arizona State University. He assumed this full-time position in 2023 having taught part-time at ASU, the University of Arizona and at the University of Chicago since 2021.
Until December of 2022, Dr. Rachlin was Executive Vice President and Global Insurance Industry Leader at Capgemini, a global consultancy and services provider headquartered in France. At Capgemini, Dr. Rachlin was responsible for setting the firm's Insurance industry strategy, managing its relationships within the Insurance marketplace, and for shaping and articulating the company's perspective on the industry.
Prior to joining Capgemini, Dr. Rachlin was President of the Information and Analytics Division of Advisen (now Zywave), a leading provider of data and analytics to the commercial insurance industry. While at Advisen, he oversaw the successful launch of Advisen's cyber risk and predictive analytics products.
Dr. Rachlin was CEO of Moore Stephens Business Solutions (MSBS), a leading provider of performance management solutions to property and casualty insurance carriers, brokers and managing general agents. Dr. Rachlin founded MSBS in 2006 and successfully concluded its sale to Majesco in April 2010. The sale delivered over a tenfold return to the company's investors.
Dr. Rachlin began his entrepreneurial career as CEO of Connect Systems, Inc. a New York based data management consulting firm he founded in 1995. At Connect, he and his team built systems to automate customer and investor outreach in association with four demutualizations (insurance IPO's) and eight class action settlements. These systems managed the distribution of over 200 million pieces of mail as well as complex workflows involving over five billion pages of documents. In 2002, Dr. Rachlin negotiated the sale of Connect to Net2S, a publicly traded French IT staffing firm later acquired by British Telecom.
Dr. Rachlin is an acknowledged and widely quoted thought leader on topics concerning the intersection of risk and technology. He is a frequent conference speaker and a sought-after industry expert, regularly providing commentary to leading business press vehicles such as The Economist, The Financial Times, S&P Market Intelligence, and Reuters wire service.
Dr. Rachlin holds an undergraduate degree in History from Princeton University, a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University, and has published broadly in the academic, technical, and popular press. He is a Board Member of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in Arizona. And he is an active member of Princeton University's Alumni Schools committee, interviewing 15-20 high school seniors each year on behalf of the university's admissions office.
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Operations
Job Titles:
- Head of Membership Experience and Business Development
Job Titles:
- Board Director and Adviser
Susan Holliday has over 30 years' experience in global financial services, with a focus on insurance and fintech in both developed and emerging markets. She has worked in several areas of the IFC and World Bank, and prior to that was a managing director at Swiss Re, serving as head of strategy for Swiss Re's global reinsurance business and before this CFO of Reinsurance Client Markets and group Head of Investor Relations. She has served on boards in UK, US, Brazil and India. She is currently a board director of Tangerine Financial, a PE owned company investing in financial services and fintech in Africa, and an advisory board member of Solera, a software company serving the insurance and automotive sectors. Susan is a non-resident scholar for the Insurance Information Institute in US. She graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford, with a degree in Modern History and completed Harvard Business School's Advanced Management and Women on Boards programs. She is a Chartered Accountant and a Qualified Risk Director of the DCRO Institute and was selected as a Business Insurance Woman to Watch in 2013 and an Exceptional Women Awardees recipient in 2021.
Tamika Tyson is the Co-Founders of TGC Impact Growth Fund, a fund that invests growth capital in diverse and women-led or managed companies in the Southern Region. Prior to co-founding TGC, Tamika was the Global Head of Credit at Noble Energy, her responsibilities included managing the credit functions, trade finance, and performing due diligence on large-dollar projects and new ventures.
Tamika has over 25 years of risk management experience and has worked with entities ranging from small businesses to multi-national enterprises in a cross-section of industries. She is known for her pragmatic approach and authentic management style while driving highly strategic business initiatives and leading risk strategies to support business transactions and growth.
She has a Masters and Bachelor of Business Administration with an emphasis in Finance and Economics from Sam Houston State University. She is a past Board member of the International Energy Credit Association, has served on the Advisory Board for the Kayo Energy Summit, is a Non-Resident Scholar for the Insurance Information Institute, a lifetime member of the National Black MBA Association, and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Tamika has one son, Christopher, and spends her free time exploring the world.
Teresa is the Director of the Master's in Insurance Management program at Columbia University. She launched the program in 2019 after 27 years of insurance industry experience in legal, product and business development. The Master's program is an epicenter for innovation, mentorship and thought leadership, and helps accelerate career advancement for risk and insurance professionals. Through its faculty, the program provides students access to insight, experience and connections that are not readily available in the workplace.
Prior to joining Columbia, Teresa spent much of her career working on product and business innovations that served specialized markets. She has led the creation of new commercial property and casualty, and personal lines coverages, and engaged with niche markets, notably Native American tribes and renewable and alternative energy developers. She worked for a variety of companies within the insurance ecosystem, including AIG, Guy Carpenter, Willis Towers Watson, and NER.
Since joining Columbia, Teresa has been giving back to the insurance industry through the Master's program, providing not only technical expertise but mentorship to students and alumni, and ensuring that the industry is a supportive community built around the program. She is actively involved as an Advisory Board member of the Business Insurance DEI Institute, as well as a contributor to CAIA, NAAIA NY and AAIN in support of advancing underrepresented professionals. She has also been working with high school students through Boys Hope Girls Hope to introduce them to the insurance industry.
Teresa has a J.D. from Fordham University and B.S. in Operations Research from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University. She has been recognized by Business Insurance as one of "25 Women to Watch" and ReActions Magazine as one of the "Top Insurance Women".
Job Titles:
- Southeast Media Relations