insurance
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Martin Werth and the Price of Asking Twice
After years inside insurance, Martin Werth built UnderwriteMe around a deceptively small change: ask once. His career traces the distance between spotting an industry’s bad habit and persuading its people to give it up.
Joel Lieginger and the Value of Taking Turns
A Hong Kong group ride introduced Joel Lieginger to a future investor. Years later, the Paceline founder would carry the logic of a cycling pack into the less aerodynamic business of starting a company.
Margaret Meister kept outgrowing the job description
She joined an actuarial team in 1988. Thirty years later, she became Symetra’s first female CEO - after learning how to build a company, steer its finances and take on work nobody had put in her job description.
Luis Pino and the Business of Keeping the Middleman
Luis Pino left Berkeley to build technology for independent insurance agents. The paperwork he encountered along the way became the opening for a second business.
Amrit Santhirasenan and the price of a good decision
He trained in computer science, became an actuary, and built hyperexponential to solve a problem he had lived with for years. His next wager is that better software can give human judgment more room to work.
Nicolas Faquet and the Art of Starting Again
He helped build DirectAsia, left after its sale, and started Roojai in Thailand. Ten years later, Nicolas Faquet is bringing the businesses together around a question he has spent his career answering: how much work should buying insurance require?
Harry Franks and the price of an hour
At Deliveroo, Harry Franks watched would-be couriers disappear at the insurance question. He co-founded Zego to make cover fit a working shift - and built a career around asking why the rules were written that way.
Alan Schnitzer and the risk of staying comfortable
He thought he would retire as a corporate lawyer. Then he joined Travelers. A decade into the CEO job, Alan Schnitzer is still weighing what to preserve, what to change, and when to leave a comfortable position.
Jesús Spínola Grandio and the distance between a policy and a person
RGA’s Latin America CEO came to regional leadership through marketing and business development. His recurring question is what happens when an insurance product meets the person it was made for.
Michel Khalaf and the long way to the sixth floor
Before he became MetLife’s CEO, Michel Khalaf learned the insurance business across countries and continents. Then he brought the executive team 50 floors closer to everyone else.
Kirt Walker’s education in the long run
An Iowa farm, a family truck and 33 years inside Nationwide prepared Kirt Walker for the corner office. Now the insurer’s centennial is testing how far those early lessons can travel.
Rakesh Nayar and the distance between a policy and a person
From motor insurance in the UAE to risk conversations in Doha, Rakesh Nayar’s career follows a practical question: how do you make protection fit the people buying it?
Beto Quintero and the business of starting over
Before he founded Quintero & Partners, Beto Quintero worked on roofs, behind a bar, and in restaurant dining rooms. His insurance career became a study in learning a job, then teaching it to someone else.
Sunil Sharma and the unlikely education of an insurance chief
He studied physics and entered insurance looking for a job. Three decades later, RGA India’s chief executive is asking how an industry built on complex calculations can make its promises easier to understand.
Peter Zaffino and the art of subtraction
He helped rebuild AIG by narrowing its ambitions and sharpening its decisions. Now Peter Zaffino is preparing to take those lessons into artificial intelligence at Palantir.
Bill Westrate and the arithmetic of a promise
He joined American Family Insurance to work with numbers. Three decades later, Bill Westrate is deciding which risks a nearly century-old insurer should take - and which it should leave behind.
Kevin Strain went east. His ambitions grew.
Five years in Asia changed how Kevin Strain thought about leadership. Now Sun Life’s president and CEO is applying those lessons to a business whose reach extends well beyond its Canadian roots.
Brooks Tingle and the education of an impatient insurer
Before he ran John Hancock, Brooks Tingle handled agent commissions and customer calls. Those early jobs still shape his argument for changing an old business from the inside.
Christopher Albrecht and the problem with a paper fortune
A career across banking, brokerage and insurance brought Christopher Albrecht to Sun Life Singapore. His recurring question: how can a family keep its wealth useful when circumstances change?
Jim Williamson and the value of walking away
He learned insurance one account at a time. Now, as Everest’s CEO, Jim Williamson is putting a global business through a more selective test: which risks deserve its capital?
Gary Haase and the unfinished business of insurance
From insurance run-off at Catalina to cloud analytics at CNA, Gary Haase has worked on what companies inherit. At Everest, that experience meets a question with consequences: what can the past make possible next?
Federico Grosso and the conversation without an agenda
At Assurant Puerto Rico, Federico Grosso brought a finance executive’s discipline to a quieter management habit: making time to listen. His story runs from mobile-sector refinancing to coffee conversations where work was off the menu.
Paul Cosgrove and the work between the promises
Before leading Assurant Canada, Paul Cosgrove spent 25 years inside the business. His career runs through the less glamorous work of insurance: claims, client relationships, implementation and the people who make a promise hold.
Kevin Tobin and the trouble with dry land
From consumer finance and auto parts to Marsh and Torrent, Kevin Tobin kept returning to a practical problem: how to make protection easier to buy and faster to deliver. His flood insurance work put that question to a particularly unforgiving test.
Ramzi Toubassy and the long way back to Seoul
He began at AIG in New York in 1996. After building insurance distribution teams across Asia and leading AmMetLife in Malaysia, Ramzi Toubassy returned to Korea with a familiar question: how do you make a large insurer work better for the people buying its promises?
Rich Bielen and the value of staying put
He joined Protective in 1991 to oversee its securities portfolio. Thirty-five years later, Rich Bielen is preparing to hand over a larger business - and leave his mark on the city it calls home.
Andrew McMahon and the business of keeping a promise
Before he ran Guardian, Andrew McMahon delivered newspapers and ran a painting business. Now he is working on a harder delivery problem: keeping a 166-year-old mutual insurer useful to the people who own it.
John Tournet and the business of getting people to stay
From regional leadership to the U.S. helm of Gallagher’s Benefits & HR Consulting Division, John Tournet has kept returning to a practical question: what makes an employer worth staying with?
Barry Zyskind and the size of small things
An electronics warranty business gave Barry Zyskind his opening; small business gave AmTrust its scale. Keeping the enterprise durable has required a different kind of ambition.
WH Soo and the distance between a desk and a customer
Soo Wai Har’s career has taken her through AIG, AXA and Generali to the top job at Berjaya Sompo. Her first months in 2026 included visits to every branch, bringing decades of work in risk, technical operations and broker relationships onto the office floor.