People & Places

National

HUB International (HUB) appointed John Meek senior vice president and chief marketing officer and Matthew Sontag senior vice president and chief claims officer for HUB Private Client.

Meek has 30 years of property/casualty insurance leadership and experience and 18 years in the private client marketplace. Most recently, he worked at Chubb Personal Risk Services as senior vice president of distribution.

Sontag has nearly 20 years of experience in the private client industry, he most recently served as the vice president of property claims for PURE.

Verisk named Carrie Barr president of casualty solutions. Barr joined Jersey City, New Jersey-based Verisk as an account executive in 2010 and advanced to leadership positions within sales and operations.

Aaron Brunko has been named Verisk’s president of property estimating solutions. Brunko joined Verisk as a tech support agent in 2001 and served most recently as senior vice president of claims on the property estimating solutions team.

N2G Worldwide Insurance Services LLC named Kevin M. Strong chief executive officer.

Strong has more than 20 years of industry experience across global insurer and broker organizations. Most recently, he served as head of multinational at The Hartford, leading U.S.-produced and incoming global program teams and The Hartford’s global insurer network and Canada branch operations.

N2G is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Swiss Re Corporate Solutions appointed Lisa Butera as head of financial and professional lines (FinPro) and casualty North America, effective July 17.

Butera will lead Swiss Re corporate solutions’ FinPro and casualty business in the U.S. and Canada. She will be based in New York, New York.

Butera brings over three decades of leadership experience in the insurance and reinsurance space. She most recently served as head P/C clients markets U.S. in Swiss Re’s reinsurance division.

Ascot appointed Mark Totolos to the newly created role of senior vice president, captive solutions, Ascot U.S. He will be a part of the portfolio solutions group.

Totolos joins Ascot with more than 15 years of experience in the specialty insurance industry, most recently working at Skyward Specialty Insurance Co., where he served as senior vice president, head of captives and programs.

Gaurav Kapoor joined the NFP North America Construction and Infrastructure Group as senior vice president, head of strategy, digital and operations.

Before joining NFP, Kapoor held multiple positions with Marsh, including, most recently, strategy and operations leader for the global construction practice based in London, England.

NFP is headquartered in New York, New York.

John F. Shannon has been named senior investment officer of Starr Insurance Companies.

Shannon previously served as senior vice president and chief investment officer at Alleghany, which Berkshire Hathaway acquired in October 2022. Before Alleghany, he held positions at MetLife and Prudential Financial.

Shannon is based in Starr’s New York, New York, headquarters.

The Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) named Executive Vice President Ramona Tanabe as CEO. She succeeds John Ruser, who will stay on temporarily as an advisor to the CEO.

Tanabe has held several key leadership positions at WCRI, including leading the institute’s line of core benchmarking studies, designing and conducting studies on workplace health policy, and managing WCRI’s data collection and technology investments.

WTW appointed Jackie Bolig as head of property/casualty, corporate risk and broking (CRB), North America.

With more than 30 years of experience in insurance and risk management, Bolig joins WTW from Aon.

Heather Fox has been named chief underwriting officer at Zurich North America.

Fox is based in Zurich’s New York office and will become a member of the Zurich North America Executive Committee.

She comes to Zurich from ARC Excess & Surplus where she started in 2009 and most recently served as general counsel and chief brokerage officer.

Chubb Limited appointed Frances O’Brien executive vice president, Chubb Group, and chief risk officer.

O’Brien was senior vice president, Chubb Group, and deputy chief risk officer, a position she held since January 2022. O’Brien has more than 40 years of insurance industry experience.

Sean Ringsted, formerly Chubb’s CRO, will continue to serve as EVP, Chubb Group, and chief digital business officer. He will remain a core member of the Risk Underwriting Committee.

Ringsted has more than 30 years of experience in the insurance industry.

The Hartford named Mark Azzolino head of a new unit, Global Specialty Digital Solutions, which will focus on offering specialty and wholesale insurance products in a fully digitized, end-to-end manner.

Azzolino previously served as The Hartford’s head of management liability in Global Specialty’s Financial Lines segment, where he was responsible for The Hartford’s private and not-for-profit management liability businesses. In addition, he oversaw the sales and process execution for the management and professional liability lines of business.

East

Security Mutual, headquartered in Binghamton, New York, hired Emmett Cavanaugh as a commercial lines underwriter.

Cavanaugh brings more than three years of experience to his new role. He previously worked with Utica First Insurance Co. as a multi-line claim adjuster.

Midwest

Ryan Specialty Holdings Inc. promoted Brenda (Ballard) Austenfeld and Chris Houska to CEO and president of their respective RT Specialty practices, the wholesale brokerage specialty within Ryan Specialty.

Austenfeld, CEO and president of RT Specialty’s National Property Practice, has been with RT Specialty since 2013, joining with the acquisition of Westrope, where she was a partner with the firm.

Houska, CEO and president of RT Specialty’s national casualty practice, joined RT Specialty as part of the original founding group in 2010 and has more than 30 years of casualty insurance experience.

Ryan Specialty is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

AmTrust Financial Services Inc. hired Michael Tripp as regional vice president, head of MidAmerica region. Tripp joins AmTrust from Chubb, where he spent the last four years as national vice president, small business sales.

Before Chubb, Tripp was with The Hanover, where he was branch vice president of Arkansas and Oklahoma, and later, regional vice president of Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas.

Valley Insurance Agency Alliance (VIAA), a family of more than 160 independent insurance agencies in Missouri and Illinois, promoted Kaylee Rucker to communication coordinator.

Rucker previously served as an administrative assistant for VIAA’s sister company Powers Insurance & Risk Management.

VIAA is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.

South Central

Skyward Specialty Insurance Group Inc. promoted two in its captives and programs divisions.

Ryan Burke has been promoted to vice president, specialty programs. Burke joined Houston, Texas-based Skyward Specialty in 2021 as an underwriting manager. Before joining the company, he held underwriting and leadership positions at Swiss Re, Travelers and RT Specialty.

The company promoted Amy Klatt to senior vice president, captives and programs claims. Klatt joined Skyward Specialty in 2019. She has more than two decades of experience, having held roles at Berkshire Hathaway, Travelers and Gallagher Bassett.

Lockton Companies named Jeff Henningsen chief executive officer (CEO) for the Texas P/C business, with teams in Dallas, Houston and Ft. Worth, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Birmingham, Alabama.

Henningsen is based in Houston.

Henningsen has 27 years of industry experience, including 21 years with Lockton. He most recently served as president of Lockton’s Texas property/casualty business.

Lockton is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri.

Gunnar Kephart has joined Texas Insurance Professional Services as an agent.

He previously served as a professional liability specialist at the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas Association. Kephart also has been an agency owner and a commercial lines producer in several private and publicly held agencies, primarily in the North Texas area and in San Antonio, Texas.

Texas Insurance Professional Services is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

Southeast

Travelers named Marsh Duncan president of Northfield Excess & Surplus, a specialty division.

Duncan will oversee Northfield’s current business while identifying new areas for growth. He is based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Duncan previously worked at Argo, most recently as president of excess and surplus.

West

Buckner appointed two new C-suite executives.

Agnesa Bakhshyan is the firm’s new chief growth officer. Lianna Kinard is Buckner’s new chief marketing officer.

Bakhshyan has more than 25 years of insurance industry experience, including as a Nationwide Insurance agency owner.

Kinard has more than a decade in the insurance industry, including a role as Utah Business Insurance Co.’s vice president of marketing.

Buckner is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Embroker named Chris Spagnuolo as chief product officer.

Spagnuolo has nearly 20 years of product management experience, most recently as CPO at Wander.

Spagnuolo also founded two startups and spent seven years as a product consultant to organizations such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Deloitte, Ford Motor Company, Home Depot, Jackson Hewitt, PwC, Riot Games and Under Armour.

Embroker is based in San Francisco, California.