People & Places

Cover Genius recently named Darcy Shapiro as its chief operating officer for the Americas and Amer Massoudi as global chief revenue officer.

Cover Genius is a global insurance technology company. Based in New York, Shapiro initially joined Cover Genius in 2018 to lead insurance partnerships and legal in North America, Canada and Latin American markets and established a 50-state managing general agency licensing model.

She has more than 15 years of commercial and general insurance experience. Shapiro joined Cover Genius from The Hartford, where she was the product director for cyber, tech, media and miscellaneous professional liability products.

She also spent time at AIG and

the specialty division of Liberty Mutual in different roles including claims and litigation management.

Massoudi will be the first person to serve as global CRO at Cover Genius, where he will control partner integrations, account management, mid-market sales and various growth and margin expansion initiatives from San Francisco.

Previously, he was senior vice president of analytics and partner services for Cover Genius, for which he and his team have overseen the company’s data analytics API, BrightWrite.

Before joining Cover Genius, Massoudi was vice president of product and growth at Freelancer.com, overseeing all revenue, product management, data science and customer operations.

In addition, Julio Castellon has been appointed as senior vice president of partnerships for Latin America to further build Cover Genius’ partner network in the area. He brings more than 25 years of senior partner and leadership experience.

Buckle, a tech-enabled financial services company, has added insurance product executive, Andrew Sand, as vice president of product management and auto dealership executive, Tim Morris, as director of dealer development.

Sand comes from Farmers Insurance, where he was head of commercial auto. He has previously served as director of product management and commercial lines for Mercury Insurance for nearly 12 years. For more than 16 years, he held various underwriting, sales and service and product positions at Progressive Insurance.

Morris most recently served as director of outside sales at Cox Automotive. He has held various sales positions at automotive companies of all sizes, from startups to multinational corporations, including Mercedes-Benz, VinSolutions, Grayson BMW and Dealertrack, among others.

He has experience in retail auto dealership operation and dealership vendor and partner representation.

RT Specialty has promoted Joe Reynolds to vice president within its environmental and construction professional (ECP) practice. He is based in Spring City, Pennsylvania.

He joined the company in 2018 as an assistant vice president and has since built a book of business within the contractor’s pollution liability (CPL), architects and engineers (A&E) and contractors professional (CPrL) liability marketplace.

Prior to joining the organization, Reynolds served as an A&E product head at Hiscox Insurance and vice president and executive underwriter in XL Catlin’s Design Professional division.

For more than a decade, he also underwrote and developed product strategy for management and professional liability products at Travelers Insurance and The Chubb Corporation.

USG Insurance Services Inc., a national wholesaler and managing general agency, has added Bob Reardon as business development manager for the Southeast.

Reardon joined USG in July 2020 as the branch manager of the Alpharetta, Georgia, satellite office. Reardon has 28 years of combined retail and wholesale insurance industry.

In his new position as business development manager for the Southeast, he will support the overall effort to expand USG’s Southeast footprint through agency development, carrier development and talent development for the Georgia, Florida and Louisiana regions.

This move is the most recent change that USG has implemented as part of its national expansion plans.

Insurance adjusting firm Catastrophe & National Claims (CNC) has added Tom Noonan as senior vice president of strategy and innovation.

In this newly created role, Noonan helps lead strategic planning and accelerate CNC’s innovation initiatives. He joins the team with more than 36 years of experience in operations and business development within the claims industry.

Noonan began his career with Hartford Insurance in 1985 and has experience building teams and businesses, including his own insurance adjusting and private investigation firm in 1993.

In 1997, he sold his interest in the firm and joined Cunningham Lindsey as an assistant vice president overseeing operations in the West. Noonan also worked as regional manager for American Technologies and director of business development for Rimkus Consulting.

Most recently, he served as vice president of strategy and development for Leading Edge Claims Service.

Founded in 1988, Catastrophe & National Claims is an independent adjusting firm offering full assistance to regional and national insurance carriers.

Workers’ compensation insurer, Texas Mutual Insurance Co., promoted Bill Potter to chief financial officer (CFO). Potter succeeds Mike Barron, who served as Texas Mutual’s CFO for more than 17 years and has retired.

Potter joined Texas Mutual in 2018 as vice president of premium audit, after accumulating more than 25 years of finance, accounting and business leadership experience in multiple executive roles.

Texas Mutual also named Larry Martin as the company’s new senior vice president of human resources. Martin assumed this role following the retirement of Lynette Caldwell, who held the position for more than 12 years.

Martin has been a part of Texas Mutual since 1994, after spending five years at Blue Cross Blue Shield. He has held a number of roles at Texas Mutual, including vice president of human resources consulting services.

Martin also played a role in overseeing the growth of Texas Mutual’s college recruitment program and implemented the company’s learning and development and performance management strategies.

Commercial insurance brokerage and consulting firm, The Plexus Groupe, has named industry veteran John Stollenwerck to vice president of business development. He is based in Dallas, Texas.

Stollenwerck has more than 20 years of client service experience across multiple industries and lines of business. He joins The Plexus Group from Ragland Strother & Lafitte, an independent insurance brokerage in Texas, where he was named a partner in 2015.

Before entering insurance, Stollenwerck was in technology consulting and sales with Electronic Data Systems, now part of Hewlett-Packard, among other firms.

Stollenwerck has experience in the insurance industry, with expertise in complex accounts and serving clients in private equity, the golf and country club industry, technology, real estate, law and manufacturing.

Root Inc., the parent company of Root Insurance, named Christine Patrick as vice president of investor relations.

Patrick comes to Root with more than 10 years of insurance industry experience, both in investor relations and as a sell side analyst.

Most recently, Patrick led investor relations with Kemper Corp. and previously with National General Holdings Corporation.

As a senior equity research analyst at JMP Securities, she covered both the property/casualty and mortgage insurance sectors.

Workers’ compensation insurer, Omaha National Insurance Co., in Omaha, Nebraska, promoted Theresa Aronson to director of operations and Cori Barnes to director of medical services.

Aronson joined Omaha National in January 2019 and built the premium audit department.

Before joining Omaha National, Aronson had 18 years of experience in payroll services and premium audit.

Barnes joined Omaha National in October 2020 to build the utilization review operation and soon assumed the role of medical services manager. Barnes spent more than 20 years with CHI Health as both a radiologic technologist and a clinical coordinator, where she was responsible for clinic operations, including supervision, training, compliance and scheduling.

Most recently, Barnes served as utilization review supervisor with Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Cos.

Midwestern Insurance Alliance has named Robert Young to its wholesale division as vice president of business development. Young will be based out of San Diego, California.

Young’s focus will be to help the team grow revenue by enhancing retail agent partnerships and carrier relationships as well as bringing on new brokers to the team and expanding the product line.

He has 33 years of insurance experience holding executive positions in both underwriting and marketing. He has spent most of his career in the wholesale and managing general agent area of the business, but has also spent time as a retail agent and a company underwriter.

Most recently, he ran Valiant Insurance Services, a start-up workers’ compensation wholesale brokerage.

Crest Insurance Group LLC of Ft. Collins, Colorado, has added Jeramie Holt.

Holt has more than 15 years of industry experience, including a background in employee benefits. He will join Crest in the Ft. Collins branch.

Dane Lupe has joined Lockton’s Pacific region as senior vice president and producer based in Los Angeles, California.

Lupe will partner with private equity and commercial real estate firms to provide guidance in proactively mitigating, transferring and insuring their risk.

Lupe previously served at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. as area senior vice president. He started in the industry at Lockton.

Lockton’s Pacific region has also added Jordan Burbach, Daniel Denham and Andrew Szot.

Burbach and Szot are based in Lockton’s San Francisco office. Denham is based in Lockton’s Los Angeles office.

Burbach is a senior vice president and producer at Lockton.

He joins Lockton after serving as a senior vice president of Marsh’s global private equity and mergers and acquisitions practice for more than seven years.

He previously worked at Zurich Insurance as the underwriting manager responsible for the Western US. He started his career in insurance at Marsh as an insurance placement broker.

Denham is also joining Lockton as senior vice president and producer.

He has nearly 13 years in insurance working at brokerages including HUB International and Marsh.

Szot joins Lockton as vice president and client services consultant specializing in private equity insurance services.

Szot most recently served as vice president in Marsh’s Private equity and mergers and acquisitions practice.