People & Places
Distinguished Programs, a national insurance program manager, promoted Donna Percival and Erick Schmitt to the newly created position of regional vice president of sales.
Percival will oversee sales initiatives in the West and Midwest U.S., while Schmitt will manage the Central and Eastern territories.
Percival joined Distinguished as a regional sales executive in 2020. Previously, she served as a business development manager at Westchester, a Chubb Company, where she grew the company’s broker relationships in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
Schmitt also joined Distinguished in 2020. Prior to this, he worked at Markel Specialty as a senior sales manager, where he worked directly with retail agents to place workers’ compensation accounts.
Property/casualty insurance broker NFP, hired Seth Michaelson in the Energy practice within NFP’s specialty business. Michaelson holds the title of vice president, Energy and Marine, and supports the ongoing growth of NFP’s specialty practice.
Michaelson brings more than 13 years of experience, serving most recently as managing director at Catto & Catto, a division of HUB International of Texas Inc. Prior to this, he held a variety of brokerage, risk management and business development roles with several organizations, including Wortham Insurance and WTW.
Insurance broker WTW appointed five new industry leaders within its North American natural resources business. They are based in Houston.
Bill Helander, the new head of Natural Resources North America, Houston Corporate Risk & Broking, and managing director, joins WTW from Marsh, where he served as the specialty leader for the Natural Resources sector.
WTW appointed Matt Gelotti as growth leader, Natural Resources, North America, and managing director. He is a former business development leader with Aon’s Houston office.
Joining WTW as managing director and head of Client Management, Natural Resources, North America is Chris Mulvey. He formerly as enterprise client leader for the Natural Resources space in Aon’s Houston office.
WTW appointed Clayton Corbett as senior director and global client advocate, Natural Resources, North America. He previously served as senior vice president and client executive with Marsh’s Specialty practice.
William Hoke joined WTW as senior director and producer, Natural Resources, North America. Hoke joins WTW from USI, where he served as a producer in Natural Resources.
Markel Corp. appointed Tim Pasik managing director, Commercial Casualty Product Lines leader for Markel Specialty’s insurance operations.
In his new role, Pasik will provide oversight for Markel Specialty’s commercial primary and excess — retail and wholesale — product lines.
Pasik joined Markel in 2014 and most recently served as managing director, Commercial Excess Casualty, Wholesale. He has nearly 40 years of insurance industry experience and has successfully developed underwriting guidelines, established rating parameters, and set authorities for field underwriters.
Pasik is based in Markel’s New York City office.
Acrisure Re, the reinsurance division of global insurance broker and fintech platform Acrisure, appointed Chuck Furlong as senior vice president and broker.
In his new role, Furlong will focus on expanding Acrisure Re’s reinsurance capabilities in its North American property/casualty classes of business. He will also work with internal and external stakeholders to ensure quality solutions and service is provided to all its reinsurance clients.
Furlong has more than 25 years of industry experience and has held various management level roles. He joins Acrisure Re from Guy Carpenter, where he was most recently head of U.S. casualty facultative reinsurance.
AXA XL promoted Christopher Lee to lead its excess and surplus property insurance business.
Based in New York, Lee assumes underwriting management responsibility of AXA XL’s book of E&S property business.
He joined AXA XL in 2013 as an equipment breakdown and commercial property underwriter before moving into E&S underwriting in 2018. Lee began his insurance career as an EB underwriter with Zurich North America.
AXA XL also appointed Matthew Waters as head of U.S. Middle Market to lead an initiative to expand its reach in the U.S. commercial insurance market. He is based in Boston.
Waters joins AXA XL from Liberty Mutual, bringing more than 20 years of middle-market underwriting management experience and demonstrated leadership across various and diverse property/casualty segments including Construction and Energy. He most recently served as EVP, general manager for Liberty’s Middle Market business.
In addition to his management responsibilities, he also served as an executive sponsor for several employee resource groups, including Men as Allies.
Aon appointed Rachel Perry to chief innovation officer for commercial risk in North America.
In this new role, Perry will use her proven leadership skills and expertise to work across commercial risk to accelerate innovation and better address unmet client needs.
Perry has more than 25 years of insurance experience and has been part of Aon since 2012. She currently serves as market leader for Atlanta, responsible for strategy, financial performance, growth, client retention, and delivering client solutions across Commercial Risk, Health, Wealth and Human Capital Solutions. She is passionate about talent development and a strong champion of diversity, equity and inclusion within the insurance industry.
Virginia insurance agency Choice Financial Group appointed insurance veteran Robert J. Hilb as chief executive officer following the retirement of J. Richard Braun, founder and president of Choice.
Prior to his appointment as CEO, Hilb was serving as a member of the board of directors and head of mergers and acquisitions at Choice. Hilb has more than 35 years of insurance industry experience, including founding and serving as CEO of Hilb Group.
Choice is headquartered in Virginia Beach and has 18 offices in eight states. The firm is backed by Northlane Capital Partners, a middle-market private equity firm.
Crum & Forster’s credit division appointed Drew M. Kovalsky as vice president and credit underwriter.
Kovalsky is responsible for the research, evaluation and underwriting of Crum & Forster’s credit insurance and alternative risk finance products for North American customers and other select jurisdictions, including single situation credit and multi-buyer trade credit insurance, as well as alternative risk finance.
Kovalsky has nearly 20 years’ experience as a credit analyst. His expertise focuses on origination and underwriting of transactional credit solutions for varied asset classes, underwriting structured finance, project finance, infrastructure-related credits and municipal enterprises.
Most recently, Kovalsky was vice president and credit analyst with Assured Guaranty.
He is based in New York.
Canopius Group hired Roberta Sweeper as lead business systems analyst for its new US application support team.
Sweeper joined Canopius in May 2022, bringing extensive system administration and software development project management experience in the insurance domain.
Most recently, she served as the senior business systems analyst at CNO Financial Group. Prior to CNO Financial Group, Sweeper held program management, business analyst and quality assurance engineer roles for DTZ, CNA Insurance, Derivatech, the Chicago Stock Exchange, and T.M. Floyd.
Ryan Specialty announced Michael Blackshear, chief compliance and privacy officer, will assume additional responsibilities as the head of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
In this newly created function, Blackshear will lead Ryan Specialty’s DEI efforts in its ongoing efforts to promote DEI at Ryan Specialty, in addition to building strong alliances within the insurance industry.
Blackshear has more than 30 years of financial service and executive experience in the areas of compliance and risk management.
Prior to joining Chicago-based Ryan Specialty, he was the North America chief compliance officer for Chubb Insurance Group, responsible for developing and maintaining their North American compliance program.
Houston, Texas-based RSL Insurance added Ryan Colville as an insurance advisor on the commercial business team.
Colville will serve the insurance needs of business owners in the West Texas region. He previously worked in the agriculture business as an agronomy consultant and chemical, fertilizer and seed broker.
RSL Insurance is an affiliate of Leavitt Group, a privately held insurance brokerage.
FIRST Insurance Funding named Ryan Riolo as a relationship manager in Austin, Texas.
Riolo has nine years of experience in developing relationships with independent agents, brokers and general agents. Prior to joining FIRST, Riolo worked at Bank Direct Capital Finance as vice president of sales.
FIRST is a premium finance company with more than $10 billion in loans financed annually.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reappointed venture capitalist Erin Knight to the Citizens Property Insurance Corp. board of governors.
Knight, of Coral Gables, was appointed a year ago and is one of three people DeSantis has named to the nine-member board. She is president of Monument Capital Management, an A-Rod Corp. company, and is part of the leadership team for A-Rod Corp., a venture capital investment firm led by former major league baseball player Alex Rodriquez, according to Florida Politics news site.
Knight previously served in executive positions at Stonegate Bank and Regions Bank.
Risk Strategies named Patrick Roth senior vice president, growth leader for the Central and West regions.
He is located in Colorado.
Roth will be responsible for developing a sales culture, managing all levels of producers, driving organic growth strategies, and recruiting and onboarding new producers.
He was most recently chief growth officer and executive vice president at Lockton. Prior to Lockton, Roth was resident sales director and senior vice president at Aon.
Risk Strategies is a national specialty insurance brokerage and risk management firm.
Celia Dietrich was named to the board of directors for Pinnacol Assurance in Colorado by Gov. Jared Polis. Her appointment is contingent upon approval by the Colorado Senate once it reconvenes in 2023.
Dietrich will serve in the seat designated for an individual experienced in finance or investments whose workers’ compensation liability is not covered by Pinnacol. She takes over the seat from Barbara Mellman Davis, who has retired.
Dietrich is the founder of Dietrich Partners, a business consulting firm.
Pinnacol is Colorado’s workers’ comp insurer.