The 2017 Power Broker® Rising Stars are already shaping the future of the insurance industry.

These Risk & Insurance Power Broker® winners and finalists are emerging leaders of the brokerage industry.

If a given industry sector is facing challenges, you can bet a 2017 Power Broker® is already well on their way to a solution.

Working Magic With Carriers For one industrial multinational client based in the Midwest, Aon’s Katherine Glancy Johnston secured physical damage and business interruption coverage against cyber attacks within the property program itself — a fairly unusual coverage in the industry. How did she do it? “Magic, I guess,” quipped the company’s risk manager. Well, there… View Article

The ‘Go-To’ Broker Michael Calhoun is my “go-to guy for aerospace-related business,” said the vice president of administration of an aircraft manufacturer. Calhoun’s work, he said, is “extraordinarily creative” and the broker is always available whenever “a peculiar or unusual” issue might arise. Calhoun, who is also Midwest region manager, took a lead role in… View Article

A Skillful Mediator Aon’s Joseph Boschee wowed clients this past year with his mastery of the arts of diplomacy and mediation. “We were having trouble communicating with our insurance company,” said an executive vice president. “Joe and I decided that a face-to-face meeting with the carrier [was needed]. … Joe stepped in and took care… View Article

Meeting Needs Far Beyond Insurance Several of Alex Burton’s higher ed clients needed more flexibility than what they were getting within their risk retention group. But transitioning out of a risk retention group can be a complex and exhausting process. The groups house such a diversity of risks, ranging from football programs to art collections,… View Article

A Knack for Finding Unexpected Savings One of John Byers’ clients had been going directly to a carrier for its elective benefits, but the outdated strategy caused its employees to pay up to four times the market price for an inferior product. Byers, who is also director of sales, and his Aon team were able… View Article

Helping New Business in a Big Way Few brokers can say they were present at the creation of a new business. “I formed a company about a year ago that acquires pre-construction solar projects and funds the construction and operations,” said the company’s managing partner. Since then, he said, “Susan has essentially served as our… View Article

Improving Coverage and Rates William Barnett was instrumental in several significant positive developments to one client’s insurance program this year, said its global director of risk management. For starters, he was able to engineer an 8 percent premium decrease on a program that was already reduced by 12 percent the prior year. “As our program… View Article

Setting the Bar for Brokers No project is too challenging for Seth Cohen and his team to insure, as his clients can attest to. “One of our clients was producing the ‘Heaven Sent’ jump, in which Luke Aikins jumped out of a plane at 25,000 feet without a parachute or a wing suit. The only… View Article

Track Record: On Time and Under Budget With less than two weeks before a client needed to conclude a major real estate acquisition, Laura Decker got to work. First she reviewed hundreds of environmental Phase I reports on the property. Of even greater concern was the fact that many of the property’s environmental exposures fell… View Article

No Jargon, Just Action Edward Conlon became the broker of a registered investment adviser and a related broker-dealer after a spinoff and merger at the holding company level. Despite a difficult loss history on the broker-dealer side, Conlon saved the combined entity 55 percent on its premium by showing carriers how the client improved its… View Article

Making It Easy Susan Jaffe, director of Guernsey’s auction house, may deal with a $10 million collection of guitars one day or a $25 million glass piece by Picasso or rare star rubies on other days. Regardless of the type of valuable — or its storage and transportation needs — she counts on Kristina Marcigliano… View Article

Long-Term Risk Management For 30 years, Arthur J. Gallagher’s Martha Acker mitigated risk and helped insure the long-term care market. Last year, Acker further fortified the industry when she established a risk purchasing group (RPG) program for the property and liability environmental exposures of long-term care. Long-term care has an inherent risk for environmental claims… View Article

Possessing Wisdom One client of Wesley Bryan’s charged him with the task of providing manuscripted coverage for its captive program. “He knows our program, he knows our business practices, and he knows our captive,” said the client’s vice president of risk management. “He has already made some important adjustments, but we have a situation that… View Article

Keeping Schools’ Missions at the Forefront School clients count on Brandon Cole to provide them the risk management education they need to perform their missions. Oakland, Calif.-based Thrival World Academies, a new nonprofit, was designing a program to provide publicly subsidized education abroad to racially and socio-economically diverse students. “Since we were in our design… View Article

Anticipating Client Needs When Japanese pharma company Astellas moved its clinical trial cover to a new carrier, an Astellas executive in the Netherlands objected. They didn’t appreciate the new carrier’s failure to provide a summary of the policy exclusions for countries where a broker is not used and the option for long-tail certificates of insurance…. View Article

A Fast Mover When one of Jay Brancaleone’s clients sees something they like, they tend to buy it and pay cash. Whether it’s a car or an investment property, the clients move quickly and they ask a lot of Brancaleone in making sure the correct coverages are in place. “Off the charts,” is how the… View Article

A Hard Negotiator Blazing a trail for an independent brokerage, Karen Bartak impresses with her connections in the excess casualty markets. “I rely on her to get me access to the big players in the public entity space,” said Greg Kildare, executive director of risk at the LA Metro Transportation Authority. “I regularly sit down… View Article