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Speakers
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 Paul Balbresky is the principal of Balbresky Consulting Services, a marketing/sales strategy and training professional practice specializing in the insurance industry. Clients range in size from large divisions of Fortune 500 corporations to startup business units. Balbresky has more than 30 years experience in insurance and has taught as an adjunct faculty member of Penn State University, served as board member of the Campus Violence Prevention Center, and as regional vice president of the Society of Insurance Trainers and Educators.
 Richard Berry is a member of the leadership team for Deloitte Consulting’s financial services/insurance sector. His focus is on business and distribution strategy development and related implementation support for insurance industry clients. Berry has more than 26 years of general management consulting experience – nearly 20 years focused on the insurance business – and has worked with many clients on a variety of assignments of joint client-consultant teams. Berry has market eminence as a thought leader in distribution. He has written nearly 40 articles for industry publications such as Best’s Review and National Underwriter.
 John Bykowski is president, CEO and chairman of the board of SECURA Insurance, A Mutual Company. Before joining SECURA in 1997, Bykowski served as the senior vice president of marketing for West Bend Mutual Insurance. A Marquette University graduate, Bykowski also spent part of his 36-year property casualty insurance career with Wisconsin Employers, Allstate and Milwaukee Insurance. He is active in industry and community affairs and serves on the board of directors for the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, the Community Foundation, NAMIC and M&I Bank Fox Cities.
 Christopher Carlson is a consultant with Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Inc. Prior to joining Pinnacle in 2005, Carlson spent more than 25 years with the Nationwide Insurance Companies. His varied assignments included personal lines ratemaking in automobile and homeowners, rate filings and regulatory compliance, reserving in the personal and commercial lines as well as assumed reinsurance. Carlson is a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. He is currently the president of the Casualty Actuarial Society.
 Paul Chaney is president of the International Blogging and New Media Association. In his day job, he serves as marketing director for Web content management company, Bizzuka.com, where he is tasked with using the tools of new media for marketing and public relations. Chaney has been involved in online marketing for nearly a decade and was one of the first business blogging consultants.
 Sharon Cooper is senior vice president and chief marketing and communications officer for Selective Insurance Group, with oversight for the company's marketing and communications strategy, including employee, agent, public and media communications, corporate branding and advertising, and marketing and communications business integration. Before joining Selective in 2000, Cooper was director of media relations for The Allstate Corporation and a corporate relations manager for Allstate Insurance Company in Irving, Texas. Prior to that, she was executive director for the Insurance News Service in Columbia, SC, and a news reporter, anchor and producer at TV stations in Texas and Georgia.
 Andrea Ezerins is the lead underwriter for Hartford Steam Boiler's Green Initiative. She has been a leader in HSB's development of a Green Endorsement, and conducted numerous seminars with HSB's partner companies as a consultant on the exposures and solutions to their own Green coverage development. During her career with HSB she has held significant Underwriting and Marketing positions providing service to various customer segments. Her most current position is responsible for providing underwriting services to HSB's partner companies.
 Gerry Finley is senior vice president casualty treaty underwriting for the underwriting services division of Munich Re America headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. Finley is primarily responsible for providing specialized casualty underwriting expertise, solutions and support to the Munich Re America business units. Finley’s background includes more than 30 years of underwriting experience comprised of nine years at the primary company level and more than 21 years in casualty treaty reinsurance underwriting. He has been with Munich Re America for 14 years.
 Linda Golden, Ph.D., is a professor of marketing at the University of Texas in Austin. Dr. Golden received her Ph.D. from the University of Florida. She is published in the areas of attribution theory, comparative advertising, retail image and patronage behavior, methodological scaling issues, and social marketing (health and ecological issues) and is currently working on additional research in these areas. Journals in which Golden has published include the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Educational Research, Journal of Urban Analysis, and Management Science.
 Jill Griffin has led the Austin-based Griffin Group since 1988, helping firms around the globe build fiercely loyal customers. Griffin's clients call her The Loyalty Maker®. Her clients include Microsoft, Dell, Toyota, Marriott, Hewlett-Packard, Wells Fargo, Western Union and Subaru. Griffin’s newest book, Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World, will be in bookstores in March 2009. She also has served on the marketing faculty at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business.
 Jenny Hodge is vice president of marketing strategy and development at American Modern Insurance Group. She and her team are responsible for developing fact-based recommendations about market conditions, product offerings and new opportunities for profitable growth. Her team is also heavily involved with line of business planning and the development of state-level marketing and sales plans in a cross-functional environment. In support of those goals, she is also responsible for managing the market research function and is also actively involved with the strategic planning process at American Modern.
 Sue Johnson serves as senior vice president and Midwest region treaty-manager, responsible for Gen Re's treaty franchise development in 11 Midwestern states. Prior to this role, she served as account executive and property development specialist in the treaty department. She began her career at Gen Re as an underwriter. Prior to Gen Re, Johnson was a commercial lines underwriter at the Royal Insurance Company.
 John Lucker leads Deloitte’s actuarial and insurance solutions data mining, predictive modeling, and advanced analytics practice, one of the leading analytics groups in the insurance industry. He has developed numerous proprietary methods and technical solutions in the areas of commercial insurance underwriting, risk selection and pricing, credit and non-credit-based predictive modeling solutions for personal lines insurers, claims management, soft fraud detection, agency, sales force and producer management, rules engines, data warehousing and data mining systems design/development, customer relationship management and pricing analytics, and predictive modeling systems.
 Scott Mackey is the assistant vice president of business insurance underwriting for Ohio Mutual Insurance Group. Mackey currently oversees the farm and commercial lines underwriting operations which are Ohio Mutual’s drive lines for their multi-state expansion effort. He was previously the AVP of e-Business and non-standard auto. As immediate past chairperson of CSC’s midrange user community, Mackey often consults with companies on their system implementation projects and web development efforts. During his 25 years in the insurance industry he has worked in varying roles from claims to underwriting and from sales to administration.
 Michael Miller is a principal with EPIC Consulting, LLC. Miller is a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. He holds the designation of chartered life underwriter and was a fellow of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries. He has numerous publications and has presented and testified extensively at industry meetings and hearings on topics including ratemaking, loss reserving, underwriting, risk classification and rate of return. Prior to EPIC, he was employed with Tillinghast, the actuarial consulting firm of Miller, Herbers, Lehmann & Associates, Inc. and State Farm Insurance Company.
 Dan Norris is a lively, energetic and effective presenter who specializes in the science of ethical influence. One of only a few individuals worldwide who currently hold the CMCT designation (a specialization in the psychology of persuasion), Norris helps organizations take the latest scientific research out of the laboratory and apply it in their own day-to-day sales, leadership, and customer service applications.
 Kimberly Paterson is the founder and CEO of CIM – a strategic marketing, research and communications firm that focuses on the insurance and financial services industry. Her experience in working with insurance executives to drive business and create lasting positive organizational change led her to her current focus on energy leadership. As a certified energy leadership coach, she now spends the bulk of her time working with insurance leaders on how to use energy to improve personal and corporate performance. Paterson is also a contributor to Best’s Review and Rough Notes magazine.
 Deborah Popely is the founder and president of Green2B/Green2C Marketing, a full-service green marketing and communications agency. She has more than 25 years of experience as a marketing consultant for corporations, associations, healthcare organizations, educational institutions, arts organizations, government agencies and charitable foundations. For the past five years, Popely has provided sustainability consulting, procurement guidance and marketing services in the areas of Green meetings and events, Green cleaning, sustainable food policy and Green building design, maintenance and construction. She is editor and publisher of The Green Events Source Book and Green Events & Exhibiting E-News.
 F.W. “Bill” Purmort is the president and chairman of Central Insurance Companies, a position he has held since 1994. Purmort joined Central Insurance Companies in 1979 making him the seventh generation of Purmorts in the company’s history. He held various underwriting, marketing and management positions before being named president and chairman. Purmort is a past chairman of the PCI Board of Governors and served on the AAI board. He is a trustee of the Van Wert County Foundation.
 Roger Rudell is the director of product strategy for the property casualty division of Computer Science Corporation’s financial services sector. Rudell currently defines and manages the strategic direction of CSC’s property casualty software products, business process outsourcing and self insured solutions. He also oversees the governance of the largest customer community in the property casualty industry. Rudell has driven the successful creation and adoption of multiple ecommerce and core back office applications for the insurance industry. Rudell has 26 years of experience within the property casualty industry.
 Parker W. Rush, a seasoned and highly accomplished insurance industry executive, was named president and chief executive officer of The Republic Group in December 2003. Since that time, Rush has overseen Republic’s emergence as a dominant regional carrier in the Southwest. Prior to joining Republic, Rush was a managing director with the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies in charge of the southern United States, a region spanning from Texas to the Carolinas with nearly 500 employees and more than $1.2 billion in premium volume.
 Jason Young is president of LeadSmart, Inc., and shares his vision in developing successful corporate cultures and workplace environments with forward-thinking companies, including Starbucks, Coca Cola, Radio Shack and Tyson Foods, to name just a few. During his 10-years with Southwest Airlines, consistently rated No. 1 in customer service and employee satisfaction, Young was a key driver in creating and developing the company’s innovative training programs for its successful leadership and customer service culture that have become renowned in the business world today.
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