Newsletter Sign-up

Vice President
Aon, Sacramento, Calif.
Category: Nonprofit

The Teacher

At heart, Alex Michon is a teacher. Take the story he tells about when he met a university's young assistant risk manager several years back at an event.

The young man, a recent college graduate, had an understanding of the industry that surprised Michon for someone so young, and they struck up a friendship. While the young man was in no way a prospective client, Michon mentored him over the next three years.

Later, the young man moved to another company. With Michon's continued mentoring and his own talent, he landed on the management committee within six months and cut risk costs by 30 percent within the year.

Although Aon very rarely hires straight from outside the commercial insurance brokerage world, Michon's superiors eventually hired the young man to assist Michon's clients in a risk management matters. The years of mentoring paid off for both of them. One is on a career path that pays substantially better than before, and the other has a skilled practitioner helping his clients reduce losses and identify risk.

The word has gotten around and now Michon is mentoring five other people at Aon, trying to help them understand the methods and processes of enterprise risk management (ERM). In the end, Michon wants to let people that insurance is really about people as much as it is about contracts.

"It's a struggle to understand how a claim can be stopped before it starts," said Michon. "But it really helps if our clients understand the total cost of risk, and it really helps if our clients look at risk management as more than just insurance contracts.

"That is the core of what I am trying to teach," he added.

--By Julie Liedman

Vice President
Marsh, San Francisco

A Taste for the Finer Points

Michael Pellegrini knows something about the wine business given that his family has owned and operated a well-known Sonoma County winery since 1933. He has been able to put that knowledge of the wine industry to use by creating a better policy for wineries.

Pellegrini launched the Winery Stock Throughput policy form in 2008 and picked up four new winery clients in 2009. This new policy better covers wine leakage, contamination, and catastrophic exposure for inventory in transit, processing and during storage.

One of the keys to this program is the valuation clause for nonreplaceable vintage products. Standard policy forms would not adequately cover the recovery required by wineries in event of a loss, so a customized approach was needed.

Pellegrini received agreement from three U.S. and five London markets to quote per the Marsh Manuscript Winery Stock Throughput form.

"The cargo coverage is much more broad than what was available under the normal property program," one client said.

This has made a big difference for the client, which had two claims which previously would have been uninsured.

Pellegrini is a client adviser in the Global Marine Practice of Marsh's San Francisco office. His primary responsibilities are marketing and servicing cargo programs, primarily for clients in the biotechnology, technology, retail and agriculture sectors.

Vice President
Marsh, San Francisco
Category: Marine

The Team Captain

Michael Pellegrini is not one to sit around and wait for other people to take action.

As a client advisor in the Global Marine Practice at Marsh's San Francisco office, he has stepped up to take on leadership roles to provide clients with better service. He is, for instance, manager for Marsh's National Cargo Marketing Platform and is the national cargo leader for the Life Sciences Industry Practice Group.

After hours, he puts in time working to help his community. He serves on the board of trustees for the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and is on the insurance committee of the Olympic Club, a private San Francisco area athletic and social club.

"I believe if you give time and effort into these things, there's going to be a reward and benefit beyond anything that is measurable," said Pellegrini, a San Francisco native.

His involvement with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society came about as a result of his connection with former colleague Norm Jacobi, a managing director at Marsh who had been active in the LLS before he died of blood cancer in 2006. It was Jacobi who had recruited Pellegrini to Marsh and then invited Pellegrini to get involved with the LLS.

In his work for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Pellegrini is also the team captain for Marsh and has played a key role in organizing in-house fundraisers.

For the Olympic Club, he was able to put his insurance knowledge to work to help the organization with a recent insurance RFP.

--By Patricia Vowinkel

Senior Vice President, Life Science Practice Leader
Riggs, Counselman, Michaels & Downes, Bethesda, Md.

A Repeat Not to Be Beat

Harry Wallace is back on the Power Broker¿ list this year after winning in 2009, and clients have every reason to believe he deserves to be here. A "connector" in the pharmaceutical industry, which has been as hard hit as everything else in this tough economy, he"s helped numerous clients and prospects find jobs after being laid off.

One pharmaceutical client said Wallace is, simply, "tireless on your behalf." Over the last year, Wallace has visited this client on several occasions to look at how the economic downturn has impacted the company"s contract renewal, volume and risk status and has worked with them to readjust their program to save them money.

"I didn"t ask him to do that," the client said. "He just came and did it. He is a full-service broker and beyond."

Wallace won a new account in 2009. The CFO of the life science company said Wallace has the total package: excellent customer service, industry expertise and a great team.

"My challenge to him was that we would consolidate all of our insurance under him if he could bring us better coverage at lower premiums, with equal or better carriers," the CFO said. "He delivered in every aspect."

On a larger scale, Wallace has been an advocate for the life sciences community in Maryland and nationwide, lobbying for a state tax credit for emerging life sciences companies.

Senior Vice President, Life Science Practice Leader
Riggs, Counselman, Michaels & Downes, Bethesda, Md.
Category: Pharmaceuticals

The Motivator

It might be difficult to find an insurance broker who isn't a member of various community organizations, who doesn't scope out networking events to land a prospective client. But what about a broker who is truly passionate about promoting the community he works for?

Harry Wallace said that he feels his responsibilities to the life science community go far beyond simply procuring risk management for it.

"The life science community is the future of healing and making people's lives better," Wallace said. "Life science companies are tricky enough investments as they are, but whenever the country falls on hard times like we have, it becomes doubly tricky. Finding access to capital and promoting some of these companies that frankly have some amazing cures and amazing science--it is good for our children and grandchilden to make sure that some of this science gets to the shelf."

Wallace has been doing his part to make that happen. He sits on the bioscience committee of the Greater Baltimore Committee, a business trade group in Maryland. Last year he worked with clients, law firms and accounting firms; drafted letters; created mailing lists; and made phone calls to make sure a tax credit for emerging life science companies remained.

"We lobbied hard and motivated people to make their voices heard, to make sure the tax credit was not cut," he said. "And we were successful."

Another issue at the top of Wallace's list is the controversy surrounding how the National Institutes of Health were choosing to distribute its stimulus funds. He has been part of an effort to work with state and federal legislators to question the NIH practices to ensure the money is distributed to needy and worthy startup life science companies.

--By Erin Gazica