Career Development Roundtable

When: April 15th 4PM ET

Where:

Guy Carpenter Office

30 S. 17th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103

With networking to follow at:

Tir na nÓg Irish Pub.

1600 Arch Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103

Host:  Imelda Powers - Managing Director, Guy Carpenter

This career roundtable has invited four recent and-soon-to-be retired professionals, Liz Cleary, Maria Kovas, Shari Zola and Chris Zumbrum, to share their insights on how to navigate the career journey, where to find road-signs, what to do when you hit an obstacle, and how to cultivate a satisfying experience. They have a wealth of experience mentoring many in the industry. Come to get their advice and make your career journey more rewarding.

Speaker Bios:

Liz Cleary

Liz specializes in modeling and managing catastrophic risk. She is a member of Guy Carpenter’s Americas Analytics Leadership team and serves as a Catastrophe Advisor.  She is the analytics account manager for a number of global insurance firms as well as FEMA; collaborating on the implementation and adoption of catastrophe management strategies. Liz has participated on various steering committees for Guy Carpenter’s catastrophe modeling platform including oversight of best practices; internal tool development; model investigation; report templates; colleague development and hardware and software deployment.

Liz is a company spokesperson on catastrophe management matters including conferences; lectures and media engagements. She volunteers for the International Society of Cat Managers and has her Certified Catastrophe Risk Management Professional (CCRMP) designation.

Liz began her career as an underwriter with Home Insurance Company then joined Guy Carpenter as a facultative broker for excess and surplus lines and large limit risks. Liz then worked at Marsh as a retail broker handling national accounts business. Liz returned to Guy Carpenter in 1997 as a member of the Quantitative Services team, now GC Analytics.

Liz received a bachelor's degree in business in 1983 from Cornell University.

Maria Kovas

Maria has worked in all business types of the insurance industry: Brokerage, Primary, and Reinsurance.  As the first East Coast account manager at RMS, she supported all the business types, including the largest and most critical accounts, covering a domestic geographic area from New Hampshire to Florida inclusive of Chicago and internationally supporting Bermuda, the Caribbean and traveling as far as Melbourne, Australia.

This support included all domestic and international models. The combination of business, accounting, and IT experience facilitated communication and training of the client staff and the completion of installations which became more and more complex as the modeling software evolved.

Her current interest focuses on the integration of new technologies and risk management, especially the incorporation of AI, Block Chain, Virtual Reality, Robotics and Augmented Reality into day-to-day business processing and risk management.

Shari S. Zola

Shari has been a Munich Re employee for over 38 years, and retiring at the end of June 2024.  She is currently the Smart Mobility Operations Lead within an innovative underwriting team focused on current and future risks around mobility.  Prior to this role Shari was the Vice President/Deputy Head of Risk Accumulation for the Munich Re US Operations, working in the cat risk management space for 27 years.  She was instrumental in starting the Catastrophe Management Department, and served on a global team responsible for developing, implementing, and directing global strategy on catastrophe exposure/loss accumulation and capital risk allocations, with her focus on the U.S.

Shari received her undergraduate degree in Business - Management Information Systems from the State University of New York at Albany, and her Masters of Business Administration from Rider University.  Shari serves on the Executive board of the International Society of Catastrophe Managers (ISCM) and is currently the Immediate Past President, and is an active member of the RAA Cat Risk Management Conference planning committee.  She is a Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), and has earned the Associate in Reinsurance (ARe) and Certified Catastrophe Risk Management Professional (CCRMP) designations.

Chris Zumbrum

Chris Zumbrum has spent many years in the catastrophe risk management space.  While working as Managing Director at Guy Carpenter, Chris led teams that were focused on the strategic development of various products/tools related to climate change and managing catastrophe risk through spatial analysis suites.  Prior to Guy Carpenter, Chris led a team at JLT Re and Towers Watson, and spent 13 years at Risk Management Solutions, Inc (RMS).

Chris holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Shippensburg University, he has the Associate in Reinsurance (ARe), Certified Catastrophe Risk Management Professional (CCRMP) and Certified Catastrophe Risk Analyst (CCRA) designations. Chris has spoken on various catastrophe risk management topics at numerous conferences, an active member of the RAA Cat Risk Management Conference planning committee, and is a member of the International Society of Catastrophe Manager’s Education Committee.