Valverde Named VP of I.I.I.

The Insurance Information Institute has promoted Dr. L. James Valverde Jr. to vice president of Economics and Risk Management.

Dr. Valverde joined the I.I.I. in August 2005 as director of Economics and Risk Management, focusing on several topics where risk and uncertainty are pervasive and problematic concerns, including enterprise risk management, global climate change and extreme weather, natural catastrophes and terrorism.

During the past year, Dr. Valverde has been a featured speaker at numerous industry conferences and seminars. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Valverde has commented extensively on the challenges that the nation and the insurance industry face in managing natural disaster risk in the post-9/11 era. He has, in addition, provided testimony and analysis on the U.S. OMB’s proposed risk assessment bulletin, and on the risk of extreme weather in the Northeast United States. Most recently, he was the lead author of an in-depth I.I.I. study exploring the potential linkage between global climate change and extreme weather.

In recent years, Dr. Valverde has held senior executive positions in several international consulting firms, working extensively with senior-level decision-makers in the energy, financial services, insurance and pharmaceutical industries, on a broad array of strategic and operational issues. Prior to assuming these roles, Dr. Valverde was on the faculty of the London School of Economics, where he directed the Operational Research Department’s graduate program in Decision Sciences. Before joining the LSE faculty, he taught decision analysis and competitive decision-making at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Dr. Valverde has published numerous articles in both academic and industry journals, and has served on the editorial advisory boards of several leading journals. He is, in addition, active within the NATO Science Programme, and has been an invited speaker at NATO Advanced Workshops in Lisbon, Rome and Venice. In 2004, Dr. Valverde was a Visiting Economics Fellow and Assistant Director at the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), where—under the auspices of the Office of the Chief Economist—he worked on issues pertaining to risk management, homeland security, intelligence reform and terrorism for the United States Congress.

Dr. Valverde earned his Master of Science degree from Stanford University, and his S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The I.I.I. is a nonprofit, communications organization supported by the property/casualty insurance

Topics USA Risk Management