People & Places

National

Commercial lines insurer Starr Insurance Companies added Matthew Thompson to the company’s U.S. sales and distribution team as Strategic Relationship leader.

Thompson is responsible for establishing new client relationships and expanding existing relationships, working across Starr’s underwriting teams.

Thompson joined Starr from AIG, where he worked for more than 12 years as a client director and business development manager. He also served in a business development role with broker Marsh prior to AIG. He is based in New York City.

Insurance broker Acrisure appointed Matthew Kirk as executive vice president and head of Insurance Strategy and Execution.

Kirk joins Acrisure following 16 years at The Hartford, where he served as senior vice president and chief officer, Sales & Distribution, for small commercial lines.

Kirk will focus on execution of Acrisure’s wider insurance plans, including its artificial intelligence-based technology, managing general agency platform, value chain compression and carrier partnerships.

In this new leadership role, Kirk will join Acrisure’s executive leadership team and will report to Grahame Millwater, president of Global Insurance.

Prior to The Hartford, which Kirk joined in 2006, he was deputy assistant to President George W. Bush in the White House office of legislative affairs. He also worked in the office of U.S. Senator Don Nickles.

Specialty insurer Hamilton Insurance Group appointed Devon Minarik as head of U.S. Small Business Casualty Insurance and Logan Kirkland as head of U.S. Products Liability & Contractors Insurance at Hamilton Select Insurance, its new excess and surplus lines insurer.

In these new roles, Minarik and Kirkland are responsible for the development of their respective lines of business.

Reporting to Hamilton Select Insurance CEO Clay Rhoades, Minarik and Kirkland are based in Richmond, Virginia.

Minarik most recently spent over a year as vice president at AmWINS Group, prior to which he spent over a decade with Burns & Wilcox in senior roles.

Hamilton’s new U.S. small business casualty division is targeting general liability insurance for a range of contractors and premises driven accounts, and other general liability exposures for small businesses.

Prior to joining Hamilton, Kirkland was an underwriting specialist at James River Insurance Co., handling large, complex, national products and construction accounts.

Before that, he was a property underwriter and property/casualty broker at Continental Underwriters.

Kirkland’s new U.S. division is focused on a broad range of hard-to-place manufacturing and construction risks.

The Big “I” named Whitnee Dillard as the new executive director of Invest and diversity. Dillard succeeds Deborah Pickford as executive director of Invest, a classroom-to-career education program.

Dillard has 10 years of experience in insurance, nonprofit management and youth educational programming. She began her insurance career in 2012 as a licensed property/casualty agent, joining the Big “I” in 2014. She currently serves as the Big “I” director of diversity and inclusion and also serves as the staff lead to the Big “I” Diversity Council representative of Big “I” agents and 24 insurance companies.

East

The Insurance Agents & Brokers (IA&B) hired John Savant as government affairs director. In his role, Savant will oversee the organization’s legislative advocacy.

Savant most recently worked for the Reading-Berks Association of REALTORS, where he was responsible for the association’s legislative advocacy efforts, including direct lobbying, grassroots mobilization, and managing the association’s political action committee.

Midwest

Alliant Insurance Services hired Hunter Johnson as vice president, growing its presence in the Midwest region. Based in Springfield, Missouri, Johnson will deploy his broad expertise in workers’ compensation, alternative risk financing, and complex risk placement to design and deploy cutting-edge insurance products and solutions to clients across the region.

Previously, Johnson was a commercial insurance consultant with a mid-sized insurance brokerage firm offering employee benefits, human resources, workers’ compensation, and property and casualty solutions. He also has worked on the carrier side of the business.

Indianapolis-based Gregory & Appel Insurance (G&A) named Heather Kennedy as chief operating officer. As a member of the executive team, Kennedy will lead strategic priorities for the company’s service operations.

Her responsibilities will include overseeing day-to-day operations, improving processes to support client experience, enhancing staff professional development and advancing the company’s IT infrastructure initiatives.

Kennedy joined the company from the Indiana Department of Transportation, where she served on the executive team as chief legal counsel for the past three years.

Holmes Murphy named Tim Boberg as the property/casualty market leader of the company’s growing Minneapolis team.

Boberg joins Holmes Murphy with nearly 20 years of industry experience. In this new role, he will continue to build upon Holmes Murphy’s Minneapolis team, while working to grow the business with new clients and advise existing clients as they prepare for challenges in today’s economy.

Prior to joining Holmes Murphy, Boberg was the president of Hays Minnesota Property Casualty, now Brown & Brown, for nearly 14 years. Boberg also spent time as a managing director for Travelers.

Hershey Insurance Group, Inc. promoted Betsy Sinutko to vice president of commercial lines.

Sinutko will provide direct oversight of the commercial lines sales, marketing and servicing departments, and manage operational functions within the commercial lines department to promote growth through new business and stability within the existing book of business.

Sinutko, who formerly held the title of commercial lines manager, joined Hershey as commercial lines account manager in October 2014.

South Central

Alliant Insurance Services added James Chenoweth in the company’s mergers and acquisitions group. Chenoweth will specialize in providing tax, litigation and M&A risk solutions to private equity firms and corporate clients for their most challenging transactional risks.

Prior to joining Alliant, Chenoweth, along with six others, opened the Houston office of Gibson Dunn, which now has over 50 lawyers and where he served as a tax partner since 2017.

In addition, Chenoweth previously was a partner at Baker Botts in Houston where he began his career as an associate in 2005.

He is based in Houston.

Stonetrust Workers’ Compensation named Carlos Contreras and Kristin Boman to its underwriting team.

Contreras, senior production underwriter, brings nine years of industry experience in both claims and underwriting.

Located in Oklahoma, Contreras will serve agents in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri.

Kristin Boman, production underwriter, has 14 years of industry experience with an extensive agency background.

Located in North Louisiana, Boman will provide underwriting services to agents in North Louisiana and Arkansas.

Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Stonetrust writes workers’ compensation in 10 states including Alabama and Kansas, which it entered in 2021. Stonetrust plans to expand into Iowa and Georgia by the end of 2022.

Southeast

Byars/Wright Insurance, an independent agency with six offices in Alabama, has named four new shareholders, officially giving the agency six owners.

In addition to existing owners Haig Wright II and Skip Roberts, the new owners are Paul Burnett, Evan Chambers, Gabe Clement and Haig Wright III.

All have at least eight years of experience with the 76-year-old agency.

Haig Wright III is manager of the agency’s Jasper office, where the agency is headquartered.

The agency has seen significant growth in recent years and acquired Business to Business’s employee benefits assets in 2021.

The firm offers commercial, personal, and life insurance and employee benefits programs.

Keystone Insurers Group named Carolyn Nalley as its new Tennessee state vice president.

Nalley was previously at The Hartford as a senior small-commercial sales representative.

At Keystone, she will oversee carrier growth and engagement with service divisions. Nalley takes over the role from Michele Bicknell, who was recently named Mid-South regional vice president.

Keystone, based in Pennsylvania, was founded in 1983 when four independent agencies joined forces, the company said. The firm now includes 300 independent agency partners in 18 states.

West

Woodruff Sawyer named Andrew Holloway as a vice president, surety.

Holloway was previously regional manager at Hartford Bond for 17 years, working in both Southern and Northern California.

He will be based in Woodruff Sawyer’s Walnut Creek, California, offices.

Woodruff Sawyer is headquartered in San Francisco, and has offices throughout the U.S.

LP Insurance Services LLC named Melissa Marsh director of human resources.

Marsh was most recently owner of HRinDemand, an HR consulting company in Reno.

Marsh previously held positions with the MGM Grand Hotel Casino, the N9NE Group and the Greenspun Media Group.

Reno, Nevada-based LP Insurance Services is a risk management and insurance brokerage firm specializing in property/casualty, surety, workers’ compensation, employee benefits, personal and risk management services.

CAC Specialty added Rick Eisenstat and Justin Sharp to its natural resources team.

Eisenstat is an environmental law specialist and will serve as vice president. He most recently worked with Galloway, Johnson, Tomkins, Burr and Smith, APLC as a maritime attorney representing multinational shipping companies, insurers and businesses on disputes.

Sharp will serve as vice president, with a focus on power and renewables. Sharp has more than a decade of experience in project development, insurance and management.

CAC Specialty is a specialty insurance brokerage business.

Alliant Insurance Services named Roland Graham-Helwig a senior vice president with its team in the Bay Area in California.

Graham-Helwig has more than 30 years of experience.

Alliant is a distributor of insurance products and services.