Ash Faraj Podcasts

In this last episode of the InsurBreak Podcast, discover major key takeaways from Tiffany Grinstead, VP of Personal Lines Marketing at Nationwide! Challenges Addressed: Customer acquisition and retention tackled with AI and digital tools. Nationwide's Marketing Magic: Data-driven segmentation for tailored messages to the right audience. Innovation …

Laura Drabik, Chief Evangelist at Guidewire Software and globally recognized thought leader in the insurance industry discusses key value propositions to meet the insurance customers shifting needs, the complexities of the insurance buying process and how integrating InsurTech solutions is changing the industry. Renowned for her insightful TED Talk…

Lisa Wardlaw, North America Advisor of InsurTech Israel, joins us in this months InsurBreak episode and talks about being first movers in the insurance industry, incorporating emerging technologies to carrying the user experience throughout the entire insurance journey. Listen to Lisa discuss about: Recognizing patterns in insurtech, the macroecono…

Marissa Petriano, is the Head of Strategic Initiatives at Remark America. Bringing her diverse, consumer-focused experiences to insurance, Marisa has been working with insurers and carriers on digitalization, the adoption of new technologies and multichannel strategies. Marisa explores the results of Remark's Global Consumer Study, the largest surv…

Brian Poppe worked for Lincoln Financial Group for a period of time and then came over to Mutual of Omaha a little more than 13 years ago. From pricing and product development at Lincoln Insurance, he worked his way up in risk management at Mutual of Ohama. Brian also created and led the innovation practice for a couple of years, led one of the PNL…

Listen to the new InsurBreak podcast with our guest Robert Easton, Global Chief Compliance Officer & Deputy General Counsel at Marsh LLC. In this podcast learn about: The impact of digital tech transformation in insurance, on legal and compliance, and the new regulation priorities. How to embed these new regulations in insurance brokers’ and risk a…

Join Lance Taylor, VP & Marketing Partner at EPIC Insurance Brokers in the InsurBreak Podcast. In this podcast learn about: How effective communication within an organization can boost revenue through awareness of cross-selling opportunities How innovation is used to make products work seamlessly across multiple channels to create more sales opport…

How should Insurance companies navigate in this new economic climate? Join Karim Hirji, CFO and Canada Managing Director at Intact Venture in the InsurBreak Podcast. Intact is a 20bn global p&c insurer with 70% of revenues and 20% market share in Canada. Intact Insurance is Canada's largest home, auto, and business insurance company, the choice of …

Colin Works has been working at SCOR for the last 19 years. He has held multiple leadership roles in all aspects of Life Underwriting, and he is now the global head of underwriting and claims. Originally from Cork, Ireland, he traveled a great deal, Colin worked in the UK,Ireland, France, in the United States (Charlotte), and now lives and works fr…

Craig Chapman spent his career in the finance and insurance industry. Craig has worked in three countries and held various C-Suite positions including CEO CFO and CTO across consumer banking commercial banking and other sectors. His last role was the President at Washington Mutual Commercial Banking. Listen to this episode to learn about Craig's in…

Niels Keuker is the Chief Marketing and Sales Officer for iptiQ Americas and Chief Executive Office of iptiQ Sales Solutions. IptiQ is a B2B2C insurance unit within Swiss Re that is focused on developing innovative Life & Health insurance solutions for the Middle Market. Listen in to this episode to learn about Niels' experience around the globe as…

In this episode, we sit down with Barbara Humpton. Barbara grew up to parents who were both math professors so initially set her eyes on being a math professor “when she grew up.” After taking a job at IBM and working on a globally impactful project, she was hooked into the world of working on impactful technology to make our world a better place. …

Satish Weber is Executive Vice President and Head of Sustainability Financial Services Strategic Business Unit at Capgemini Listen in to this episode to learn about Satish's experience and career and her take on: Capgemini's sustainability targets for the next decades and how financial services companies can contribute to a greener future The futur…

Lynne grew up in the bay area and accidentally learned what she loved to do when she was helping a friend become more physically independent by helping her up stairs, and taking her to the gym. So after getting her undergraduate degree, she dove right back into school and used her savings along with student loans to pay for training to become a Phy…

Jeff Roe has been CEO at Premera Blue Cross for 24 years. Prior to Premera Blue Cross, Jeff served as a president at Safeco, then served as president and CEO of LifeWise health plan of Washington. Premier Blue Cross is the largest health plan insurance provider in the pacific northwest, serving more than two million people. How did Jeff Roe turn ar…

Bracken began his career in accounting after college. After working in accounting roles for an accounting firm and then PepsiCo he transitioned into brand management early in his career. He first worked at Procter & Gamble, then moved into a General Manager position at General Electric. There are other career moves we talk about in this episode, so…

Kara grew up in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona and naturally developed the skill of persistence growing up. In her early years she worked many different jobs including working at a toy store, interning for a local senator, and waiting tables at a local Mexican restaurant. After college she used unique approaches to reach people and get hired at a …

James Kane is the senior vice president of USI Insurance services and former president of HUB international for personal lines. Listen in to this episode to learn about the great life stories of James around personal insurance risk management principles, the impact of the exponential acceleration of AI technology and, how insurance companies need t…

Wes was born in Canada, grew up in Columbia, and lived in Southern California . He admits his dyslexia and ADHD growing up caused him to hate school and didn’t attend college after high school. After high school, Wes took the first job he was offered, which was a job making high-end cabinets in Los Angeles; a business that his neighbor owned. Liste…

In this episode, we sit down with Jeff Roe, CEO of Premera Blue Cross. Employing over 3,200 people, Premera Blue Cross is the largest health plan insurance provider in the Pacific Northwest, serving more than 2 million people. Jeff grew up in Bellevue, WA and had an early interest in politics growing up. His curiosity and enjoyment of politics led …

In this episode, hear from Mike Hughes, former President and executive at Liberty Mutual, Safeco, State Farm and The Hartford. Hughes brings 45+ years in Insurance, he began his career in The Harford Insurance Group as an underwriter, he later became President of The Harford ARP division. He went on to be a top executive across some of North Americ…

Seattle's Former Police Chief Carmen Best published her book “Black in Blue” in October of 2021, and it was the #1 book in new releases when it came out. Carmen grew up in the Puget Sound area to a loving mother and a father who was in the military. She had a close relationship with her siblings and seemed to always be driven from a young age. Carm…

Howard Behar grew up in North Seattle, attended Roosevelt High School, and struggled to find his way early on in his life. He took some courses at Everett community college but didn’t finish school because he was directing his energy towards his work. At the time he was helping run his brother’s furniture store in Edmonds, WA. He would spend the ne…

Mike Clayville is the Chief Revenue Officer of Stripe, a payment processing company that is building the economic infrastructure of the internet. Their mission is increasing the GDP of the internet -- and Stripe is valued at almost $100 billion. In our conversation, we talk about Mike’s career journey leading up to Stripe. He was born and raised in…

In this episode, you’ll get to hear from Howard Tiersky. Howard began his career in theater and performing arts before starting his consulting career at Ernst & Young. There, he would build E&Y’s first website and get exposed to a whole new world. After 15 years of being in the consulting space, Howard started his own business; From Digital, a digi…

A fourth generation Puget Sound native and nascent New Yorker, Kurt has always felt passionately about authentic, full-flavored foods, free of artificial additives. Kurt is the owner and head chef of Sugar Mountain, a creative food company that is home to extraordinary food brands and restaurants, from the award-winning Beecher’s Handmade Cheese to…

In this special episode, we chat with Chris George, a serial entrepreneur who has successfully started and managed 7 businesses in his career (most recently Founder of Certified). His first business that he started in college, was a debt collection agency that he worked in for almost a decade. His most recent venture was a subscription-based men’s …

In this episode, we cover the man behind the largest biotechnology IPO in history, Steve Harr. Steve co-founded Sana biotechnology, a company that went public earlier this year (2021) and raised almost $600 million dollars in its IPO. Sana is changing the way diseases are cured. Their approach is based on repairing and controlling genes within cell…

In this episode, we hear from Finimize CEO & Co-Founder, Maximillian Rofagha. He grew up in Berlin, Germany, attended a very diverse, international high school, and went on to study economics and international relations in Scotland. He did a year abroad in the U.S., and interned at eBay, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Company, and a German Stock Excha…

Mary grew up on a very rural, cattle ranch in New Mexico just above the US-Mexico border, where she learned to drive when she was just seven years old and had no television in her home. She attended Williams college, in Massachusetts town near the New York-New Hampshire border. She first intended in going into politics, then fell in love with drama…

Today’s guest is Scott Torrey, PayScale CEO. Scott always knew he wanted to be in business, so he attended a commerce-focused college and worked in consulting after college. After an 8-year career in consulting, Scott pivoted and joined Concur which was later acquired by SAP, and would remain there for 20 years of his career. He took a very short b…

Today’s guest is Surabhi Gupta, Robinhood’s VP of Engineering. Surabhi grew up in India and pursued an education in computer science. She participated in an internship with Microsoft, and her research focused on artificial intelligence and natural language processing. She worked on creating a system for producing scalable summaries of conversations…

Today, we make history. It’s the first time we’ve had an executive from the city on our show. All of our guests before this show have been business executives. Today’s guest is Debra Smith, Seattle City Light’s CEO. She graduated with a finance degree from Arizona State University, and kickstarted her career in the oil industry working for ConocoPh…

Today’s guest is Adena Hefets, CEO & Co-Founder of Divvy Homes. She grew up in Long Island, New York to immigrant parents who lived paycheck to paycheck, and were not financially stable, and this drove her ambition to be financially independent at a very young age. She would go on to work in lots of finance roles like investment banking, private eq…

Today, you will hear from Ryan Hogan, CEO & Co-Founder of Hunt A Killer. He joined the Navy out of high school, got admitted into a very competitive military program after 6 years of hard work, started multiple businesses that needed multiple pivots, until they ended up failing. In 2016, a few years after Ryan’s last business had failed, he got tog…

Melinda Lee began her professional life as an attorney out of college, but transitioned into the media business. She admits that she’s always had a passion for pop culture and being in the media business in some form, but didn’t think it was possible because she didn’t' see many people that looked like her in media. Also, her parents’ journey of im…

Our guest today is Matias Muchnick, co-founder & CEO of NotCo – A Chile-based AI-driven food technology company that is redefining food. They’ve raised over $110 million dollars, including a big investment from Jeff Bezos! So, you’ll want to be sure to stick around until the end to hear all about what how NotCo is using AI to make vegan meat, milk,…

Today's guest is Spencer Rascoff. If you're reading this you probably know who Spencer is, but in case you don't, he most known for co-founding Zillow Group and was the CEO for a long time before stepping down in 2019 to focus on his new ventures dot.LA and Pacaso. In his first startup experience, Spencer co-founded an online travel company called …

Today’s guest is the famous Dave Asprey: As seen on Bloomberg, The New York Times, Business Insider, Fast Company, CNN, Men’s Health, Rolling Stone, Vogue, Forbes and many more! He sold the first product EVER over the internet, was a top 100 influencer in cloud computing for 20-years, and is the father of what is called, biohacking. You’ll want to …

Joel is the Former CEO of SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, one of the largest public entertainment companies in the world, Former CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment, one of the largest private entertainment companies in the world, the Former CEO of Saab Automobile, AND most importantly, the Author of one of the best books I have ever read called …

You'll want to listen in to this to hear how a girl who grew up in a household with 5 older brothers in Southern California went from not knowing what she was going to be when she grew up, to volunteering to work at a company that had a terribly negative culture, to writing a very convincing letter to the CEO of then a small company called Tableau …

Today’s guest is Jim Lico, the CEO of Fortive Corporation, it’s the Fortune 500 company based in Washington that you probably haven’t heard of before, well, until now of course! Fortive has 18 subsidiaries including notable brands like Fluke and Tektronix. You’ll want to stick around for the entire episode to get a peek into what Jim’s childhood wa…

You’ll want to listen to the entire episode to hear how Sarah went from being a pregnant 16-year-old, to graduating law school and becoming an unintentionally great negotiator, to quitting her job at a law firm based on, literally, a dream, to successfully scaling the number one SEO marketing software on the planet.…

Today’s guest is Gautam Gupta, Founder and former CEO of Naturebox, and current Partner at M13, a venture capital firm based in Santa Monica. You’ll want to be sure to stick around, because Gautam shares a story about how he landed his first internship – and it has nothing to do with resumes or cover letters, he shares the story behind a company ta…

Christy grew up on the San Juan Island, a very small community of people in a town that actually had no street lights! After college, Christy got her first job at the wall street journal in advertising. She knew she eventually wanted to go to graduate school, so she chose a company that would support that in the future. During her time at the wall …

Dr. Dawn Graham holds a PhD in counseling psychology and is currently the Director of Career Management at the Wharton School of Business, the world's #1 business school in the world. She authored the book "Switchers" - How smart professionals change careers and seize success. If you are currently frustrated with the current methods of job-searchin…

You’ll want to be sure to stick around for the entire episode, because Kelly dives deep into important career skills like storytelling, listening to other people’s stories, and how to strategically think about your next career move. Kelly Wright is the former Tableau Executive Vice President of Sales, and was actually the first sales person at Tabl…

You’ll want to be sure to stick around for the entire episode to hear how a kid that grew up in Morocco ended up in Gig Harbor selling coffee out of a van, then going broke and foreclosing on his home while he had a family, to accidentally starting a photo booth company that generates over $3 million in annual revenue and got placed on the Inc. 500…

Adam was born & raised in Marysville, WA, a town one hour north of Seattle. His father was an entrepreneur and football coach, and his mother was a principal at a local high school. Adam always had an interest for math & science, so he pursued a degree in computer science from Portland State University, and after college, he landed a job working fo…

Today’s guest is Vinay Bhagat, Founder & CEO of Trust Radius. You’ll want to be sure to listen to this episode to hear how Vinay’s experience with racism growing up shaped him to be more empathetic, how Vinay addressed racial bias issues in the workplace, and ultimately, how being fired from a job was the best thing that ever happened to him. Vinay…