Experience

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  Society Insurance

  • Director Of Information Systems - Solutions
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  Society Insurance

  • Director of Information Systems - Solutions

    • Feb 2016 - Present
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  KWEP 1024 Consulting, LLC

  • Greater Milwaukee Area

  • President

    • Aug 2011 - Jan 2016
    • Greater Milwaukee Area

    Providing consulting services to carriers in the Commercial Insurance industry that are looking to increase the effectiveness of their internal operations, seek to improve the speed-to-market of their products and increase the quality and timeliness of service to their Agents. Specializing in all...

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  AQS, inc.

  • Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer

    • Sep 2008 - Mar 2011

    I provided executive leadership for all product development and led all aspects of product design, architecture and development for all product offerings. I was also chief consultant on product direction and technology to the CEO and executive team.KWEP:Being able to think in the context of your company’s vision, the customer’s vision and the respective goals that have been set to achieve each of those visions is the foundation for creating sound strategies and making good decisions at all levels.

  • Vice President & Chief Technology Officer

    • Mar 2006 - Aug 2008

    I provided executive leadership for all Product Development. I was a member of the executive team contributing to the creation and implementation of the corporate strategy, mergers & acquisitions and the creation of marketing and sales strategies. In addition, I championed the development and implementation of a comprehensive SDLC program within product development with an emphasis on iterative development.KWEP:As an organization grows, as the complexity of its business increases, as the technology options proliferate, as the competition grows and as your customers become more demanding you have to become more agile in every way. The only way you can keep up is to focus on continually improving everything you do, to encourage everyone in the organization to be active participants in that improvement, to provide them with the training, mentoring and challenges that move them and your organization to the next level.

  • Chief Technical Architect

    • Apr 2002 - Mar 2006

    I was responsible for the design and construction of AQS/Advantage a world class commercial Policy Administration System. Responsible for all aspects of AQS/Advantage including technical architecture, features & functionality, maintainability, scalability, release & delivery schedule and developed the implementation strategy to deliver the PAS solution to existing and new customers.KWEP:With a great sense of purpose and relying on numerous people throughout our organization we were able to produce a system that processes billions of dollars of commercial insurance premium each year for multiple clients. You would think that creating an application that has to just use simple math to calculate premiums would be pretty straight-forward. You don’t truly appreciate the complexity of these systems until you step back and look at the huge number of entities, attributes, validation list & rules, rates & factors, rating algorithms, underwriting rules, processing rules, workflow rules, forms, document mappings and much more that make up insurance products. Oh and by the way, they all have to be versioned because they are constantly changing.

  • Application Architect

    • Sep 1998 - Mar 2002

    I was responsible for design, development and migration of a 16-bit DOS based Policy Quoting System to a 32-bit Microsoft Windows based application. Designed and constructed both a client/server prototype and web-based prototype. The web-based prototype used bleeding edge technology to create a very dynamic application that provided users with a rich user experience enabled by the processing of server-side business logic. The web-based prototype ultimately became the flagship product.KWEP:Developing these prototypes was some of the most exciting and challenging work I’ve done. It was challenging because while a few of us recognized the power of developing a Windows-based application, many in the organization were not quite ready to make the leap. But with great persistence and a good deal of patience we were able to prove that moving the system forward with new technology opened up limitless possibilities.

  • Account Manager & Integration Team Lead

    • Sep 1992 - Aug 1998

    I was responsible for managing several customer accounts, focusing on understanding their business objectives, setting and managing their expectations, improving their ROI and broadening our solution footprint. In addition, I led a team of software developers to design and implement integration solutions between the AQS Policy Administration System and the carrier’s enterprise systems. We successfully implemented those solutions with numerous enterprise systems including various versions of PMS, WINS, Coverall, SDS and multiple homegrown systems.KWEP:Always listen carefully to what the customer is saying and listen even more carefully to what they are not saying. As for integration, while it might be tedious and expensive work, if it doesn't work, nothing else matters.

  • Application Development Team Lead

    • Jan 1988 - Aug 1992

    I managed the Application Development team responsible for creating and maintaining core software components.KWEP:The role that opened my eyes to the power of team work! Taking everyone's most positive characteristics and harnessing them to the fullest. Amazing what a team can accomplish when you channel the best from everyone!

  • Application Developer

    • Aug 1984 - Jan 1988

    This is where it all started. Not just my career but I was blessed with getting into this profession just as PC's were beginning to make their inroads into corporate America. Little did I realize how far this was going to take me and the incredible transformation technology was going to bring to business.