The people the system overlooks — the small fleet, the independent agent, the family-owned shop — are the ones worth building for.
Twenty years scaling commercial insurance distribution. Currently VP, National Distribution at Berkley Small Business Solutions (W.R. Berkley Co.). Founder of Seven16 Group — a holding company building for the operators most insurance technology forgets.
I'm an introvert who often shows up as relaxed and playful — warmth and humor are how I get close, and how I lower the temperature in the room. Underneath that is a long-haul builder who carries weight. Twenty years in commercial insurance distribution. One marriage. One industry lane. Most of the work spent fixing what other people gave up on.
Failed the California P&C licensing exam twice. A third would have ended me. I passed and kept studying. I'm a quiet intellectual — not academic, just always learning. SPIN, Strategic Selling, Conceptual Selling, Miller Heiman, LAMP. Scripture since 1991. Markets and human behavior for decades. I look for patterns and tells, then move quickly to action.
First distribution leader at Atlas General. Employee #2 at Kinetic Insurance. Built the MGU's broker network from a blank page; recruited 30 of the Top 100 commercial brokerages in 90 days. I have a bias for action. I'd rather try, learn, and adjust than overanalyze forever. When something is broken, I'd rather be the one who carries it back to working.
Architected the verticalized distribution model at CopperPoint. The 90-Day Reset. The intel-capture loop. The straight-through small-WC platform — $250K to nearly $30M in California's competitive workers' comp market, at a 25% in-force loss ratio over six years. Salesforce scorecards auto-emailed to branch and agency leaders the same day. The work that makes the whole book compound — not the deal you remember, but the system that makes the next 100 deals easier than the first.
Most folks don't know this: I failed the California commercial licensing exam twice. I was at Allianz Trade Credit at the time. Failing a third time would have meant immediate termination. I passed, and history was made.
But the deeper reason I stayed in commercial insurance for two decades came earlier. I joined ADP in 1995 — an era when its corporate sales training was rotating among the top three programs in America, alongside IBM and Xerox. Then-CEO Josh Weston, who had built that culture, spoke to my new District Manager class and said something I never forgot:
“There is no better place to sell than in an environment where it's compulsory — by the government — to possess a specific product or coverage to be in compliance.”
Trade credit had elements of that. But when I pivoted to workers' compensation, then commercial auto, then BOP and general liability — lines where the law itself compels coverage — I excelled. The economics of compulsory lines do work for any operator who shows up consistently. I was good at this.
And the people in this industry are more grounded than the people I worked with in tech and consulting. Less ego. More figuring it out. I made friendships that have lasted twenty years.
I serve on the AI Committee for Berkley Small Business Solutions. AI shows up in my work every week — on real producers, real territories, real accounts. Not theory. Not someday.
The Seven16 properties exist downstream of this practice. What works at the operator's desk is what we're building for the operators who don't have a committee yet.
A holding company building for the operators most insurance technology forgets.
Seven16 Group is named for a moment, a triad, and a conviction. Three numbers — 7, 1, 6 — map to how I'm wired: the seeker, the pioneer, the builder. I hold that frame through a Christian lens, not as divination but as archaeology — digging up what God wrote in before I had any say in it.
The properties under Seven16 aren't four separate ventures. They're four expressions of the same conviction: that the people the system overlooks — the small fleet, the independent agent, the family-owned shop — are the ones worth building for. Most insurance technology is built for carriers and Fortune 500 risk. The next twenty years of distribution belongs to whoever builds for the operators that everyone else ignores.
Properties are in active development. Reveals follow their own cadence.
The fastest way to meet me is in person. Below is my 2026 calendar — industry conferences and field travel with the Berkley Small Business team, plus a speaking engagement coming up. If our paths cross, reach out — I'll make time.
I'm open to speaking and conference invitations, podcast guest appearances, media inquiries, and conversations with operators thinking seriously about commercial insurance distribution and Seven16's properties. Tell me what you're working on. I'll come back with how I might help — or if I'm not the right person, who is.
Direct, early, with your best read on the situation. That's the briefing that gets a fast reply.