SPEAKER, MODERATOR AND PANELISTS BIOS

Keynote Speaker


Jon Gentile
Vice President of Government Relations, PIA National

Jon is vice president of government relations at PIA National, where he leads the advocacy effort of the association before Congress. Jon began working at PIA National in early 2014. In addition to representing PIA National on Capitol Hill, Jon is responsible for managing the annual PIA Advocacy Day.  

Before joining PIA National, Jon spent the last decade working in federal government relations for a variety of nonprofits and trade associations on a broad range of issues, including business, law enforcement, labor, and education. Jon sits on the board of directors of the National Institute for Lobbying and Ethics (NILE) and Historic Fairfax City, Inc. Jon holds a bachelor’s degree in politics and a master’s degree in international affairs from the Catholic University of America.


Speakers


Tom McClendon
Managing Partner, Hertel McClendon LLP

Tim McClendon is the managing partner in our Fort Worth, Texas office. Tim holds the Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) professional designation, the Certified Work Comp Advisor (CWCA) designation and is a licensed risk manager. With over 30 years of insurance experience, Tim handles all types of insurance and risk management issues for his clients.

A graduate of TCU with a BBA degree in management, Tim is a member of the TCU Lettermen’s Association, the TCU Alumni Association, TCU Frog Club and The M.J. Neeley School of Business.

Tim is a nationally recognized speaker and lecturer on insurance topics. He is a member of the national faculty of the Society of Certified Insurance Counselors and has taught college-level courses at Texas Christian University and the University of Dallas.


Alexi Papandon, CAE  
Senior Vice President, Products & Services, National Association of Professional Insurance Agents

Alexi Papandon has been with the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents since 2001. He has served in a variety of communications, marketing and sales roles with the association over those years. He helped create the PIA Branding Program and the annual PIA Agency Marketing Guide and has overseen the design and redesign of PIA's national website and publications a number of times over the years. Alexi currently serves as senior vice president of products and services for PIA National. In that role he puts together member benefit programs for PIA members and works closely with the carriers of The PIA Partnership.

A native of Oakdale, New York, 50 miles east of New York City in Long island’s Suffolk County, Alexi earned a bachelor’s of business administration in marketing from The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. Alexi returned to New York City and worked in sales after graduating from William and Mary, but before returning to Virginia to settle down. There he worked in advertising for two of the city’s premier advertising agencies.  He later earned a masters degree in education from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia where he taught fifth grade for six years, before starting an educational fundraising business and ultimately returning to his marketing and sales roots at PIA.


 

Meg McKeen, CIC
Founder, Adjunct Advisors, LLC

Celebrating her 21st year in the industry, Meg McKeen, CIC, founded Adjunct Advisors LLC in 2018 with the essential belief that the way we sell insurance is ripe for change. Throughout her career, working both as underwriter and agent within the insurance industry, Meg has held a seat at the table during thousands of insurance negotiations. Meg now holds space, at the crossroads of personal and professional development, for individuals and groups of insurance salespeople as they grow in their sales practice through 1:1 and small group coaching, in-person and virtual facilitated workshops, and the podcast she hosts, Bound & Determined.

She is a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University.



Samuel Bennett, CIC, CPIA, AFIS, CISR
Producer, Harris Agency

Sam Bennett is an active retail producer, presenter, and shareholder in Harrison Agency, Inc. of Columbia, MO. He began his insurance career in 1987 and has been an Independent Insurance Agent from the beginning. He has worked with individuals, families, and small businesses his entire career. In this capacity, he has worked in the personal lines, commercial lines, agribusiness and life and health marketplaces. As a result of working with many types of clients, many carriers, and many coverage needs, Sam has grown to understand and appreciate the important ways an insurance professional must work with markets and clients in today’s insurance world.
Sam obtained his Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) designation in 1996. He has taught coursework for the National Alliance in their CISR program since 2000, has presented in their CIC program since 2004, and in 2009 became a National Faculty Member of the Society of CIC. Sam is also a National Faculty Member in the Agribusiness and Farm Insurance Specialist (AFIS) program and is a speaker in the AIMS Society’s Certified Professional Insurance Agent (CPIA) program and IRMI’s Construction Risk Insurance Specialist (CRIS) program. He has been called upon to offer insurance education in conferences and symposiums across the country over the past twenty years and has provided services to several law firms in the capacity of expert consultant. 

Moderators and Panelists

Carol Hargis
Former Publisher and Editor, The Insurance Record

Carol Leslie Hargis is the retired co-owner of The Insurance Record, a family-owned insurance news magazine that served the Texas insurance industry from 1934 to 2019.

As a small business owner, Carol worked in all aspects of the business, including as editor and publisher, as well as advertising and marketing manager. She became acquainted with many insurance agents, GAs, MGAs, companies, and related vendors during 44 years of attending insurance meetings and conventions.

Prior to joining The Insurance Record, Carol worked at two insurance MGAs and an independent insurance agency.

Panelists:

John Grube, Senior Manager of Operations
Texas Mutual

John Grube is Senior Manager of Agency Operations and oversees the corporate functions related to distribution management including agency compensation programs, agency management systems & data, agent recruiting, contracting and performance.  He previously held positions as an underwriter, agency specialist and underwriting supervisor. John began his insurance career at the Texas Association of Counties Risk Management Pool. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in government from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dale Moon, President
Moon Insurance Managers, Inc.

Dale Moon graduated from the College of the Mainland and the University of Houston Clear Lake where he studied Public Administration.  In addition, he graduated from the Harris County Sheriff’s Academy and the Pasadena Policy Academy and worked in law enforcement, earning advanced certification, from 1977 until 1996.  During this time, he was a career agent with Famers Insurance Group from 1985 until 2006 and founded Moon Realty Partners in 1998.  In 2007, Dale became an independent agent founding Moon Insurance Managers.  He has extensive association experience with United Farmers Agents Association serving as President of the Houston Chapter from 1988 to 1992 before being elected National Secretary of UFFA serving from 1993 to 2000.  He also served as the National Director of Legal Affairs from 2001 to 2006.  In that position, he worked closely with the Coalition of Exclusive Agents in the areas of legislation and litigation.

Tracy Thompson, AU 
Associate Vice President and Director of Underwriting Operations, Utica National Errors & Omissions
 

Tracy leads a team of professional liability underwriters at the second largest writer of agents’ errors & omissions coverage in the United States. His team helps to drive new business production and renewal retention. His responsibilities include reviewing complex transactions, monitoring and acting on business metrics, identifying business efficiencies that impact guidelines, and collaborating with internal and external business partners, focusing on the profitable growth, product development, and customer relationship management.

Tracy is a graduate of the State University of New York State Polytechnic Institute. He started his Utica National career from 1988 to 2002, where he worked in a variety of Home Office and field underwriting roles. In 2002, he joined Hartford Financial Services Group (HIG), where he spent 13 years in positions of increased responsibility, which included underwriting management as Director of Technology & Life Science for the Northeast Division and, most recently, as Director of Underwriting. Tracy rejoined Utica National in 2015 as Managing Director of Strategic Underwriting, and was named to his current position in 2017. 

Rosalie Donlon, J.D., Editor-in-Chief
PropertyCasualty360/NU Property & Casualty magazine

Rosalie L. Donlon, editor-in-chief of the insurance and tax publications for ALM Media LLC, has more than 20 years of professional publishing experience as a lawyer, writer, editor and content acquisition strategist. In this role, she focuses on property & casualty insurance issues as well as insurance coverage, policy interpretation, and liability concerns, as well as insurance litigation.

Rosalie has written and edited publications on employment and labor law, safety, retirement plans, healthcare compliance and environmental law. In addition to her experience in legal publishing, Rosalie has been in private practice with a small law firm and a benefits communications consultant with Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

Before joining ALM, Rosalie was the contributing author and editor of several insurance industry and legal publications, including Employment Practices Liability: Guide to Risk Exposures and Coverage and Guide to Captives and Alternative Risk Financing, published by The National Underwriter Company, and Connecticut Appellate Practice and Procedure, Fifth Edition, published by Law Journal Press.
Rosalie earned her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Toledo College of Law and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Fine Arts from Fairfield University.
 

Panelist:

Kitty Ambers, CIC, CPIA, CISR, Chief Growth Officer
AVYST

Kitty joined AVYST in January, 2019 as Chief Growth officer after more than 5 years as CEO of NetVU.  In her role, Kitty will focus on helping independent agents grow their profitability by embracing more efficient point of sale workflows. The goal: enable agents to focus on building relationships and sharing insurance expertise by embracing AVYST technology solutions that can do the heavy lifting.

Chris Cline
National Agency Distribution Leader, Westfield


Through Chris Cline’s 25 years in the insurance industry, he has established himself as an industry resource for topics such as perpetuation, merger and acquisition, culture, agency operations, marketing and sales, data and analytics, and has had multiple speaking engagements around these topics. At Westfield, Chris is the National Agency Distribution Leader who directs a team that is focused on the entire agency life cycle and is responsible for implementing the distribution strategy initiative.   

Since joining Westfield in 1994, he has held positions in a wide array of disciplines; ranging from graphic designer and marketing, sales, training, compliance and personal lines P&L leadership.  Through his diverse experiences and life-long focus on continual learning (he’s a closet science geek), Chris has helped create and deliver meaningful agent experiences through a powerful combination of relationships and technology. He’s also the inquisitive and thought-provoking host of Westfield’s award-winning podcast,
Closing the Gap. 

Chris earned his Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design from the University of Akron. 

Jessica Jeffress, Associate Vice President of Business Insurance & Employee Benefits
Peel & Holla
nd 

Jessica Jeffress is the Associate Vice President of Business Insurance & Employee Benefits at Peel & Holland in Western Kentucky. She works with the agency’s commercial and benefits teams to streamline processes, increase efficiencies, and to grow and develop each individual team member. Jessica loves digging into processes and workflows and identifying ways to improve them and to positively impact the service delivered to clients and the job satisfaction of her team members. She also serves on the agency’s leadership team, which develops the firm’s short- and long-term strategies.

Jessica served in the Chapter leadership for the ImageRight NetVU Chapter for eight years, and spent three years on NetVU’s Chapter Committee, serving as Chair of the Committee for one term. She serves as Chair of NetVU’s Executive Board of Directors, and is a member of the IVANS Advisory Board. Jessica is a 2008 graduate of Murray State University with a bachelor of science degree in journalism, and a 2012 graduate of Murray State with a masters in business administration.
 
Jessica Jeffress is the Associate Vice President of Business Insurance & Employee Benefits at Peel & Holland in Western Kentucky. She works with the agency’s commercial and benefits teams to streamline processes, increase efficiencies, and to grow and develop each individual team member. Jessica loves digging in to processes and workflows and identifying ways to improve them and to positively impact the service delivered to clients and the job satisfaction of her team members. She also serves on the agency’s leadership team, which develops the firm’s short- and long-term strategies.

Jessica served in the Chapter leadership for the ImageRight NetVU Chapter for eight years, and spent three years on NetVU’s Chapter Committee, serving as Chair of the Committee for one term. She serves as Chair of NetVU’s Executive Board of Directors, and is a member of the IVANS Advisory Board. Jessica is a 2008 graduate of Murray State University with a bachelor of science degree in journalism, and a 2012 graduate of Murray State with a masters in business administration