IRUA Officers & Directors

Jim Brost joined Holborn in 2011 as Senior Vice President, and is based in the firm’s Minneapolis office. He began his career in the reinsurance accounting department of EW Blanch in 1975, and subsequently moved into the sales and service area. With the formation of Blanch subsidiary AgRe Management, Mr. Brost moved into a senior officer role and focused more intensively on the crop insurance business. In 1987, he left the Blanch organization and became a founding member of Collins Associates, where he remained for almost two decades. In 2005, he joined Cooper Gay, a reinsurance broker based in the United Kingdom, and then led a team to BMS Intermediaries in 2007.

Mr. Brost is recognized as an agricultural business expert, and as such, provided testimony before the Agriculture Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He has served in leadership positions within various property/casualty and crop industry groups; he is currently President of the Intermediaries and Reinsurance Underwriters Association, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Crop Insurance and Reinsurance Bureau.

Nick Cook is a Vice President at Crum & Forster in the Jersey City, NJ office. Nick’s responsibilities at Crum & Forster include leading the Small Business Team as well as working with the Actuarial, Underwriting and Operations teams to implement submission scoring, risk selection and pricing tools for the E&S Casualty division.

Prior to joining Crum & Forster, Nick held treaty underwriting roles at OdysseyRe, most recently serving as a Vice President working with clients in the U.S and Bermuda casualty markets. Nick is a graduate of Georgetown University and holds the CPCU and ARe designations.  He resides in Stamford, CT.

Sam DeGiovanni began his career in the reinsurance industry with Aspen in 2009 as part of their graduate training scheme.  During the two-year program, he worked with a number of Aspen teams and offices, spending time in the US and International casualty treaty, facultative and property cat markets.  Upon completion of the program, Sam spent two years underwriting US Casualty Fac business before transitioning back to the treaty world in 2013 where his current role sees him underwriting casualty and professional lines.

Sam graduated magna cum laude from Boston College with a degree in Economics and Hispanic Studies.

Christiane Gross is a Senior Vice President Underwriting Team Lead Property Fac. Cert. & Programs at Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. in Princeton, NJ. Christiane started her career with Munich Re in Germany in 2002, holding various property facultative and treaty underwriting positions first in Munich’s Industrial Clients division and later in Munich’s Global Clients/ North America division.

Christiane relocated to Munich Re America in 2014 and has been servicing Regional Clients in the United States. She holds a degree in international business from the Reutlingen University in Germany. She is a member of the APIW and serves on the Board of the IRUA.

Joshua Hackett is currently Director of Casualty at Arch Reinsurance Co and has over 10 years of insurance, reinsurance, and financial services experience.

Josh began his career with Zurich Financial Services as an underwriting trainee in their Global Associate Program focusing on large commercial property insurance. He then joined Endurance Re (Sompo) as a reinsurance treaty casualty underwriter where he became an AVP. Josh moved on to become a sell-side equity associate focusing on the insurance sector at Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, until ultimately returning to the reinsurance field as Vice President of Broker Treaty Casualty at Swiss Reinsurance.

Josh received a Masters International Affairs from University of California, San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Political Science from University of Delaware. He holds the CPCU and ARe designations, and has passed the Series 7, 63, 87 licensing exams.

Tom joined Guy Carpenter as its Strategic Advisory Leader for US/Canada in 2017 after spending three years at Arch Reinsurance in an underwriting capacity developing solutions for clients to help manage capital and take advantage of predictive modeling endeavors.  The Strategic Advisory team includes Capital & Growth Advisory, Rating Agency Advisory, and Structured Risks Solutions.

Prior to joining Guy Carpenter and Arch Re, Tom was the America’s P&C Sales and Practice Leader for Towers Watson, a position he stepped into after leading the America’s ERM team for Towers Watson.  Tom was a founding partner of EMB America, LLC, an industry leading ERM and predictive modeling software and solutions provider.

Tom graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a Bachelors of Arts in Mathematics and minor in Insurance.

Danny Hojnowski
Vice President
Transatlantic Reinsurance Company

Danny Hojnowski is a Vice President at TransRe in the Specialty Casualty Underwriting unit with a focus on E&O and D&O treaties. During his 11 years at TransRe Danny has also worked in the facultative unit where he underwrote individual Professional Liability risks. In addition to working as an underwriter, he is responsible for monitoring TransRe’s aggregate exposure across their global Professional Liability book of business. Danny was instrumental in implementing TransRe’s “Entity Data Analytics” which allows TransRe to analyze exposure and pricing across their portfolio by aggregating individual policy level details.

Prior to joining TransRe, Danny was a D&O underwriter at Ace American Insurance Company in New York and a facultative underwriter at Everest Re based in both New York and Bermuda.

Christopher J. Holland is currently an Assistant Vice President at AXIS Re and has over 10 years of insurance & reinsurance experience.  Prior to joining AXIS Re, he was a Casualty Underwriting Officer at Platinum Re.

Before joining Platinum Re, Mr. Holland served in various underwriting roles at Zurich and AIG.  He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Celiac Disease Foundation. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for a few industry associations including the IRUA and associate board for the IICF. He was recently named by Insurance Business America as “Young Guns 2017” and Intelligent Insurer as “Rising Stars: Top 40 Under 35” in 2015.

Mr. Holland received an MBA from Iona College‘s Hagan School of Business and a Bachelor of Science from University of Scranton.

Julie is a Managing Director at Guy Carpenter with over 12 years of experience. She is responsible for treaty account management for various clients across multiple lines of business.

Julie graduated from Fairfield University with a degree in business management, has completed the Guy Carpenter training program and earned the ARe, AIS, ARM & CPCU designations. Julie has served on the IRUA Education Committee and Board of Directors since 2015.

Tony joined Folksamerica Re (a predecessor company of the Sirius Group) in 2003 as Senior Vice President, in charge of Property Treaty based in the New York office.  He is a member of the Board of Directors of Sirius America Insurance Company. In 2016 he was promoted to EVP and Head of Property of SARM, the U.S. based reinsurance manager for Sirius Bermuda Insurance Company, Ltd.  He is responsible for the U.S. working business in the NY branch, as well as the Miami and Canadian branches of Sirius Group.

He began his career in the Inland Marine Claims unit of Wm. H. McGee in 1976, and moved to the primary underwriting side at AIG in 1979, then to the facultative reinsurance underwriting side in 1981, growing to the role of VP and NY Branch Manager at the reinsurance subsidiary of the Travelers. In 1996 he joined PMA Re in Philadelphia to as a VP to oversee the property treaty business.  Mr. Sasso is recognized as a specialist in Excess & Surplus Lines.  He has earned an MBA degree in Finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University, as well as CPCU and ARe designations.

Rod Thaler joined Holborn in August 2015 as Executive Vice President, and a Member of the Franchise Operating Committee. He is heading a number of strategic initiatives focusing on value creation, people, and branding. Most recently, Rod was Vice Chairman of the Americas at Aon Benfield for the past 9 years where he co-led Aon’s Global Reinsurance Client (GRC).

Prior to joining Aon, Rod was on the Willis Re North America Executive Committee. Rod’s early career was spent at Guy Carpenter, where he led both Property and Casualty teams as Managing Director and was a member of the GC Market Security Committee. Subsequently, Rod served as Chief Broker at JP Woods & Co, responsible for all P&C broking activities reporting to the CEO.

Rod graduated, with Honors, from Harvard College and did post-graduate studies at St John’s School of Risk management. Rod has 4 children with his wife of over 35 years.

Hank Watkins is responsible for the Lloyd’s operations in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Frankfort KY, Los Angeles, New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Canada.  In addition to ensuring regulatory compliance in the US and Canada, his colleagues are actively engaged in educational and marketing outreach to retail, wholesale and reinsurance intermediaries, managing general agents, risk management programs at colleges & universities and the many other stakeholders in the Lloyd’s market.

He has more than 30 years of experience in the insurance industry and has held a range of underwriting, client management and leadership positions in the United States and Europe at Chubb, Barney & Barney, Johnson & Higgins, Marsh and HRH.

Hank received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley and has completed an executive leadership program at The Wharton School.  He’s a member of the Board of Overseers at St. John’s University’s School of Risk Management, Insurance and Actuarial Science and is on the boards of BritishAmerican Business, the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (NY/Northeast Division) and the International Insurance Society.

John’s career in insurance and reinsurance has spanned the spectrum from Accident and Health to Property, Casualty, Work Comp, Excess Work Comp, Occupational Accident.  Has worked as an intermediary, broker, claims analyst, and consultant in multiple other capacities. John was previously with the Devonshire Group, Axa LM, Helix UK, Alan Gray, Inc and LDG Re.

John’s current focus is on Liability Runoff Transfer, Captive Insurance, Reinsurance Audits and Commutation.  Additionally, has participated at Director level for several non-profit organizations.  Please visit www.apetropusa.com for more information.