Dr. Etti Baranoff (PhD University of Texas at Austin) is an Emeritus “Distinguished Career Professor” of Insurance, Risk Management, and Finance at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. Currently, she provides expert opinions and consulting in all areas of insurance and risk management. She is a member of the board of directors of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association and is a licensed Texas life insurance agent. Until retirement, Etti taught courses in risk and insurance, employee benefits, finance, and financial risk management. From 2010 to 2016 she served as an external research director for the Insurance and Finance Program of the Geneva Association, an Insurance Think Tank based in Switzerland. Etti is an independent expert on all fundamental and theoretical work in Insurance and Finance (IF) and was the editor of the Insurance and Finance Newsletter of the Geneva Association. As editor, she focused on issues such as financial stability and international macro regulation of all sectors of the insurance industry relating to systemic risk and financial stability issues. Etti’s insurance work spans over 40 years, 28 years in academia with about 80 publications in prominent journals and practitioners’ publications. The academic journals include The Journal of Risk and Insurance, The Journal of Banking and Finance, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, The American Journal of Managed Care, and The American Journal of Accountable Care (AJAC), among others. In teaching and writing about enterprise risk management and leading teams in the development of such insights into large corporations, she integrates all aspects necessary for CRO to lead any entity. She promotes holistic risk management tools and imparted this strong foundation to thousands of students who have been placed in leadership positions in financial institutions, insurance organizations, and businesses’ risk management departments. Besides being an expert in solvency issues, risk-based-capital, Basel III, and rate and form regulation, she is knowledgeable in all insurance lines and operations including underwriting, sustainability, ESG measures, recent effect in health insurance, InsurTech, enterprise risk management, performance, diversification, and specializations. Etti is a multiple-time winner of the Research Paper Award from the International Insurance Society and the prestigious Thales Grant. She is a member of ARIA, FMA, and other associations. She became a life member of the prestigious Risk Theory Seminar in 2017. She consulted on various cases and is quoted by many of the media outlets in the United States. She volunteers her time using her expertise as a treasurer and a board member of Congregation Aguda Achim (in Austin with about 720 member units), and a board member of the Austin National Council of Jewish Women for the Israel Grant program. She is very pleased to be appointed by the Texas Commissioner of Insurance to be a Non-Seacoast Territory board member on TWIA.

Dr. Patrick L. Brockett (PhD University of California, Irvine) is the Gus Wortham Chair in Risk Management and Insurance in the University of Texas-Austin’s McCombs School of Business. He holds joint Professor appointments in the departments of Finance, Mathematics, and Information, Risk, and Operations Management. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Statistical Association, the Royal Statistical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute for Risk Management. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He served as editor of The Journal of Risk and Insurance for 9 years and has served on the Board of Directors and as President of the American Risk and Insurance Association. Currently he is Editor of the North American Actuarial Journal.

Patrick’s articles have won awards from the American Risk and Insurance Association, the American Statistical Association, the Society of Actuaries, the International Insurance Society, the Casualty Actuarial Society, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, as well as from the Faculty of Actuaries of Scotland, and Institute of Actuaries in England. His most recent research awards are the 2017 Spencer L. Kimball Prize from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and the 2017 Best North American Actuarial Journal Article Award from the Society of Actuaries.

Patrick served on three National Academy of Sciences research committees on the National Flood Insurance Program and served as an integral member of a University of Texas research team helping the Texas General Land Office in modeling damages from Hurricane Harvey in 2017. He continues to serve as a member of the Board of Directors of the Texas Property and Casualty Guaranty Association. He has published two books, five monographs, and over 185 scholarly articles in a variety of journals across many disciplines.

Prof. Yehuda Kahane (PhD Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is a Fellow (and trustee) of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) and Professor Emeritus of the Coller School of Management and the Porter School of Environmental Studies. He is the 2011 recipient of the prestigious Insurance Founders Award by the International Insurance Society, for his contribution to the theory, practice, and education in risk management and insurance. In that same year, he was also awarded for his lifetime achievements by the Israeli insurance industry. During the last two decades his focus was mainly on the environmental and societal risks that threaten humankind’s survival on planet Earth. He offers practical, feasible solutions to mitigate these risks, based on the retirement and insurance industry (both private plans and social security programs). Insurers hold the key to the solution, since they are the only sources of long-term capital in the world. Yehuda showed how insurers can globally finance the trillions of dollars that are needed annually for reaching the world Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that all countries accepted during the Paris 2015 summit. He showed how these investments can yield the high rates of return that are needed to create attractive retirement plans, and at the same time to handle two other critical risks: the employment and retirement insecurity of millennials.

Yehuda was the founding dean of the first academic school of insurance in Israel. For nearly five decades he taught and researched in many universities around the world, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Florida, University of Toronto, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Texas at Austin. Yehuda is a life and general insurance actuary (Fellow of the Israel Actuarial Association, The International Actuarial Association, and others). He is also a prolific writer and served on the editorial board of the major journals in the area. He has a broad experience in sustainability, life insurance and retirement plans, ratemaking, datamining, social security, catastrophes, natural hazards, auto insurance, agricultural risks, portfolios, financial risks, digital currencies, technological forecasting, and long-term planning.