Most of the time, when you find a news story that describes the activities of insurance company executives, it reports upon their bad behavior. This isn’t that type of story. A group of eight insurance industry chief executives have shaved their heads to raise money for, and awareness of, childhood cancer.
It is always nice to hear a story about insurance industry executives who are doing something good! It takes a bit of explaining in order to fully understand exactly what they did, why they did it, and how that came to be.
AmWINS Group, Inc. is a company that has its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are a leader in the wholesale insurance industry. They have more than 2,000 employees, and are made up of more than 25 wholesale brokerage, underwriting, and group benefit operations.
In November of 2011, AmWINS announced that they would be doing a fundraising campaign for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. Eight chief executives, who came from various firms that dealt with excess and surplus lines in the insurance industry, were going to focus on the promotional efforts of this campaign.
The eight insurance industry executives became a team, of sorts, that was ironically named “Expired Coverage”. This team was made up of David Bresnahan, (President of Lexington Insurance Company), Dave Leonard, (President of RSUI Group), Eduardo Lucena, (CEO of Colemont Brazil), Frank Murphy, (Group CEO of THB Group plc), James Drinkwater, (President of AmWINS Brokerage), John Chairman, (CEO of AXIS Capital), Scott Carmilani, (CEO of Allied World Assurance Company), and Skip Cooper, (President of AmWINS Group, Inc.).
St. Baldrick’s Foundation is a charity committed to finding the most promising research that will find cures for childhood cancers. They want to help give childhood cancer survivors the ability to have long, and healthy, lives. This is a volunteer-driven charity.
The foundation was started on March 17, 2000. A small group of reinsurance executives, (John Bender, Tim Kenny, and Edna McDonnell), decided to turn their industry’s St. Patrick’s Day party into a fundraising event to benefit kids with cancer. People volunteered to shave their heads if they were able to collect the fundraising goal. That very first event was a great success, and they raised much more money than their original goal.
Who was Saint Baldrick? You won’t find mention of him in any religious text. St. Baldrick is a made up saint. His name comes from the word “bald” and the phrase “St. Patrick’s”. Kids who are going through cancer treatment often end up bald, due to the effects of chemotherapy.
The fundraising efforts of “Expired Coverage” ended on January 16, 2012. They intended to raise $250,000 for St. Baldrick’s, and ended up raising $700,000. Today, January 17, 2012, the entire “Expired Coverage” team attended an event where they had their heads shaved. This is done to acknowledge the fight that kids who have cancer face every day.
Image by Steve Snodgrass on Flickr