Leadership
Mary Guzman
CEO & Founder
Mary Guzman is an insurance industry veteran, having spent 30 years as a broker, advising clients on a myriad of risks to their businesses, most recently with a focus on all things related to technology, media, and intellectual property. She is considered a “disruptor” in the industry and has now tackled both the broker and underwriting sides of insurance. Mary is a creator of new products and/or capacity from within large brokerage firms where she led teams to growth and success, and a passionate advocate and speaker regarding risks related to the convergence of all things intangible, specifically the protection of US critical infrastructure and trade secrets. Mrs. Guzman left the retail insurance brokerage business where she was a pioneer going back to the creating of “cyber” insurance nearly twenty years ago. As an underwriter and CEO, Mary was the first to develop the first-party coverage for the intrinsic value of trade secrets. To accomplish this goal, she worked with her trusted relationships in the brokerage, security, and legal community to develop of full suite of risk management services to drop into a company’s Enterprise Risk Management program, then convinced the Lloyds market to sit behind this process and offer insurance covering trade secrets on an “agreed value” basis. No one had been able to get this done prior to Mary. Her belief in the concept was why she left her successful broker career and became an underwriter.
Prior to creating CJI, Ms. Guzman spent ten years with McGriff Seibels, & Williams/BB&T (now Truist), the sixth largest US broker. She and her team developed innovative products and created market capacity for a variety of industries, concentrating on customized risk and insurance solutions for the Fortune 2000 companies. Ms. Guzman was instrumental in helping McGriff grow its practice from the ground up to become one of the most respected teams in the country and grew her personal book of business to one of the 20 largest in the company. She has been involved with the DHS and other government agencies as part of a public/private partnership focusing on security of US Critical Infrastructure. She was the first to create "failure to supply" coverage in the utilities space and worked in the market to build a $125 million line slip. Shortly after, Mary led her team to do a very similar achievement only this time in the Oil and Gas Space. Today Ms. Guzman is involved in several high-profile Trade Secret focused groups such as the AIPLA, USIPA, and the Sedona Project.
Prior to being at McGriff, Mrs. Guzman served as the SVP, Large Account Team Leader at Willis for 4 years. She started her career at Marsh & McLennan Companies where she became one of the country’s first leaders in Cyber/E&O Practice.
Ms. Guzman is a frequent speaker and has written several publications related to information technology and security risk. As a subject matter expert, she has spoken at professional conferences over 100 times including the 2022 Atlanta RIMS Conference. Most recently, Mary was named a 2021 Business Insurance Women to Watch. Mary has her degree in Risk Management and Insurance from the University of Georgia.
Lily Tapia
Board of Advisors
Lily Tapia is a seasoned corporate finance executive with 29 years’ experience in private equity and commercial and private debt. She is the founder and Managing Partner of Exelvest Partners. She serves on the board of several businesses and has vast experience working with businesses in the areas of strategic growth, commercial lending, capital raising, mergers and acquisitions, and optimization of enterprise value prior to an exit. Lily started her career at Bank of America in 1991 and joined Merrill Lynch Business Financial Services in 1998. She was with the combined Bank of America Merrill Lynch organization in a variety of capacities for 24 years and served in several leadership roles. Lily was Chief Executive Officer of a trade finance company and Chief Development Officer managing the acquisitions for a large health care company. In 2017 she joined Trivest Partners specializing in private equity for middle market companies and in 2019 she founded Exelvest Partners.
Jeremy Hitzig
Board of Advisors
Mr. Hitzig began his insurance career in 1995 as a principal at Capital Risk Strategies where he focused on emerging risk transfer tools including catastrophe bonds and other blended capital markets/insurance products. In 1997 he joined Distinguished LLC and held several executive positions before being named Chief Executive Officer in 2006, serving in that role until the end of 2018. During his time at Distinguished, the company grew from a single office with less than 10 people and $2 million in revenue to more than 3,000 people in 3 continents generating nearly $150 million in revenue During his tenure as CEO, Distinguished was recognized four times on Inc. Magazine’s list of America's Top 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies and the IAOP and Fortune Magazine recognized ReSource Pro as a "rising star" and one of the Top 100 Global Outsourcing Companies. In early 2019, Hitzig launched Duero River Ventures, an investment vehicle and consultancy focused on the insurance and specialty finance industries. Duero River Ventures current interests include ReSource Pro, Accord Financial and BondIt Media Finance.
William Butler
Advisory Board Member
Bill is a highly experienced insurance broker focused on all lines of P&C insurance with a heavy concentration in Private Equity, family offices, asset managers and middle market commercial and financial enterprises.
His technical insurance expertise is in Executive Risk coverages such as D&O, General Partnership Liability, E&O and Cyber, with deep experience developing solutions for complex events such as IPO’s, M&A transactions, Class Action lawsuits, Cyber Security breaches, corporate crises, bankruptcies, and leadership changes. He had handled the D&O Insurance for a wide range of large global companies including Aegon, Ahold Delhaize, Johnson & Johnson, Aetna, PG&E, Goldman Sachs, Aditya Birla Group, Ross Stores, Chanel, Gannett, USX, BNY Mellon, Comcast, PNC Financial, Fidelity Investments,
A few examples of his relevant Private Equity and IPO client experience are the Bass/Oak Hill entities (and portfolio), TPG, Apollo, Leonard Green, Cerberus, TA Associates, Haas Wheat, Forstmann Little, HIG Capital (and portfolio), JH Whitney, Goldman Sachs (D&O for their IPO), Brown Brothers Harriman, Rothschild, and Greenhill. Bill also ran the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) D&O/E&O Insurance program from 1998-2003 while at Aon, negotiating scores of new D&O/E&O coverages (and eventual claims) for dinovo and established VC and Family Office enterprises, and their portfolio companies.
Bill joined Integro (now EPIC via acquisition) as a partner in early 2017 from Marsh, where he had served as Managing Director and Growth Leader of a $300M region. Prior to Marsh, he ran Aon’s D&O/E&O Southeast business and held other roles in leadership, sales and client engagement at Aon and Lockton in New York and Atlanta. Bill was also co-founder and CEO of iRiskExchange, an early digital business insurance exchange.
Bill’s emphasis is on delivering meaningful value to his clients, providing strategic and thoughtful advice with highly responsive service and disciplined execution. Bill takes the time to gain a deep understanding of his clients’ businesses and goals, while appreciating the “M&A timeline” that is so critical to his clients
He is a member of the American College of Corporate Directors (ACCD) and has achieved the Executive Masters Professional Director level certification to serve of corporate and non-profit boards of directors. Bill is an investor and member of the Board of Advisors of Crown Jewel Insurance, an innovative blockchain-enabled provider of insurance for trade secrets.
Bill is a competitive tennis and paddle tennis player and enjoys traveling the world with his 4 children. He is an Assistant Scoutmaster in BSA Scouts Troop 370 where his twin sons achieved the Eagle Scout Rank in 2018 and is a supporter and volunteer with Second Helpings Atlanta.
Andrea Pearson
Advisory Board Member
Andrea is enjoying an early retirement from Chubb (2022) and doing some consulting and advisory work. She returned to the Global Client Executive role, after serving as the Chief Operating Officer for the consolidated Pacific region of Chubb during the early integration processes of ACE and Chubb. Prior, she was the Senior Vice President and Regional Executive Officer for ACE USA’s Western Region.
In that role, she was responsible for setting and driving the overall strategic direction for the region, overseeing production, distribution, product sales and marketing, producer management, staff management and overall operations.
Andrea has over 30 years of experience in risk management, insurance brokerage, insurance operations and strategic business leadership. She joined ACE as a Global Client Executive, where she worked closely with a select group of ACE’s global clients to identify their needs and coordinate with ACE’s global network to deliver tailored solutions.
Prior to joining ACE, she served as Managing Director of Aon’s Account Executive Practice in Los Angeles. She also spent 15 years with General Electric (GE) in a variety of leadership roles, including serving as GE’s Global Risk Manager, leading GE Employers’ Reinsurance Corporation’s Global Claims organization, and serving as the National Commercial Leader for GE Commercial Finance Fleet Services. She began her career with Sedgwick in San Francisco.
Ms. Pearson earned a bachelor’s degree in Risk Management and Insurance from the University of Georgia. She now sits on the Alumni Board of Directors of UGA’s Terry College of Business.