Leadership

Mary Guzman

Founder and CEO

Mary Guzman is a highly experienced veteran in the insurance industry, with a remarkable three decades serving in a variety of roles. Renowned as a "disruptor," Mary has successfully ventured into both the broker and underwriting sides of insurance. She has provided invaluable advice to clients on various risks affecting their businesses, specializing in technology, media, and intellectual property. Mary’s proven track record of creating innovative products and capacity within large brokerage firms has led to the growth and success of multiple organizations, including McGriff, Seibels & Williams (Truist), WTW and Marsh.​

​A passionate advocate for risk management in the convergence of intangible assets with the tangible, Mary focuses on protecting critical infrastructure and trade secrets. She played a significant role in the creation of "cyber" insurance nearly 25 years ago, and in 2023 became the first person to develop insurance policy wording and meaningful capacity to insure the risk of trade secret misappropriation. This is a game-changer that creates the foundation for a new industry vertical addressing a $15 Trillion gap in the market. Ms. Guzman is a sought-after speaker, consultant, and author. Her accomplishments include:

  • 2023 Innovation Award Winner - Business Insurance

  • 2021 Business Insurance Women to Watch

  • Chair of USIPA Trade Secret Committee

  • Member, Trade Secret Committee of AIPLA

  • 25+ years of experience as a commercial insurance broker (March, Willis, McGriff)

  • Experienced bringing new insurance products to market (Cyber & Trade Secret)

  • 1st Trade Secret policy supported by 5 A+ Markets

  • Author of IAM's 2024 1st Edition Guide to IP Monetization, Trade Secret Chapter - link here

Merritt Baer

Chief Technology Advisor

Merritt is a security executive based in Miami, FL.

Merritt serves as CISO to Enkrypt AI. She also advises a small handful of young tech companies including Andesite and AppOmni.

Merritt served in the Office of the CISO at Amazon Web Services for over five years– a Deputy CISO to help to secure AWS infrastructure, at vast scale.

Merritt worked in security in all three branches of US government and the private sector. Her insights on business strategy and tech have been published in Forbes, the The Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, Tech Crunch, SC Media, The Baltimore Sun, The Daily Beast, LawFare, and Talking Points Memo. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard College.

Lily Tapia

Chief Financial Advisor

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

Advisor

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.