Executive Team

Over 35 years of underwriting management and business development along with a strong record of achieving sustainable growth and profitability for various insurance organizations. As an effective facilitator, led high performance teams across various business units, i.e., underwriting, actuarial, sales, claims and loss control, developing and executing specialty programs and niche product solutions.

 As Chief Underwriting Officer @Aura Risk Management, Brenda will leverage her diverse background to:

• Identify, design and launch cutting edge insurance products and programs
• Provide strategic underwriting insights to support product innovation
• Drive market differentiation and profitable growth for clients and partners

Prior to Aura Risk, Brenda spent the last 8 years at Venbrook as the Head of Programs (Cardigan) leading the Transportation Programs, a proprietary $20M property program, 2 recent program acquisitions along with various small program verticals. Brenda was most recently responsible for all new Business Development initiatives including programs, organic growth, and strategic partnerships across the Venbrook enterprise.

Before Venbrook, Brenda held various underwriting management roles overseeing both large account divisions and programs including alternative risk and captive business. With a strong casualty background, along with a multi- line underwriting skillset, Brenda has been able to effectively maximize her diverse and entrepreneurial underwriting experience including starting her own MGA (Stonebriar Specialty) where she developed and launched a niche trucking program which ultimately merged on to the Venbrook platform and assumed a Program Management leadership role.

Her previous experience includes:

• Tokio Marine Management; as Regional Underwriting Officer, managed a $180M book of Japanese and domestic casualty, property, and marine business. In addition, she was responsible for domestic programs which included a $30M hospitality program and various auto related programs
• Liberty Mutual Alternative Markets; as a Senior Executive, led an underwriting team responsible for structuring and servicing alternative risk programs utilizing captives and other funding structures. Her portfolio included construction wrap ups (OCIP’s), WC PEO’s along with various real estate, warranty, and service products along large conglomerates
• Willis Insurance Brokers; as Strategic Marketing Officer, led the broking and marketing team which supported 10 production teams in the 3 Southern CA Regional offices
• CNA Insurance Group; as SVP Major Markets, responsible for a national team of property /casualty underwriters and a $200M book of Fortune 500 accounts and programs.
• AIG Insurance Companies: over 8+ years, demonstrated strong underwriting and profit center leadership oversighting casualty lines of business, i.e., Workers Compensation, General Liability, Auto and Excess Liability along with niche segments such as Construction, Tough products (SIR’s), Transportation including Aviation and Public Entities for the AIG Risk Management segment. Lastly as Zonal VP, she was responsible for the P&L of 25 profit centers rolling up to the Large Account segment and $300M portfolio in the Midwest Zone.
• Her career began as a casualty underwriter with Aetna; was promoted to a production multi-line underwriting role at Hartford and relocated to Los Angeles to assume an Underwriting Management role with Argonaut responsible for all primary casualty lines

Brenda is a graduate from the University of South Florida with a double BAs in International Business and French. She completed a 12-month exchange program at the Universite Paris Sorbonne and is an avid Francophile.