Spike Lipkin is the CEO and Co-founder of Newfront. Previous to Newfront, Spike was one of the first employees at Opendoor, where he helped grow a five-person company into a business currently valued at more than $3 billion. Prior to Opendoor, Spike was an investor at Blackstone, where he served on the startup team that built Invitation Homes into the largest owner of single family real estate in the United States. At both Opendoor and Blackstone, Spike ran the purchase of commercial insurance, and his experiences with brokers was so bad that he began looking into how the insurance industry could be improved. This led Spike and Gordon to found Newfront.

Spike grew up in Colorado and received degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (BA), Cambridge (MA), and Stanford (MBA).

Brian Hetherington is the President of Newfront, a specialized insurance brokerage transforming the delivery of risk management, employee experience, insurance, and retirement solutions by building the modern insurance platform.

Brian has a successful track record in technology sales at NightFire, N.E.T., and MCI Telecommunications. Brian attended Northwestern University for his BA (with honors), Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Business (McGovern Academic Scholarship), and Stanford Law School’s Directors College.

Mike Brown is Chief Operating Officer at Newfront, overseeing our company’s growth and leadership at scale. Mike joined Newfront in 2019.

Mike has more than 20 years of experience in leading teams at high profile technology companies, such as Facebook, where he sourced, negotiated, and integrated more than ten acquisitions, and Twitter, where he was responsible for user growth, monetization, and public relations in Twitter’s priority markets outside the U.S. 

Most recently, Mike was the Regional General Manager for Uber in Asia, overseeing the company’s operations there. During his time with Uber, he was responsible for 1,500 full-time employees and hundreds of contractors, as well as working with tens of thousands of drivers.  

A Bay Area native, Mike received his MBA from Stanford University and bachelor’s in Economics from Yale.

Amy Steadman is the Chief People Officer at Newfront. Under Amy’s leadership, Newfront has been recognized as one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work, among other accolades. 

With 20 years of experience in human resources leadership, Amy has a demonstrated history of facilitating and growing robust company cultures. With her guidance, Newfront team members strengthened the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and created the company’s first employee resource groups. Amy also led core integration activities as Newfront underwent a merger, helping to combine the two companies’ ethos, payroll systems, and benefits approach.

Prior to Newfront, Amy directed business operations at Rock Me Baby Records as Vice President, including financials, sales, distribution, marketing, and public relations. She also served as Vice President, Human Resources and Administration at BenefitPoint for several years. Amy earned both her MBA and bachelor’s degree from UCLA.

As Chief Product Officer, Aaron Forth owns the company’s product strategy. He leads our product management and design teams while partnering closely with engineering to help Newfront build amazing products and services for our clients. 

Aaron has made his career working with emerging technology in the Silicon Valley area for the last 25 years. Previously, he served as CPO for the equity management company Carta and fitness network Strava. Before that, he was Vice President of Product at Mint and General Manager of Personal Finance at Intuit after the acquisition. 

Aaron lives in San Francisco with his wife (Sangita) and three kids and holds a degree in Earth Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Kurt is the Executive Chairman of Newfront, an insurance brokerage transforming the delivery of risk management, employee experience, insurance, and retirement solutions by building the modern insurance platform.

Kurt has thirty years of progressive insurance industry and software industry experience as a sales professional, operations executive, executive officer, founder, and CEO with focus on visionary product and service development to transform the insurance industry to meet 21st century business requirements. Kurt conceived and designed the original client portal, www.cybersure.com. 

Kurt co-founded BenefitPoint, Inc., secured equity funding, built the market leader, and subsequently led the sale of the company to Vertafore, Inc. He was the Founder and CEO of Insurance Leadership Network, Inc. (ILN) – a search fund focused on insurance distribution that did its first two acquisitions in 2011. In 2012, ILN rebranded as ABD with a continued focus on building a world class culture around independence and a fierce commitment to colleagues, clients, and community.

Jonathan Young joined Newfront as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer in September 2019 after serving as outside counsel for two years. Jonathan brings a wealth of experience from the insurance and legal fields to Newfront. He began his career at the United States Department of Justice before moving on to legal giant Reed Smith, where he served as a managing partner at the New York office. Jonathan left Reed Smith to join the executive leadership at Harleysville Insurance. He eventually returned to the practice of law, focusing mainly in litigation and insurance-related matters.

Jonathan was raised in Brooklyn, NY and educated at the University of Virginia (BA) and Georgetown Law (JD).

General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer

Alex Ip is the CFO of Newfront. Prior to joining Newfront, Alex built the finance team at Masterclass, where he led late-stage capital fundraising and helped scale revenues over 15x during his tenure.

Before his stint at Masterclass, Alex was one of the first employees and Head of Finance at Stitch Fix, a market disruptor to traditional brick-and-mortar retail and one of the fastest growing eCommerce companies in the world. There, he helped profitably grow the business from revenues of less than $10 million to $1 billion over four years. Earlier in his career, Alex was an investor at Silver Lake and served on the Corporate Development team at eBay. 

Alex grew up in San Francisco and has received degrees from Cornell University (A.B. in Economics and Government) and Harvard Business School (MBA). He lives in San Francisco with wife and daughter.

Michael McCloskey is Chief Financial Officer Emeritus at Newfront. Michael has served as CFO for the company for more than 20 years and helped lead the $1.35 billion merger between Newfront Insurance and the ABD Team in 2021.

As CFO, Michael draws upon his four decades of experience in financial leadership to include each member of the executive team in the budget process. In 2014, his efforts were recognized by Silicon Valley Business Journal as he was selected as one of the CFOs of the Year.

Prior to Newfront, Michael was Vice President, Internal Audit and Taxes at Jardine Insurance Brokers, Inc.

Gordon Wintrob is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Newfront. He leads the development of Newfront's platform and operating system. Gordon attended MIT and worked at Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, and Goldman Sachs during his time there. 

Prior to Newfront, Gordon founded StackLead, a company that built automated technology to research sales leads. He sold that company to LinkedIn and it became LinkedIn's jobs product, aggregating millions of postings across the web.

We're ‍
a ‍
modern ‍
brokerage ‍
innovating ‍
on ‍
behalf ‍
of ‍
our ‍
clients. ‍

Why we started Newfront

And we've assembled a team that's uniquely qualified to transform the industry.

750+
team members

120+
brokers

20+
industry & service groups

10,000+
clients

Our leadership team brings together the best from insurance and technology.

Corporate

Spike Lipkin

Brian Hetherington

Mike Brown

Amy Steadman

Aaron Forth

Kurt de Grosz

Jonathan Young

Alex IP

Michael McCloskey

Gordon Wintrob

“The insurance industry hasn't evolved to help you grow your business. That isn't acceptable anymore, and that's why we started Newfront.”

Spike Lipkin

Latest articles

Newfront announces $200 million investment to modernize insurance

Newfront Announces $200 Million Investment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, B Capital, and Other Investors at a $2.2 Billion Valuation to Modernize Insurance

Newfront for Businesses

Newfront for Employee Benefits

Newfront for Private Clients

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Why we started Newfront

And we've assembled a team that's uniquely qualified to transform the industry.

750+team members

120+brokers

20+industry & service groups

10,000+clients

Our leadership team brings together the best from insurance and technology.

Corporate

Spike Lipkin

Brian Hetherington

Mike Brown

Amy Steadman

Aaron Forth

Kurt de Grosz

Jonathan Young

Alex IP

Michael McCloskey

Gordon Wintrob

Spike Lipkin

Latest articles

Newfront announces $200 million investment to modernize insurance

Newfront Announces $200 Million Investment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, B Capital, and Other Investors at a $2.2 Billion Valuation to Modernize Insurance

Newfront for Businesses

Newfront for Employee Benefits

Newfront for Private Clients

We're ‍
a ‍
modern ‍
brokerage ‍
innovating ‍
on ‍
behalf ‍
of ‍
our ‍
clients. ‍

750+
team members

120+
brokers

20+
industry & service groups

10,000+
clients