When Newfront co-founders Spike Lipkin and Gordon Wintrob set out to build the brokerage of the future, they resolved to shake off some of the baggage of the old-school insurance industry. One obvious way to do that was by building a company filled with diverse voices and fresh perspectives—and that's just one of the reasons Newfront empowers a strong female workforce and actively encourages gender equality at work and beyond. 

In honor of Women’s History Month, we want to shine a spotlight on just a few of the female leaders, brokers, and clients who make Newfront proud. 

Lisa Hanson's career in insurance has spanned nearly 30 years; before Newfront, she owned a management consulting firm specializing in strategic planning, change management, and leadership. Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn here. 

What do you like most about the work you do? 

Helping salespeople achieve and get out of their own way. I love being a resource at the sales level and helping producers keep their confidence up during tough times. I place a lot of value on helping people gain insight into their own emotions during important sales conversations, because it can help them clear their head of roadblocks and get in the right mindset for success. 

I have cultivated leadership skills over my lifetime and I like to lead other people toward unlocking their own leadership capacity. I strongly believe that everyone has leadership potential and I think it’s a strength of mine to help people feel empowered and find the right leadership role for themselves. 

Can you describe a time when you overcame a challenge? 

In a prior leadership role, one of my responsibilities was to turn around unprofitable territories marked by economic downturn and low producer engagement. The obvious assumption was that the regional economic troubles led the producers to disengage, but I wanted to dig deeper. My first step in every territory was to schedule lengthy one-on-ones with each producer to connect on an individual level. In doing so, I learned that it was not typically the perceived lack of opportunity that caused producers to disengage; rather, it was because the individual did not feel valued by the brokerage.

Once I listened and understood what motivated each person to do his or her best, I found ways to engage the producers in the business. We created action plans that reflected how and why the producer wanted to be successful. To further engage them, I created opportunities for the producers to become part of large and small teams to give a sense of camaraderie. Through coaching and encouragement, the results came quickly as producers surpassed the expectations others had of them as well as those they had of themselves.

Do you have any words of wisdom for women who might want a similar career to yours? 

I would say to never give up. Historically, the insurance industry has been full of barricades for women. While things are dramatically different at Newfront, they’re not fully solved anywhere. So as a woman, it’s important to reach out to your colleagues and find allies in both men and women. Your allies will be critical over time.

Debra Scalice is a Newfront broker with more than 30 years of risk management experience. She partners with entrepreneurs across a variety of industries, from manufacturing and distribution to non-profits. 

My clients are so inspirational to me. Entrepreneurs find a way where there is no way; they are mavericks, pioneers, and problem-solvers. They are the most hard-working, creative people among us and I’m so proud to help them contribute to the US economy. 

I am painstaking about assembling insurance programs that are as unique as my clients. I take the time to deeply understand my clients’ needs, educate them about their options, and compile programs that make sense for their business and their appetite for risk. 

This is one of my favorite stories, because it’s demonstrative of the power of determination. One of my HR clients found themselves in an expensive bind when their workers' compensation classification code had been mis-assigned before we started working together. They had tried to remedy it to no avail, but I was determined to fix it. With my client’s permission, I spoke with eight people at several entities and carriers—all of whom told me “no”—before I finally got the change made. It didn’t affect my commission but it was a huge cost savings for my client. The takeaway is that it doesn’t matter how many people tell you that you can’t do something—you can. Just follow your instinct and keep forging through. 

I would tell any woman that if you want this career and you’re willing to work hard for it, you can have it. Pursue knowledge, gain experience, and find a mentor and this is one of the most financially and emotionally rewarding careers you could possibly have.  

When Cristina Posada emigrated from Colombia at age 20 and arrived in San Jose, California, she found a job at her brother-in-law’s construction company and spent the next 13 years mastering English, earning her undergraduate degree in business and marketing, and absorbing as much industry knowledge as she possibly could. When presented with a fortuitous offer to buy a struggling concrete scanning company, she borrowed money from her parents for a down payment, arranged to pay for the rest of the company over time, and took an enormous risk. She’s owned the company, Safe2core, for a decade now, and Cristina is a client of Newfront broker Susan Groff. 

Safe2core provides concrete scanning, concrete cutting, and utility locating services. We use ground penetrating technology—an alternative to x-ray—to locate embedded construction targets like post-tension cables, conduits, and rebar. We also locate utilities such as water, gas, and telephone lines. After the target areas have been scanned and cleared, we cut the concrete laying over them. The process is important because it prevents the structure from being damaged and protects the safety of everyone working on the site; that's what I value most about what I do. 

I care deeply for my team and I consider them family. I routinely hear from clients, employees, and friends how much my team loves working for Safe2core. Most business owners think the customers are the most important asset, but for me, my employees are the most valuable—because if they’re happy, they make my clients happy. 

When I first bought Safe2core, the business had a terrible reputation that I had to overcome. The prior owner was a good person but distracted by personal issues that left the business in bad shape. Former clients were hesitant to hire me and I couldn’t get a loan from the bank. I sometimes literally begged people to give me a chance. I eventually rebuilt the reputation of Safe2core and I’m now doing five times as much business as the prior owner. It’s an incredible feeling to look back on what I’ve achieved. 

I always think of this quote from Robert Kiyosaki: “Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” I always keep that quote present in my mind because it helps me remember to not let fear interfere with my goals. Of course uncertainty is terrifying, but you have to just go for it anyway—because the feeling of really achieving something cannot be matched. 

In March and Beyond, We Celebrate Our Woman Leaders

Karin Robinsantos left Uber to join Newfront in April 2019 and now leads our 50-person Operations Specialists team. We spoke with Karin about building the support organization at Newfront and what keeps her motivated at work each day. 

Q. What is your professional background and how did it prepare you for life at Newfront?

A. I started my career in tech operations working the phones at a (then-small) Cambridge startup called HubSpot. As it morphed into an industry leader, HubSpot taught me how to use enterprise CRM solutions and gave me my first taste of what is needed to build a support team from scratch. A few years on, I took a chance at another small startup—Uber—as a project manager on the support operations team in Boston. There, I launched a new ticketing platform in China, grew offshore support centers all over the world, and led a massive migration of Uber’s internal knowledge architecture for the US and Canada. It’s hard to express what a wild ride Uber was for me; when I left after five years, Uber had evolved from a network of hyper-local teams to a massive global operation with hundreds of thousands of support interactions each week. In a nutshell, it taught me how to scale support. But most importantly, Uber brought me to San Francisco—where I transitioned to Newfront and launched my career in insurance. 

Q. What do Operations Specialists at Newfront do? 

A. The purpose of the ops specialists team is to take on the day-to-day paperwork, bookkeeping, and data entry that keeps our business alive but takes critical bandwidth away from the account managers and brokers whose time is better spent serving clients. 

There are a total of nine distinct ops specialists teams at Newfront, each tasked with managing the data associated with a core insurance function. Our certificates team does the complicated (and high-stakes) work of issuing proof of coverage documents to our clients on demand. Our endorsements team manages the immense amount of data we get from incoming policy and endorsement documents. 

When I started as Head of Operations Specialists in April 2019, we had three full-time staff dedicated to the work. I knew instantly we would require massive growth to accommodate Newfront’s business and that our team could be a critical lever for scale at Newfront. In just seven months, we’ve grown to 50 full-time operations specialists and contractors and we’re still hiring. (Jobs here!)

Q. How is ops at Newfront different from ops at other insurance brokerages? 

A. The operations function is entirely unique to Newfront. At most brokerages, account managers are either required to handle these tasks themselves or they rely on assistant account managers for help. To illustrate why that’s unduly burdensome, let’s consider an example. Say a construction client is headed to work on a job site that requires proof of insurance. At other brokerages, generating that certificate would require oversight from the producer and the account manager involving lengthy discussions, contract reviews, and sign-off requirements that could create delays. 

At Newfront, our operations specialists are experts in specific pieces of that workflow—so not only are they able to get the task done faster, they do so with dramatically fewer errors than a generalist would produce. This means that Newfront ops specialists enable our account managers to take on a more strategic role than would be possible anywhere else. At Newfront, account managers are dedicated to ensuring that each client has the most thoughtful, competitively priced insurance package possible. They can spend their days doing what they are hired to do—helping clients.

Of course, our technology platform plays a critical role supporting both our operations specialists and our account managers. Our product and engineering teams have built proprietary tools that help us dramatically speed up these insurance workflows while reducing errors. We can conduct audits to assess how long each task is taking and where the pain points are to make them run faster. 

At other brokerages, it’s accepted that account managers simply have too much to do. At Newfront, we’re modernizing the insurance industry not only by building technology, but by implementing entirely new operating models in the service of our clients. 

Q. How is culture at Newfront similar to and different from culture at Uber? 

A. Both companies strongly encourage creative thinking to overcome challenging business problems. When teams are empowered to build solutions themselves, I truly believe anything is possible. And both companies attract and hire eternal optimists—my favorite kind of colleague. 

One major difference is that at Newfront, I’m glad to report that our philosophy is not “growth at all costs.” We absolutely want to grow as a company, and we believe we will grow while treating people right. We often say at Newfront that “our vision of the future has people at the center of it,” and as both an employee and a manager, I know this to be true. 

Q. What is the most satisfying part of your job?  

A. It gives me no greater joy than to realize that through our rapid hiring, we’ve built our team of operations specialists into a critical talent pool for Newfront. By hiring collaborative, smart, and intellectually curious people into support roles, we now get to develop career pathways for our ops specialists into management, account management, training and development, and much more. 

For example, Erika Palomo started as a contractor just six months ago and consistently demonstrated deep subject matter expertise and management talent. She was recently hired full-time to lead our conversion vertical and now manages a team of four. 

The ops specialists team is full of owners who step up when presented with meaningful challenges and I’m so proud to report that these empathetic, hard-working people are quite literally building the brokerage of the future. 

Karin is hiring for operations specialists roles in both San Francisco and Sacramento. She would love to hear your thoughts on this article and can be reached at karin@newfront.com.  

We spoke with Karin about building the support organization at Newfront and what keeps her motivated at work each day. 

An Interview with Karin Robinsantos, Head of Operations Specialists

We’d love to introduce you to Adrianne Peixotto, Head of Private Client Group at Newfront. Adrianne got her start in insurance more than 20 years ago and joins us most recently from ProCo. Among Adrianne’s many accolades, she was nationally recognized as one of nine Travelers Insurance 2018 Agents of the Year for being the top producer in the state of California.

Adrianne joined Newfront in May 2019 to deepen our brokerage’s commitment to personal insurance. We spoke with her to learn more about why she joined Newfront and her plans for personal lines. 

Adrianne, you work in personal insurance exclusively. Why? 

It suits my personality perfectly. I’ve always offered policies like home and auto because I enjoy helping people manage the day-to-day facets of their lives. 

When it comes to insurance, it’s crucial for me that people understand what they’re actually buying. I always treat my clients as if I was the one buying the policy. I ask, “Is this the best value? Is this what I would want for myself?” And my clients trust me because of that. 

Throughout my career, I’ve always said that what I sell is a piece of paper that reads, “I’ll be there when you need me.” Nowadays, I joke that it’s a PDF, of course. But all my clients have my cell phone number, they can text me, we’re friends on Facebook; I’m as involved as my clients want me to be. 

Why is Newfront the right brokerage for you? 

When I first took a meeting with Spike, Newfront’s CEO, to learn more about the company, we ended up having a two-hour brainstorming session that was a beautiful synergy of my insurance expertise and his tech knowledge. We each kept saying, “I wish we had a whiteboard!” We had so many ideas to write down. I hadn’t had that experience at any other brokerage—having my voice heard and getting to share my most creative ideas. 

I have always wanted to be at the forefront of changing our industry. I have a great deal of expertise to contribute and as I look to the future, I have no interest in maintaining the insurance industry status quo.  

Why is Newfront the right brokerage for your clients? 

Unlike other companies building technology for the insurance industry, Newfront has people at its center. We’re using technology to enhance the broker-client relationship, not replace it. In fact, one of our key insights is that if we use technology to create an amazing experience for insurance professionals, the client benefits in a huge way. 

For example, the thing I always want to spend time on as a broker is collaborating with my clients one-on-one to help them reach their goals. So when Newfront applies technology to help me manage my most mundane tasks (like paperwork), I have the time to be even more proactively supportive of my clients. 

Since my clients have joined me at Newfront, they receive the same personalized service I’ve built my career on, plus new perks—like a robust online portal where you can see coverage at a glance, sign documents with the click of a button, and more. 

What are some other ways that Newfront supports insurance professionals? 

Newfront technology lightens the burden of the account managers’ most rote work, so they have more time to spend on our clients—helping them to investigate a problem or reviewing coverage options. 

For brokers like me, I get an email every morning with a summary of everything that’s happened with my clients the day before. The technology gives me a daily review of my book of business. It’s fantastic, and saves me time so I can spend more energy with my clients every day. 

When I started, Newfront technology was perfectly suited to the core business we launched with—commercial insurance. My biggest contribution to date has been working hands-on with our engineering team to make improvements to the technology to better suit personal insurance clients like mine. It’s Newfront 2.0.  

I’ve recently been growing our personal lines team and ensuring our expertise is truly the best in our class. Newfront is continuing to deepen its commitment to personal lines in every way; stay tuned. I can’t wait to share more updates with you in 2020!

Adrianne specializes in personal insurance and risk management for high net worth individuals and families. She can be reached at 415-250-2222 or adrianne@newfront.com. 

We’d love to introduce you to Adrianne Peixotto, Head of Private Client at Newfront. 

Meet Adrianne Peixotto, Head of Private Client Group

Seth Word joined Newfront as Principal & Head of Agribusiness in September 2019. In this role he guides the direction of our insurance practice in agriculture and horticulture. Before Newfront, Seth was one of the top brokers in California as owner of Cultivate Insurance Services. While building his own successful brokerage he designed a proprietary Safety Management System (SMS) to lower occupational safety risks for clients. 

“It’s incredibly important to me to be able to make a difference in clients’ lives, and that’s the impetus behind the Safety Management System. It’s just one of many ways I can make a meaningful difference for my clients, by looking out for their people—not only their profits.” 

Seth’s SMS is an outstanding example of the hands-on, client-focused service we look for in all Newfront employees. While his process requires an upfront investment of time, the ultimate goal is to minimize losses while promoting a culture of safety through behavioral training in your workplace. Let’s walk through the process, from Seth’s point of view: 

Safety Compliance. We start by conducting an in-depth analysis of your company’s safety culture, including compliance with OSHA regulations, to identify room for improvement. We’re looking at things like your company's standard operating procedures, workplace hazards, and your injury and illness prevention approach. We then triage safety gaps to ensure we address the most pressing problems first. 

Employee Engagement. Time and again, research demonstrates that dramatically fewer safety incidents occur when employees feel engaged at work. We want all employees to consider themselves ambassadors of the company, and we examine factors like feedback culture and employee/manager relationships to ensure behavior at all levels of the company is in alignment with safety values. 

Safety Leadership. Your company’s safety chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We invest in management-level staff by implementing customized safety trainings that vary in intensity and duration, which increases interest, engagement, and retention of knowledge over time. We train managers to demonstrate to employees how much they care about their overall welfare, and to live the principle that safety is not a set of rules but a safeguard of everyone’s quality of life. 

Continuous Improvement. Our mission is to empower your company to administer your customized safety management system while we remain on standby to help over time. We make sure you’re poised for success by establishing internal safety committees and entrusting committee members with metrics to hold your organization accountable to your own safety standards. 

24/7 Safety Culture. We want employees to put safety first at all times, even when they’re away from work—because a safety-first attitude at home correlates to a safety-first attitude at work. We like to offer a “daily safety tip” containing short, easily digestible information—both work-related and not—to get employees in the safety mindset every day without requiring large commitments of time. For example, in the summer we might share tips around grilling or boating safety, and tips about holiday lights in the winter.  

We’re so fortunate to have Seth on board and look forward to integrating his expertise into Newfront’s own Safety and Loss Control program. For more on Seth’s Safety Management System or Newfront’s risk assessment services, feel free to contact us or reach out to Seth directly at 831-970-1976 or seth@newfront.com. 

Promoting a Culture of Safety: Seth Word’s Safety Management System 

Blog ‍

Connect ‍
with ‍
us. ‍

Articles from Meredith Swinehart

In March and Beyond, We Celebrate Our Woman Leaders

An Interview with Karin Robinsantos, Head of Operations Specialists

Meet Adrianne Peixotto, Head of Private Client Group

Promoting a Culture of Safety: Seth Word’s Safety Management System

Newfront for Businesses

Newfront for Employee Benefits

Newfront for Private Clients

.css-ehl63z{overflow:hidden;display:-webkit-inline-box;display:-webkit-inline-flex;display:-ms-inline-flexbox;display:inline-flex;}.css-k6gryc{display:inline-block;word-break:keep-all;}Blog ‍Connect ‍with ‍us. ‍

Articles from Meredith Swinehart

.css-13o7eu2{display:block;}In March and Beyond, We Celebrate Our Woman Leaders

An Interview with Karin Robinsantos, Head of Operations Specialists

Meet Adrianne Peixotto, Head of Private Client Group

Promoting a Culture of Safety: Seth Word’s Safety Management System

Newfront for Businesses

Newfront for Employee Benefits

Newfront for Private Clients

Blog ‍

Connect ‍
with ‍
us. ‍

In March and Beyond, We Celebrate Our Woman Leaders