 entrepreneurs and startups and business creators, and then marketing the city of Columbia externally and communicating to our constituents within. And I've got a couple of key staff people who who really help us get the job done at the end of the day. I want to take a second to recognize them. Kay Hampton, my deputy director who's on right now and is running some logistical support. Sergio Apparicio, our business development manager for the office. He works a lot with the startups and with the entrepreneurial community. And then Naisha Deese, who is our marketing and communications manager. So a huge thanks to them for the help and the effort that they've put in and bringing this webinar together tonight. And then also we've had some outside support as well. And I certainly want to give those folks in those organizations they're due. So it's COLA, which is the insurance technology and services cluster for Columbia, which was recently rebranded from its SC. Limelight Health. Thanks, Pellum. Appreciate that. The Women in Insurance Technology of South Carolina Group. And then Lily Chuck's Marketing. Without the assistance of those groups, certainly it would have been a monumental task to pull this together and bring it here to you tonight. And just so some quick logistical info. Please, if anybody has any questions during this, feel free to send us those questions in the chat box. We've set aside some time at the end of this meeting and we'll be glad to address those once we get through the discussion points. But with that being said, let's get right into why all of you joined us here tonight. So I'm going to run through our panelists and I'll do a quick name introduction and then I will give each of you the opportunity to talk a moment and give us your bio and tell us a little bit about yourselves. So we'll start right at the top. Mr. Gabe Casio, who's the sales director for Duck Creek Technologies. Hey, Gabe, how are you? Hey, Ryan, thanks for having me. So hey guys, my name's Gabe Casio. I'm a second generation insurance professional and grew up working for my parents, MGA, up in Greenville, South Carolina. They do specialty lines focusing on hard to place risks. So kind of cut my teeth and insurance working for them growing up and been based and live here in Columbia since 2007. I studied insurance and risk management at the USC Darla Moore School of Business and since 2016 then employed at Duck Creek Technologies and as Ryan said, an enterprise software sales role. And my wife and I just had our first child on Friday evening. Baby and mama are healthy and I'm working on a surprise appearance for the third generation insurance technology professional. Excited to be here. Thanks, Ryan. You get the MVP award just for showing up after having a kid a few days ago. I'm sure there was a little bit of arm bending just to be here tonight. So I've got an amazing wife and a lot of coffee. So we're in good shape. Awesome. Thanks. Well, we're definitely glad you could make it, Gabe. Thanks for being here. Next up, Ms. Farah Jones, Business Intelligence Analyst with Verisk. Hey, Faris. Hi, Ryan. Hi, everyone. Thanks much for having me. Like Ryan said, my name is Farish Jones. I'm a Business Intelligence Analyst at Verisk Analytics. I was raised here in Columbia. So I definitely have a soft spot for the city. Would love to see it grow even more than it already has the past few years. I attended the University of South Carolina and graduated in 2015 with a degree in social work. You might not think that social work typically translates well to the tech world and working with data, but it actually did have a heavier statistics and research course load than one might assume, which has helped me tremendously at work. I just kind of got lucky landing an internship at an insurance software implementation startup right out of college with some of the other lovely people on this call. And after working there for about three years as a business analyst, I just kind of found out that my favorite part about our projects was working more on the analytic side of things. And I leaped at the opportunity to work at Verisk and be more hands-on with insurance claims data. So yeah, I'm super happy to be here and thanks again. I think you share an interesting point with Gabe as well. You are also a multi-generational insurance industry transplant. So a little bit of lineage there. That's true. My dad actually works with Gabe, so grew up in this world. Awesome. Well, it's always interesting and fascinating to see the various relationships and how people kind of interweave in these these circles in the industry here. So thanks again Ferris. Next up, Ms. Jessica Kiers, a business analyst with Sapiens International. Hey Jessica. Hey Ryan, how are you? I'm glad to be here. Like you said, my name is Jessica Kiers. I am a 2009 Clemson graduate with a degree in psychology and I received my master's in business administration from Webster University in Columbia, their satellite campus. I started my insurance career at Colonial Life. I entered as a data entry specialist, what they called a new business specialist and my career kind of just developed and grew from there. When I graduated from college, the economy bottomed out and so I just needed a job. And so over the years and meeting some really good people and taking some risk, I found my way here at Sapiens now, which is a global employer. One unique thing about Sapiens, we have about 30 or 30 or more on senior level employees in the Midlands area, which is, you know, really big when you think about the global landscape of the insurance technology field. So I'm happy to be here and happy to talk about this industry that I love so much. Awesome. Thanks, Jessica. Glad to have you this evening. Moving right along, next up we've got Mr. Michael Olson, a commercial account executive with Magriff Insurance. Good evening, Michael. Hey, good evening. Hey, my name is Michael Olson. I'm a commercial account executive at Magriff Insurance. Magriff is the insurance division of Truist banks. So Truist is now what used to be BB&T and SunTrust, they merged. So we are the insurance arm of Truist. We are the sixth largest insurance broker in the country and seventh largest in the world. I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, but I've lived in Colombia for about 25 years now. I graduated from University of South Carolina in 2007 with a degree completely unrelated to insurance or risk management. Throughout college I was really beginning to miss being in music. I'm a lifelong musician and decided that after I graduated I wanted to get back into the music industry. So I started performing again, I started teaching private music lessons across the state, and I waited tables to kind of help pay the bills. After a while it was a really rewarding part of my life, but after a while I was kind of looking for a little more stabilization and so decided to put some feelers out there for a career change, met a local all-state agent here in downtown Colombia, threw a mutual friend, and he needed somebody to join the team. I had never thought about insurance before. I said let's do it, let's try it. So I studied really hard, got my license, did a lot of training, worked at all-state for a couple of years, really enjoyed it. And so I moved from all-state the personal insurance side over to McGriff, the commercial insurance side, and I've been with McGriff for about a little over six years now. I'm really happy to be here. I'm very passionate about this industry and just looking forward to chat about it. Awesome. Thanks Michael. We can tell by your enthusiasm, you definitely... I get what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Next up, gentlemen who I've had the pleasure and opportunity of getting to know a little bit over the past year as well through some of his work in our local entrepreneurial circles. Mr. Joshua Snead, who's the chief executive officer for Rainwalk Technologies. Hey Josh. Hey Ryan, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here talking about insurance. So I think like a lot of people on the call in insurance in general, I did not really expect to end up in insurance. I was a junior in college. I'd already accepted a job offer with Amazon corporate. I thought I was going down the distribution logistics manufacturing route. I showed up senior year with not much to do, so I decided to go ahead and get an internship, try to build the resume a little. I ended up interning at TQ, which is a Columbia startup with Ferris and with Jessica that's focused on insurance technology. And so after returning there for quite a while, enjoying it a lot, getting to work with some real life experiences and some great people. The founder of TQ ended up talking me into sticking around and it's been a history ever since. After that I did transition to Capgemini as they acquired TQ, took a little bit of a bigger role there before finally moving on to sales over at Guidewire. Sorry Gabe. I hope we can still be friends. So my co-founder and I, we actually worked together at TQ. We had been talking about starting a company for a long time. He was ready to get out of his current role that he was in and so he said, all right, let's do it right now. So I left my role and we started Rainwalk. And Rainwalk is a pet insurance insure tech. We work with existing insurance brands and distribution channels. They slap their logo on our pet insurance product and they offer it to their customers. Thanks for looking forward to talking more. Thanks. Appreciate that Josh. And something we will, I'm always fascinated to hear about the different pathways that everybody kind of takes to get into the industry either directly or indirectly. So we'll hold that thought. I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit more later on in the webcast. So last but not least, Ms. Pellum Spong, who's the Senior Solution Consultant for Limelight Health. Great to see you again. See you and don't worry Gabe. I got your back as a former duck. We're outnumbering the Guidewire here. So I'm Pellum Spong. I am a native of Winsborough, South Carolina, which is just up the road from Columbia. I graduated with a, with a double degree in French and theater from the College of Charleston and then promptly moved to Paris so I could practice both. And spent five years there working as an actress and having the time of my life, I supported myself working as a bilingual secretary actually at an American, what they call white shoe law firm. And ended up coming home and doing exactly what Michael did, waiting tables, trying to continue the art's career and getting tired of not being stable. So I got very lucky and had some introductions that were made to me to some folks that were in the Columbia Insurance Network who became mentors. And one thing led to another and before I knew it, I found my way to a company called Iteology, which is where I met you, Ryan. And that led to some different opportunities. Started working in the insure tech space for startup called One Inc. And for the past six years, I've been doing solution consulting. So I've been giving presentations of enterprise software to insurance carriers at One Inc and then at Duck Creek. And now I am lucky to be the Senior Solution Consultant at Limelight Health, which was recently acquired by an Irish company called Phineos. So we're now a global company and we're really excited because we are now the first end-to-end solution for the global life accident and health industry. So it's an exciting time for us and I am happy to be on the panel today. Glad to have you. I see a lot of people, including myself, with service industry background. So it's always nice to be around fellow people who did table weighting and bartending duty as well. So it really helps out when it comes to customer service at the end of the day. It's a good skill. Yeah. So all right. Well, let's get the Q and A started. And first off, Josh, I think I'm going to lead with you. We were talking, Columbia was recently ranked in the top 50 US cities to start a business. It was in 2020 by Aint Magazine. And as a person who left Columbia and came back and you chose to start a business here as well. So tell us a little bit about what your insure tech venture and what insure tech means to you and kind of why the decision to start in Columbia versus somewhere else. Yeah. It's an answer that or it's a question that a lot of people have a different answer to. Insure tech is a pretty dynamic term. I think the industry still out on even exactly how to spell it correctly. And so it's, I think initially the term, it seems to me was guided towards software providers for insurance carriers or their partners or people who were doing a certain piece of the insurance life cycle. It specifically was focused on software providers that gave software and helped with them directly. Now, I think recently a lot of the more well known insure techs that go by that name have actually been a little bit of a flip of that where they've been a lot of actual insurance carriers or agencies that are they themselves the insurance company in the eyes of many people. But they're doing insurance with a much more heavily tech minded approach. And so now I think it's safe to say the definition includes both of those. And in addition to some people who are kind of in the middle, but it's definitely becoming a much more growing industry. It's got a lot of attention on it both from a financial and from the insurance industry's perspective as well. And so it's an exciting industry to be a part of right now. Now, why we ended up bounding the company back here in Columbia? So when my co-founder and I were talking about what we really felt like we needed to start a company, there are really two things that were top of mind for both he and I. First, we needed access to smart young motivated talent. You know, we had had a lot of success. He and I working together on teams in the past being able to bring in motivated young professionals who really are eager to learn. When you give them a big task, they really do rise to the challenge. And so we knew Columbia has that in droves. You've got the University of South Carolina. You've got a lot of local colleges and universities around that have a very long rich history. College of Charleston, close by, Clemson close by. A lot of great universities that really do put up a lot of very smart individuals. And so a lot of them, people think they want to stick around in Columbia, but we found the opposite to be true. If they really have a good opportunity, many of them are willing to stick around in Columbia even after they graduate. The second thing that he and I really felt like we needed was just a strong network of professionals to really help us vet our business idea, bounce ideas off of. He and I both have had experience in the insurance industry, but not nearly as much as many of the very experienced professionals in insurance and insure tech around Columbia do. There are not that many hubs of insure tech specifically. And even the hubs that are there, they're in a much bigger region. It's often hard to access those experts. Those experts are surrounded by a lot of other stuff. And so here in Columbia, we've really had the ability to build a network with very strong professionals that want to invest in us. And they've really not been too difficult to, they've really been very open to building that relationship with us. And so since we knew that Columbia had both of those two things, we knew that Columbia had to be the place to start our company. Yeah, I've been hearing a little bit more about that recently is, you know, tech companies are finding it easier to go to markets that are a little less crowded to kind of get established. So, you know, they're not competing as much for talent and resources and technology as well. So, okay. Now, Gabe, I'm going to shift over to you. You're with Duck Creek. And y'all were a little bit at the end of the spectrum. Not only are you a very well-established company, but you also had a pretty significant and successful IPO this past month. So, tell us a little bit about kind of what's been going on in your side of the industry from an established perspective. Yeah, thanks, Ryan. So, let me just start up at the top with a little background on this amazing little company called Duck Creek. It's about 20 years old as of January of this year. And it's a software company built to enable property and casualty insurance companies around the globe with modernizing their core operating platforms in the cloud. And we feel like we're leaving the pack in that effort. We have in Colombia, on Main Street in the Wells Fargo Tower, we have over 200 ducks employed in various software development, project implementation roles, consulting roles, sales roles, marketing roles. So, just multiple different expertise employed all within this company, you know, around the nation, but certainly here in Colombia, we've got a very large office. And as you mentioned, last month was was pretty exciting. Certainly, first time for me and in my young career, I'd say being with a company that went public, but we IPO'd on the NASDAQ with an evaluation of over five billion dollars. And, you know, a cash infusion of that magnitude is pretty exciting. It's certainly helping us with increasing our hiring spree. And you can go to duckreek.com and see the amount of careers that are available on the page right now. I think there's over a hundred the last time that I checked. And, you know, certainly accelerating product development and just are enabling our go-to-market strategy faster. But it's certainly important, especially on the hiring piece, because, you know, the demand for our cloud platform is really only accelerated in 2020. Let me think about this, you know, small event called COVID-19, right? The pandemic it's really changed for all of us, just how we really conduct the day to day. So if you think about how the world essentially stopped working in March, you'd be amazed how many insurance companies here at Stephen Stateside were not what we call digitally enabled to conduct business and operate in this remote world that we live in right now. So, you know, we're hiring like crazy and, you know, what better talent pool to fill the gaps that we're hiring for than here in Columbia, South Carolina. It's an area that we've already really capitalized on from the insurance expertise in here for decades. And, you know, as Josh mentioned for his venture there, you know, we've got this amazing community of people that believe in Columbia, that believe in the opportunity here and that are resources available to us to, you know, enable insurtech startups or just increasing the awareness of the community here in Columbia. So, hopefully that answers your question, but it's been a fun ride. Yeah, that's good. Y'all had to raise the IPO price three, three, four times before going out? I think yes. I think that's accurate. So, the demand was pretty exciting and like I said, certainly something that I had not experienced before, but just a fun ride and certainly it's been great for just increasing our exposure here, you know, certainly locally and then global footprint as well. Well, congratulations to y'all on that. We were, I think we were all certainly kind of tracking that news over this past month and we're all really excited for the success y'all have been having and hope you continue to have more. That's right. Next up, Ferris, I wanted to talk with you a little bit. I've had the opportunity to interact with a lot of companies. Ferris is not one that I've had the ability to take time to familiarize myself with up until this point and so y'all utilize analytics a lot in providing your client solutions. Tell us a little bit about analytics and how that works and you know, what kind of solutions y'all are putting in place and how that impacts insurance technology. Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, analytics of all types has definitely been a hot topic, a growth area for years now and not just insurance but across every industry. I mean, pretty much all industries utilize only some sort of analytics at some point. So, my company as a whole focuses on analytics and services in different industries but mainly in the insurance industry and then I guess at a pretty high level. My little team works on the data modeling side of a product that collects insurance settlement information from property casualty claims departments, specifically claims dealing with bodily injury components. So, like if you get in a car accident and break your arm then that would be a property casualty claim but it would be, you know, medical bodily injury. So, we take that information and we use it to come up with more accurate models which in turn provide better claim settlement amount predictions. So, like we have different like variables and statistics that we like plug their numbers into like about, you know, like if it's a male or female or where they live and what kind of accident it was and we can assign certain numbers to these kind of abstract medical parts about the claim. Like if you have pain and suffering it's kind of hard to put a number to that but we have a way of doing that. So, what we see over time is a higher settlement consistency in claims departments when their adjusters are all using this tool in addition to other data services and support because, you know, I mean you could have 10 great adjusters but they would probably all settle big messy claims like that differently. So, you know, once you use this tool for a long period of time it just kind of makes everything more consistent and backed by data. And we're also from that able to collect industry trends from the different clients that we work with and kind of combine that into reports that we can spit out that give us some idea of what's going on, you know, in insurance settlements in general. We also service all kinds of ad hoc requests from our clients because there's just so much to learn and digest from data and there's just so much different kind of data you can collect. So, I mean the world of data can almost be overwhelming sometimes because there's just so much you can do but if you have the ability to effectively collect, manage and draw insights from your data you really have an advantage in making better business decisions at every level that's backed by data and I think that that's pretty powerful and where data gets some of the hype from. So, obviously since everyone can benefit from data analytics and the data world's already so booming to begin with I would imagine that it will continue to be a crucial component of multiple industries for years to come and hopefully continue to provide solid and enriching jobs and careers for all kinds of people in Columbia and elsewhere. Yeah, so we've certainly heard a lot about big data over the past few years and y'all are providing the solutions to your clients that take that information and actually turn it into something that's usable and actionable for them at the end of the day, correct? Right. Cool. You can in big amounts of data digesting it down into little useful pieces of information. And so then people such as Michael who work at Magriff insurance who are on that brokerage side that actually provides them with a mechanism to be able to use these solutions for their clients. So, Michael from the opposite end of the spectrum, how is the analytics impacting what you do in your products and services and how quickly you're able to administer solutions to your clients on the inside? Yeah, it's just interesting to hear Ferris speak, you know, behind the curtains of what it's like. So I'm the end user of the things that Ferris is talking about and working on, which I'm very appreciative of all the work you do. You helped me out a lot in my job. So I think I have clients in construction industry, telecommunications, manufacturing, trucking, logistics, all these different industries really get a lot of value out of this software. So we have Magriff has a wonderful division called the risk solutions group who has an analytics department who's full of wonderful people and they're using and utilizing this exact software that Ferris is talking about. And so I think that the nature of what I do with my clients is very reactive, right? So I have to react to, I have a client who maybe has a tree fall on their manufacturing warehouse. I have to react to that, help them, you know, get repairs for the roof, help them with the loss of income while they pause their operations. You know, if a client has an employee that gets hurt on the job, they have to react and help them get medical treatment, help triage the future claims costs, things like that. So very reactive. Now utilizing this software, you know, I have all this data that I feed to our RSG, our risk solutions group, and they, you know, send back these incredibly informative reports that show these very, very, you know, great trends and trajectories. So in a way that allows me to kind of see the future and when I can see the future, I can be more proactive. And when I'm proactive in my job, that significantly enhances the level of service that I can provide my clients. So I think that, you know, not only does utilizing the software, you know, help differentiate me from my competitors. It also helps me develop really strong rapport and great relationships with my clients because they see me more as a business partner and not just an insurance agent. So I would probably be half as effective without the help of what Ferris is doing. It is instrumental to, you know, my daily activities and work. It's incredibly valuable and it's only getting better and better. And so I'm excited to see where it continues to go. So it's very, very helpful for what I do. Great. Yeah. And so those tools, you know, provide you with more accurate information, a little more predictability when you're looking at things down the road. And certainly nobody ever complained about getting a faster response from their insurance. I haven't had that claim, right? That's right. That's right. No, only good things. So I've been, I've been through the dark days with my auto insurance where it took weeks. Let's let's never go back there again. Okay, so we're going to flip up some of the questions right now. And I wanted to hear from y'all a little bit about why you chose to get into insurance technology. And Jessica, let's let's start it with you. You know, tell us a little bit about your your education when you came out of school, you know, how you got started in the industry and what your pathway has been like so far in insurance technology and services. So I said before I graduated from Clemson, the best university in the state in 2000. That's the wrong pill to swallow after this past weekend when it came out. Go Tigers. In 2009, but it was during the time when the economy bottomed out. So it was very difficult to find a job in any industry. And so it took me about a year and I started doing something but not anything that I really saw as like a career and through some connections and some friends. I got a job at Colonial Life data entry with a degree. But what I saw at Colonial Life was a path for a career. And so during my time there, I moved still on the carrier side to a business specialist. That was the title that they used. And it was what I kind of referred to as it light fixing things, but just on the carrier side, fixing policies, making sure that everything's okay. And I got my MBA and I took a risk. I put my resume on monster.com and a recruiter contacted me to join TQ where I worked with Ferris and Josh which kind of just scooted me over to the insurance technology world. So I don't have a technical background, but I have a lot of transferable skills. And so when I walked into TQ, granted, there was so much to learn, but it wasn't difficult. So my overall mantra for life is how can I help people? And in whatever I do, I want to help people. I'm really big on community and making sure that people are together. And so I took it as a challenge to help people through insurance technology, right? Weirdo. But it's really been rewarding for me. And so I stayed at TQ and then we turned into Cap, Jim and I. And I work on the billing application which no one really likes paying people. You really don't like paying your mortgage insurance or your car insurance. So what can I do to help people? And then I got this great opportunity at Sapien. So one thing that I really like about this industry is that you don't have to study it. You can kind of just trip and fall into it. And that's really, really what I did. But had I known in 2009, I would be doing this now. I'd be like, no way. That may sound like me, but I'm in love with my career. I'm in love with what I'm doing because I'm helping people. Improving the experiences, one policy at a time. And that's great to hear that you're in the technology side of the industry, but you didn't start off there and you didn't necessarily have a strong background in technology through building up and getting acclimated on the insurance side and then being able to kind of segue over. So you can kind of take those indirect pathways and still wind up in the different areas of the field that may be more appealing to you. Very much so. Very much so. It's just amazing. And not as we can see what the panel is here, not everyone's story is the same. But that's what makes us unique. And it's just giving something different a try. And it's been so rewarding and like we're here today. This industry has so much growth yet to do and has grown so much. The opportunities are endless. Yeah, awesome. Thanks. And speaking of non-traditional entries into the market, Pelham, a bilingual actress who has now found herself in the insure tech industry. How does that even happen in reality? I don't know. I ask myself that all the time. How do I go from living in Paris and acting to working in insure tech? But I think Jessica said it right. You trip and fall into this industry. And that's what I did. I fell into this great network. Columbia has a really encouraging and supporting network of insurance and insurance technology individuals. And when I started working at ideology, it used a lot of the soft skills I had, right? I didn't know much about insurance, but I did know a little thing or two about building relationships. And my role there, which was actually a kind of a joint, a collaborative effort with ideology and Midlands Tech and advanced automation consulting. And I worked as a reverse recruiter. So I was working with local employers to place the candidates who were recipients of the grit grant. So I got to know, right? I got to know you there. I got to know you there. I got to know lots of really great people here in Columbia, but a lot of them were in the insurance industry. So it opened up my eyes to some of the opportunities in the insurance industry. And I started to see myself there and got very lucky. Started working for a startup out of California called One Inc. Doing exactly, I think which was the perfect balance of how do I take these soft skills I have, my love of presenting and turn it into a career. So presenting demonstrations in sales meetings is something that's a great fit for me. And I've been lucky because, you know, working starting at One Inc. and then Duck Creek and now where I am, I've been working remotely for years. So, you know, despite my husband's job moving us from Tennessee to Texas, and now who knows where? I've been able to not miss a beat. And Limelight Health where I am now, I think was a wonderful place to be there 90% remote. So they've got a very strong remote culture. 90% remote before the pandemic, I should say. And leadership did a really good job of making a culture that embraced remote. You know, whether it's, we always have our cameras on, on every meeting that we do. Our holiday party had 200 people, you know, imagine 200 Zoom squares with everybody laughing and singing. I don't know how they pulled it off, but it was wonderful. We had a virtual concert series this summer for both of our employees as well as some of our carrier partners. And you know, it was great to hear some wonderful performances including from our new Phineos partners. So because we've just become part of Phineos, we got to hear a lot of Irish music, which was nice. So we were pretty nicely aligned when the pandemic happened because we didn't need to miss a beat. We're already remote. And I'd say, especially on my team, I think we were even more productive than usual because instead of catching a flight and getting delayed and stuck in another city, we've been able to sit at our desk and take our demonstrations remotely. So I went, I think for maybe getting a couple of demos in on the road to doing five a week, which has been nice. So we're really happy that the rest of the world is seeing what we see in working remote. And that's that location doesn't have to drive your talent choices. You can choose from the best talent all over the world when you're a supporter of remote culture. And that's even more true now that Phineos owns us and we've become a global company with presence all over the world. So I'm excited about what that's going to hold for us. Awesome. Thanks. And that's one of the relationship building is one of the things that I've enjoyed most of being able to work with. It's Kola with this group. I had the opportunity to meet you a few years ago and Josh over the past year. And then to now make friends with Jessica and Gabe and Michael and Ferris. And Columbia provides you know that that level of city living with the quality and life in the amenities. But it's still a small enough community where you can get out and interact with people fairly easily. You know, you don't necessarily get boxed out just due to the size of your own city. So have really enjoyed that and having the opportunity to get to know you all through this process and over the years. Josh, let's circle back up to you and talk a little bit about the talent side of the equation. And within the past year, Columbia was ranked as like the number four city in the nation for attracting millennials. And then the top five for high tech employment growth. You know, as a company that's starting up and is starting to, you know, look at that need for talent more seriously. What do you think the city and region need to be doing a better job of to support young entrepreneurs such as yourself? Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a big task. There's no magic bullet by any means. But there are, I do think that there are some very straightforward, actionable things that that people can do. I think I'll focus specifically on the entrepreneurial side because that's, you know, colored my my most recent experiences very top of mind for me. I really think a lot of the stuff that I have used the most in the course of this process was actually built or learned or introduced to me years before I even started a company. We talked about internships a little bit before and positions that you might feel even beyond that. But I think in general, being willing to empower your young professionals in your organization no matter what size it is with real responsibility. I think it as a business owner, even with just a few interns that we have, it's very scary to give them any kind of responsibility. And this thing that, you know, especially as a small company, we find ourselves as founders controlling so tightly. But I think we've picked good people. And once you're able to get past that, it's really rewarding for us. It's rewarding for them. And it's really great to see them grow into the position that you give them. I think many, many times it can be difficult for a young professional to really find an engaging internship where they can really own something and feel like they're being relied on and needed. And that's where I think you fall into a lot of the tropes of, you know, go get me a cup of coffee as your typical internship. And so I, you know, all jokes about millennials and whatnot aside, I do think if you do a good job finding and selecting those particularly motivated individuals that are putting forth an effort, really don't be afraid to give them meaningful responsibilities. I can point to several roles that I had early in my career that really set me up very well. And I really didn't even realize how well I was being set up until much later. If it weren't for, you know, much more experienced business leaders than me, they kind of saw that and helped position me. I don't know. I might not be starting the company that I have today. And so beyond that, let's say there is someone who wants to go actually start a company. I think Columbia has a lot of the pieces in place that it needs in order to make those individuals successful. I talked about a couple of them before about the, you know, access to talent. That's useful for all companies. And then access to that professional network of smart individuals. It's one thing to have a good idea. It's very hard to take a good idea and turn it into a good business. It's something that many of us, even companies further along in that maturity curve than RainWalk, it's still a work in progress many times. For a lot of us in a never ending job. And so really you as an individual entrepreneur or any smart young person that you might meet is not going to have all the tools that they need to be able to do that alone. They really need access to that network. They really need access to those individuals. Even if it's only for 30 minutes here or a phone call there, it really goes a long way. I've been very fortunate to have access to a lot of mentors like that here in Columbia. But I do think that there is a big opportunity to be able to connect individuals that have that experience a little more easily to those younger professionals who are really looking for that guidance, whether they're entrepreneurs or not. We had to do a lot of legwork to really build that for ourselves. And so there's something to be said for the learning experience that that is by itself. But I do still think there's room for communities that bring people together in kind of a structured and guided way. It's less work for the potential mentor or that experienced network professional, especially since many have existing day jobs. And they don't necessarily have the time to go seek that out, even though they might be willing and able to invest in a younger generation of talent. And then a lot of times, young professionals or recent college grads just don't know where to go. And at that point, they're just hoping sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. So some structure there in the middle to really connect these people together. I think you'll see a lot more startup activity and a lot more growth of young professionals happen organically just by putting those two things in the same place. Jessica, tell us your thoughts on that as somebody who stumbled into the industry and then kind of, you know, took a bit of a meandering pathway to get where you are now. What could have made your entry into insurance technology services easier or helped you develop as a professional faster and easier along the way? What's valuable to you? So one thing I think would be really beneficial is just an awareness that there is an insurance technology industry. In high school and in college, I didn't know it existed. With a lot of other fields that, yeah, insurance companies, they need software. They need these things. So bringing an awareness would be great. And then like Josh said, the internships and being able to establish and nurture these valuable relationships. So yeah, I was kind of like a transplant and I kind of slid into insurance technology. But once arriving at TQ, I was surrounded by industry leaders and I was exposed to so much knowledge, just a wealth of knowledge. So awareness and knowledge, access is important. Because without them, I wouldn't know a lot of what I know now. I know I wouldn't be nearly successful because I did have that foundation coming into the industry. So I believe that's extremely important. Gabe, what are your thoughts? You have a familial connection to insurance. So perhaps you have a different perspective or viewpoint. What's better for young professionals from your thought? Yeah, so I mean, first, I totally agree with Josh and Jessica. I think we need to call a spade a spade though, right? Like insurance is not sexy, right? It's got a negative connotation to a lot of millennials and young people that are just unfamiliar and uneducated on what the potential could be in the industry. And even though I basically grew up in insurance, I would add zero exposure to the technology side until I went to the business school here at USC. And one quick sidestep here, as a junior at USC, several local insurance technology professionals and leaders basically created this insurance technology paid internship program for a handful of students really for the purpose of doing what Josh and Jessica just mentioned, increasing awareness on just the amazing potential in just the technology side of the space and what technology is doing to make insurance better for all people. And what's really cool about that internship experience for me personally is Duck Creek back in 2008, 12 years ago, actually sponsored a insurance scholarship application that I ended up earning that helped support my tuition that I was paying for. And I mean, that's just 10 years later, I'm a product of that internship program and all the benefits that came from it and all of the community of leaders here that came together to create exposure to what this career path could lead to. So from my perspective, Columbia, South Carolina is the birthplace of insurance technology. This is where it all began and grew into this global opportunity for careers. The top players in the industry, from my perspective, all have locations here for a reason. They're all paying top salaries for the talent, but we're falling flat on the sales pitch to keep the talent local. So we need to work with colleges and universities and partner them up with the leaders and the companies that are here locally and educate them. I mean, they're armed with knowing that if you build it, that they will come. You can keep your talent local with great paying jobs, with really exciting careers. So I mean, I think the opportunity is let's get the team together. Let's create the exposure for what the potential of the industry has. And if you think about everything that was discussed by my peers here on the webinar, the downstream product will continue to pay dividends. I'm fully representative of that. That's good. Ferris, do you think that the proliferation of technology into an insurance is making the industry more attractive to a younger generation and kind of to expand on what Gabe said, as a community, how do we do a better job of connecting college graduates or even people that are at the high school level that could be interested in a career down the road? Where can we kind of close that gap out a little bit, do you think? Yeah, I mean, I guess I was one of those college graduates that, like Jessica said earlier, I think she said that she didn't even know that this insurance type has existed in Columbia. And I knew it existed because my dad worked in it for my whole life, but I just assumed that there was no place for me in it. Like as a young social work grad, I always thought like, oh, I'm not going to do insurance. Like I'm just going to do some social science thing. But I guess I really like to circle back to the value of internships that everyone's been talking about and elaborate on that a little. I think several of us on the panel have benefited from the internships that we had at T-Cube or at Duck Creek or just other entry points to the industry in general. And I mean, I pretty much owe my whole career that I love so much to T-Cube being able to take a chance on me, this kid that had just graduated from college and had a social work degree. They didn't require a relevant degree or three to five years experience like most jobs out there because it wasn't internship. And so it wasn't like super high risk for them. It wasn't super high risk for me and they just gave me just such an enriching internship experience just right off of that into my working life. I was like literally thrown into client visits like put on a plane and sent to our client like as an intern, like one month into working at T-Cube, which I was nervous about at the time but I think it was super valuable to just be given those experiences and those major responsibilities like right from the start that I don't think I would have been given maybe if it weren't like a startup environment but I was able to just see all of the opportunities that the tech world has to offer specifically the strong insurance tech hub here in Columbia, South Carolina and there's a place in it for everyone. Like honestly, I mean, if you have an interest in working in technology like I work in data, data is cool. It's cool right now. Like people want to do that. I feel like people want to work in technology and it's the same in different industries and it's popular here in insurance. So all that to say, I really hope that Columbia is able to continue to support and help grow small companies startups and I hope that those startups are able to find all types of bright young talent in the area that can then just jump in and take advantage of this whole industry head on. A concern that I was thinking about recently is that it seems like post COVID a lot of startups and companies are gravitating towards full-time working from home and while I agree with Pelham that's a great situation for a lot of reasons for a lot of people, I do kind of worry that it might affect just those initial workforce experiences for new people in the industry and like I think back to my internship and like the power that it had like being in person and working with those experience industry experts and being put on the road immediately. So I guess in my case at least the success depended so heavily on those hands-on experiences. So I don't really know what the answer to that is but hopefully moving forward we can still make those like initial industry jobs and experiences just as enriching as they have been for all of us here. So it's probably safe to say that even in a virtual work environment like we're in now mentorships may even be more important than ever because if you're not going in the office to work with your coworkers you can still have an opportunity to learn from somebody who's experienced in the area and to kind of pick up some of that experience along the way even if you have to kind of throw it together and do it virtually. Yeah definitely it's going to be different but hopefully it still has the same that these great internships have had for all of us. Yeah and real real quick show of hands who who all did an internship by the way raise your hand if you did an internship okay so half the panel Jessica did you have something? Yeah kind of just a piggyback off of this new remote environment that we are finding ourselves in that's a great point there it's like how do we train new talent as we kind of forge our way in this new virtual environment but one thing that I you know here in the question and kind of sit in here thinking when I joined Sapiens I'm a full-time remote employee since February of 2019 so all my communication with my co-workers is remote I learned my entire job remotely so there is a delicate balance especially you know for newcomers to the industry but seeing just thinking reflecting on the leaps and bounds that I've made I'm hopeful that it won't be as challenging moving forward you know moving or using remote internships and via internet and with client meetings that you don't lose a lot of the benefits of the internships Yeah you're absolutely right and it's it's 2020 y'all if we've learned one thing at this point creativity and resourcefulness are the name of the game at this point so you have to you know be quick on your feet and come up with solutions on the fly that's just how we're doing things these days that's awesome thanks Jessica Helen your thoughts what do we need to do to appeal more to young professionals and technology so my response is probably not specific to Columbia employers but as a millennial who is starting a family I've got a topler and another one on the way you know something that I looked for was a company that had value had had values and had a lot of had a good culture and I and when I say values I meant not just a website page that has a list of a couple bulleted items that they they call their values but a company that actually lives their values and limelight's culture you know is is definitely one of those you know I'm also looking for companies that have high integrity of leadership good product obviously um and somewhere where I have I hate to say work like balance because I think that's kind of a phrase that's becoming has been but you know the millennial now is looking for a place where they're able to bring both their personal life their personal self everything that they have their interests outside of the office to their work and and let those both kind of influence each other so you know as a new mom that was something I was I was definitely looking for when I joined limelight and I'm going to get on my soapbox here a little bit this is my my favorite subject because it was definitely one of the things that was really important to me and I think for our generation that is in the starting family phase a company that values family whether that's you know just kind of flux flexible situations or strong parental leave policies that's that's something that I think and I say parental leave very explicitly because I think it shows that a company believes that child care is not a woman's job so that's something that's very important to me and and it also shows an employer who is committed to increasing diversity giving more opportunities to women in leadership maternity leave does tend to to lead to that and inclusive and cares about closing the gender pay gap so you know those are those are things that I personally looked for and I think you know a company that shows those sorts of values and not just hey we're a fun company work for we've got foosball table and lots of snacks that has more meaning for me now at my stage in a career than it would have when I was when I was younger so I think that's that's something that employees can keep a keep their their mind on when they're starting to recruit that's great great insight thanks pal we are getting a little tight on time and I'm want to leave some question time for questions here at the end if we have any come up but Michael same question to you your thoughts how do we become more attractive to young professionals and other insure tech type companies sure sure I'll be quick so I know that we're tight on time so I think I'm so proud of Columbia in so many ways I think Columbia has got so much going for us that we just need to be more visible across the country me personally I recently realized that Columbia has such an amazing legacy of being a pioneer city for insure tech and insurance I never realized that before and I'm in the industry so getting that word out and letting people know about how our history has been I think that will resonate with young professionals that want to become part of this legacy bolster the legacy and kind of continue and drive it forward so you know getting us more on the map I think is important Columbia is great we have I'm afraid to use the phrase work-life balance because Pelham said that phrase is going out of the window so I don't know what else to use so work-life balance is really important and I think that Columbia really facilitates a healthy work-life balance because of two things one you know cost of living is incredible here you know compared to other metro cities like Charlotte or Atlanta it doesn't cost that much to get gas and go to groceries and you know for young professionals starting a career starting a family it's really important that we're not spending a lot of money on daily you know day-to-day things so that's important the other thing is the proximity we're close to rivers and lakes and a couple hours from the beach from the mountains so Columbia just has so much going for us that I think that if we could just become more visible if we could get the story out about how important our city is in this industry that would just go a long way with people and you know we have so much talent here in Columbia that we definitely need to seize upon but you know if we want to really bolster this legacy and drive it forward we need to attract talent outside of Columbia outside of South Carolina and I think just kind of spreading the word shouting it from the mountaintops like we're doing right now is the best way to do that and then also ditto to everything everyone else said because it's such good answers but I think Columbia is great and we just need to tell everyone I like your energy I like your enthusiasm we're gonna bottle it sell it and we'll make a killing so you're absolutely right though I sat in on the insuretech connect one of the digital world tour panels and it was for Columbus Ohio and not not to take anything away from Columbus Ohio but I sat there the entire time thinking why not Columbia South Carolina we have a tremendous opportunity you know to really focus a spotlight on on our city our region and this industry and and on people like you who are in in the field and are doing these jobs every day you know who are working who are growing in the industry who are creating businesses and so I think just to kind of wind some things down you know before I see we've got a question or two up here you know I think we all realize from our discussion the value that this industry has here on the region the importance it has on creating opportunities for all our panelists I mean these these are great opportunities these are great jobs they pay wonderful wages and we want more types of these jobs available for more citizens in our community we want to help develop this talent pool as well so I think we're all committed you know to growing this network here in the Columbia area over the past few months we've had the chance to work on rebranding its SC as it's it's transformed to its COLA which is more Columbia Century and you know one of our primary goals both at economic development and for this organization is to attract develop and retain talent here in the midlands and so we've talked a little bit amongst ourselves about the need for creating a young insurance professionals group within its COLA and I know you know just to put a call to action out to you know some of our attendees we have a lot of really intelligent senior level people on this call with us this evening and we would love to see y'all get involved as well we've talked about mentorships you know there's a lot of opportunities connect and help train and raise that next generation of insure tech talents so we're glad to help facilitate those connections and we don't want us to be you know a huge commitment trust me as a guy that you know works a full-time job and has two kids that we're trying to raise and educate here we we understand it Gabe's about to learn the hard way but you know we we would just love to facilitate more of these interactions between you know the people with the experience and the people who are coming up in the industry if you're interested in participating you can feel free to email me direct at ryan.colman c-o-l-e-m-a-n at columbia-sc.gov and we can help get you connected and start to facilitate some of those conversations real quick just before we go to q&a want to thank all of our wonderful panelists appreciate y'all's time this evening I know you have your families and your obligations as well so we're glad that you could be with us tonight appreciate everybody that's been attending and with that I think we will open it up and if you give me a second let's see so okay from anonymous attendee what types of insurance tech innovations do you think are being developed in columbia how are those innovations then changing or affecting the industry on a regional national or global level what does the role what role does the columbia market play in the largest insurance tech sphere well we've got an innovator right here on the call josh you want to kind of leave the charge on that one real quick intimidating shoes to fill but uh yeah sure uh i'll start by giving a quick shout out to our our our fellow kindred young insure tech avalanche is based here they we talk about the national the national reach of insure tech and how it helps people all over their their first client is actually an insurance company based out of the midwest and so just automatically right out of the gate this is a columbia company working with someone who's not another columbia company and so you know this really with how with really how large scale the insurance industry is i think a lot of applications do tend to be very national and be a very large scale so we'd like to think that our company is is doing some innovative stuff trying to get you know new products out to market using technology in a way that's a little clever and creative that doesn't uh that doesn't lead to too many headaches whenever it comes to you know trying to rip and replace the whole software system and our first partners are based out of texas so both of our first two sales partners are actually based in austin texas and the other is actually based in california and so and we're partnered with allians who's a big insurance company that's out of germany so you know right out of the gate you know i think a lot of these implicate or a lot of these applications do tend to be very national and so any amount of traction at all i think will lead to a huge bump for the bottom line of columbia okay anybody else anybody seeing some innovation happening within your areas or is it kind of like confidential stuff that you can't share i i posted a response in there kind of about duck creek um and their their sass cloud offering i think they were one of the leaders of being true sass enterprise solutions for the the pnc space out there and i i think one thing too it doesn't as gave said earlier it's intrinsic and super sexy but what is really not great is when you hire millennials to work for your insurance company and you ask them to do paper processes or have to figure out how to work a green screen and like memorize codes to jump around um that's that's that's death to to a millennial employees so um being able to provide modern software which is something that duck creek's doing guide wire of course is doing it too just not as well as duck creek sorry Joshua um and and some of the other the others on this call i think any anywhere where you're providing modern software um it's it's not you know wow robots are reading your your water meters but it is it is really valuable and it's changing the way the industry works yeah certainly the youth like to work through forward through the technology ecocosm not not backwards so much at all no don't don't don't make me fit a lot of form and mail into you no i don't blame you um next question as a group who has been through the internship experience um what advice would you give to educators um that could better set up their students for these types of positions and what can companies do to make those internships either more attractive or just increase the recognition that it's actually out there how do we close that gap well i'll chime in first uh you know from my perspective i think column hit on something uh earlier in regards to soft skills that are critical today and you know i bears i think you mentioned you know just concern around remote work and remote internships remote careers my biggest concern is just making sure that the students that were recruiting continue to have those the basic soft skills to differentiate themselves from the competition whether it's other schools or just that their peers within their own community there so i think as an educator uh it's critical that obviously everybody's there for the grades in the gpa and learning some of those uh technical skills that you need but from a soft skill perspective you still have to sell yourself uh you still have to create that opportunity for yourself and i think it's an area that uh some some colleges and universities do well others can can really help um to enable more so and then i think the second part of the question is uh what can companies do to make internships more more attractive you know i think the first thing is just just starting and you heard about t-cube you heard about some of the other great employers that that are here you know just create an opportunity uh partner with the the local community partner with the universities go to the career fairs everything's virtual nowadays but doesn't mean that career fairs aren't taking place sometimes you just try um and and and make the opportunity attractive um the they'll follow so like i said before i'm a product of that and i wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for us i'm a great community leaders here uh just opening my eyes to wow we can do some really cool things and solve some pretty cool problems hey ryan can i pick you back off that as someone who who didn't have an internship too i think um i think it's important for this is more for the employer side is to look at candidates who don't necessarily have that traditional background and to gabes point do have the the foundational soft skills that might be needed in a role um so i think obviously internships are incredibly successful since 50 of you guys are are here thanks to them um but there is also power to to tripping and falling through different roles that can just as well prepare you um and i'd also like to call out because i i have long admired i think it's colonial life and unum who have a um rotational program and i've seen those at other companies i think rotational programs whether or not their internships or their um postgraduate programs i think they have a fabulous potential for um really forming and developing careers of of young individuals who get to taste a little bit of every different aspect of the company they're working for awesome that's a great idea and now i don't think that's something we had covered in any of our other conversations so thanks for bringing that up yes i don't think anyone when i was younger Ferris you unmuted yeah i did um i agree with Pelham i think the rotation program we've seen at my company work really well for a lot of the young data scientists just like coming out of like a data science program or something like that they just bring them in and they say hey you can live in this city or this city or this city like and then they go and do like six months dense working on different projects um so i think that's been great and then also from my own experience just coming in from like a totally different world unrelated to insure tech i thought it was really great for me personally um being someone that had never worked before in this industry like tq had it so they came out they recruited people they said hey like we have this internship program it's going to be three months like it had like a duration on it and they were like it's low risk to you low risk to us like come check it out see if you like it see if it works for you um and i really appreciate that because i didn't know like i said i didn't know if there was going to be a place for me in this industry and i mean it turned out that it was great and such a great experience and then um advice i'd give to the educators to better set up students for physicians i i mean i thought that the program that they designed was great um doing increase and working on different projects but i thought the most valuable time that i had as an intern was just having that like one on one time i had so many mentors right from the start and just getting to sit with them and see what they do every day like you know what do they do when they go into the office after they drink coffee i don't know like i want to see what it's like in however many years that i'm here um i just see like all the knowledge that they have to share so um yeah and one more just came in we're close jessica we're close we get this next one um and do we foresee a time where we will be competing heavily for tech talent here amongst our insure tech companies here in columbia um doesn't that already kind of happen sometimes it is a bit of a small environment anybody got thoughts on the local area competition for tech talent am i brave enough to answer that oh i don't mind i'll do it uh i don't even necessarily think it's a bad message either i think people fit well some places they don't fit well others i think your millennial perspective my perspective as a millennial i can't speak for every millennial but i i think it's a well documented phenomenon that you know the there's not there seems to not be as much loyalty as say my father had for ups when he worked there while he was in college and he retired there just two years ago and never went anywhere else in between never even thought about it didn't even interview somewhere else once uh it's really not how the world works today and i think there is a balancing act that you have to walk knowing that well what happens if i mean i feel it even with the interns that we have today what if i invest all of this and this individual and then they just immediately leave and go to my competitor uh it it's a real risk but there is there are things that you can do incrementally so you know i think ferris made a good example of this with look let's take a 90 days to do an internship i'm not going to teach you everything you're not going to be an expert in 90 days you know you i'm not going to pay for a $5,000 certification but at the end of 90 days you know let's just talk how do you like it how do i like it what are your goals where do you want to go where do you not want to go i think knowing i think knowing the goals of the employee i think you as an employer can be a little bit more proactive and a little bit less surprised about the moves that an employee makes um there are some cases where you know you may get burned a bit as an employer but i think being proactive and engaged with individuals and really knowing what it is that they want to do i've had several uh managers and company leaders who they knew what i wanted to do even before i knew what i wanted to do and so really building a culture there of of knowing what you know really engaging with them as individuals i think can help mitigate the risk of you investing so much in an individual and then find out that they're actually not that committed to the company as much as you're committed to them so it's a risk it's something that people are very concerned of but inevitably inevitably the revolving door is going to happen i think the thing that i try to keep in mind the most is that my personal professional relationship with this individual is probably going to be of more value to both us and our company whoever we work for then then being particularly annoyed about someone leaving in this particular context to go there i mean i went to guide wire and i have a lot of friends who worked at duck creek who still work at duck creek and so you know you know i i think most people don't really view that as of the trail though you know you make a conscious effort to maintain the relationship to and and i think people are open to that yeah we we know about those friends that are on this call and they've been giving you the business all night long i know i know well and you know to to expand on that just a little bit i mean from from my perspective let's let's be honest there's a lot of demand for technology talent pretty much everywhere so i mean it's not uncommon in that industry you know that that people are you know looking for those skill sets and um you know having those different work experiences at different companies where you're going to learn different sets of core values and different operational structures i mean that increases your long-term value as as an employee as well it's how you build experience versus if you if you just did data analysis you know for 20 years versus if you did that and then some coding you know and then did some systems main frameworks but you know you're more valuable by adding in those additional skill sets so it's not necessarily a bad thing i think as long as we can you know kind of share that talent in good faith here amongst ourselves um then you know it's a it's a more open and friendly environment so well with that i'm checking here i think we've covered everything i don't see any new questions so um on behalf of us all appreciate everybody uh joining us tonight and thanks again to all of our wonderful panelists uh we appreciate y'all being here with us as well so hope everyone has a good evening thanks for having me right here