Joseph Guardo Executive Vice President Odyssey Reinsurance Company

Joe Guardo is Executive Vice President and head of OdysseyRe’s U.S. Property, Marine and Aerospace treaty business units. He joined OdysseyRe in 1996 and has more than 25 years of experience managing the underwriting of property and casualty and specialty lines in the U.S. and Canada. His extensive knowledge of property lines covers not only standard pro rata and excess of loss contracts, but also retrocessional protections ranging from ILW’s to cat bonds. He also has expertise in technical lines including onshore and offshore energy exposures, and in general aviation.

Joe is currently leading an in-house IT initiative to build a reinsurance processing system and underwriting platform from scratch. He also serves on Odyssey Group’s Innovation Working Group.

Prior to OdysseyRe, Joe served as an AVP at Transatlantic Reinsurance Company. He began his career at Constitution Re and holds a B.A. in Economics from Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

Bruce Lucas Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Heritage Insurance

Bruce is the co-founder of Heritage Insurance and has led the company from a start-up Florida insurer to a Super Regional Insurer with over $1 billion of in-force premium in 16 states. He is well known for his leadership and entrepreneurial skills, and brings creativity and out-of-the-box thinking into making Heritage a best of breed company. He has led Heritage to profitability every year since inception while managing eight hurricanes, several tropical storms, and the challenges related to fraud and AOB in Florida. Prior to Heritage, Mr. Lucas was co-founder and CEO of Infinity Investment Funds and an attorney with Weil, Gotshal & Manges where he represented large institutional clients such as Enron and GE. Mr. Lucas graduated cum laude from Indiana University Law School with a B.A. and J.D., and was a Sigmund J. Beck Scholar. Mr. Lucas is most passionate about education based charities like the Pinellas Education Foundation and Step Up for Students as he feels education provided him with the opportunity to succeed and has been a major key to his success. Outside of the office, Mr. Lucas enjoys exercising, golf, and travel.

Steve Velotti Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer Pillar Capital Management

Mr. Velotti is the Chief Executive Officer & CIO at Pillar Capital Management Limited (PCML). PCML manages the Juniperus Insurance Opportunity Fund (JIOF). JIOF is an open-ended Bermuda incorporated fund focused on investing in insurance related instruments. The strategy of the Fund is to invest in traditional (re)insurance instruments to create a portfolio with attractive risk-reward characteristics and low correlation with other asset classes. His responsibilities included the overall operations and profitability of the Fund, strategic business planning, risk evaluation, pricing, portfolio analysis and marketing.

Mr. Velotti has over 30 years of insurance and reinsurance experience including various senior management positions in the reinsurance industry. Steve’s career has progressed through multiple sectors of the (re)insurance market place including life insurance, primary commercial insurance, facultative reinsurance, treaty reinsurance, catastrophe bonds and other capital market areas such as weather derivatives. He has had successful experience in building profitable (re)insurance entities.

Prior to forming Pillar, he was a Senior Vice President at Ariel Reinsurance LTD from its founding in 2005 until January 2008. Prior to joining Ariel Re, he spent 7 years in the Property area at Zurich Re/Converium.

Mr. Velotti has an MBA from Columbia University’s School of Business (2002) and a Bachelor’s Degree from the State University of New York at Albany (1989).