Management Team
Stephen A. Velotti, CEO and CIO
Mr. Velotti has extensive property underwriting experience in various positions in the reinsurance and insurance industries. Prior to joining the Investment Team, he was a Senior Vice President at Ariel Re with responsibilities for the United States Property portfolio. His responsibilities included business planning, risk evaluation, pricing, portfolio analysis and marketing. Prior to joining Ariel Re, he spent 7 years in the Property area at Converium where he held positions of increasing responsibility. Mr. Velotti has an MBA from Columbia University’s School of Business, a Bachelor’s Degree from the State University of New York at Albany and the Associate in Reinsurance certification.
Tara L. Railton, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer
Ms. Railton has experience in new company formations, restructuring, compliance and financial reporting. Ms. Railton’s experience has included CEO, CFO, Chief Accounting Officer and Compliance roles for a private company, a publicly traded company and a publicly listed fund. From October 2006 until May 2010 she acted as Deputy Chairman of the board of Global Investments Limited, a publicly listed fund domiciled in Bermuda. In addition Ms. Railton chaired its Audit and Risk Management Committee, was a member of the Nominations & Governance Committee and sat on the board of a number of its subsidiaries. She was formerly a director and President of the Mid Ocean Club. She received an Honours Bachelor of Business Administration Degree from Wilfrid Laurier University and is a Chartered Accountant and CPA.
Tom Cosenza, Chief Actuary
Mr. Cosenza has extensive property and casualty actuarial experience in the reinsurance and insurance industries. Prior to joining Pillar Mr. Cosenza was a Vice President at Endurance Re and was part of the Global Property Practice Leader team. His various responsibilities included pricing, capital allocation, Enterprise Risk Management, risk evaluation, aggregation management, auditing and portfolio analysis. Prior to joining Endurance, he spent 3 years as the Chief Actuary for Property Reinsurance at Quanta Re. He was responsible for the pricing, structuring and reserving of a $100,000,000 reinsurance book of US and International business. Lines of business included property, crop/hail and terrorism. Mr. Cosenza’s actuarial career began in 1997 as the actuary for AIG’s Construction Risk Management division. In 2002 Mr. Cosenza received his Fellowship from the Casualty Actuary Society. Mr. Cosenza holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Jeff Franklin, Chief Underwriting Officer
Mr. Franklin has considerable underwriting experience in the Bermuda reinsurance industry. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Franklin was Chief Underwriting Officer responsible for the International Property Catastrophe portfolio at Flagstone Re. Mr. Franklin was one of the original members of Flagstone, developing their International book of business and establishing them as a leader in the reinsurance market. He was responsible for overseeing catastrophe pricing across all of Flagstone’s global offices, developing internal systems, leading research and development projects, and managing their sidecar facilities.
Prior to joining Flagstone he started his career at Ace Tempest Re in the analytics department. He soon joined the International underwriting department and became the Vice President responsible for property treaty underwriting, marketing, and portfolio optimization.
Mr. Franklin has a Business Administration Diploma from Kwantlen University in British Colombia, Canada and is a member of the Executive Education program at Columbia University.
Stewart Foster, SVP – Underwriting & Head of Catastrophe Modeling
Mr. Foster has considerable underwriting experience in the insurance and reinsurance industry. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Foster was a Catastrophe Analyst at Endurance Re. Responsibilities included Catastrophe Modeling using RMS for multiple lines of business, exposure management, data analysis, underwriting, exposure and loss mapping and SQL programming. He was involved with both the US and International books of business spending time both in the New York and London offices.
Mr. Foster obtained the CEEM (Certified Extreme Event Modeler) designation from AIR in August 2015. The CEEM program provides a more detailed understanding of the science and statistics that underlie the models and best practices for interpreting and employing model results.
Prior to joining Endurance he started his career at Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company as a Personal Lines Pricing Actuary. Responsibilities in this role included pricing, rate filing and reserving for the personal lines book of business.
Mr. Foster has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Surveying and Mapping Science with Honors from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England.
Judith Howe Tucker, SVP – Operations
Ms. Howe Tucker’s experience includes public accounting, reinsurance, hedge fund and regulatory. Most recently, Ms Howe Tucker was a Vice President at XL Group and focused on financial planning and analysis. Prior to this role, she served as Assistant Director, Licensing and Authorizations for Bermuda’s financial services regulator, the Bermuda Monetary Authority.
From 2003 through 2008, Ms. Howe Tucker served as oversight Controller of The Patriot Group, a real estate and asset lending investment fund. From 1993 – 2002 Ms. Howe Tucker held a variety of roles with Cat Limited and its successor companies.
She began her career with Arthur Young in Providence, RI and continued in Bermuda. Ms. Howe Tucker holds a B.A. from Wheaton College and an M. Ed from Harvard University. Ms. Howe Tucker obtained her CPA in 1987.
No assurance can be given that any particular individual will be affiliated with the Manager for any period of time.