Richard Wood

Richard Wood leads the U.S. agents for the Signal Mutual Indemnity Association Ltd., a Bermuda domiciled mutual and the largest single provider of Workers’ Compensation benefits under the U.S. Longshore & Harbor Workers Act. Signal Administration is a U.S. affiliate of Charles Taylor (Hamilton).

Richard has spent over forty years in the insurance industry relocating to the U.S. in 1983. Following an extensive number of years in New York and Houston with the global average adjusting company, Richards Hogg International (now part of the Charles Taylor Group), he joined Signal Administration, Inc. in 2001 as Vice President Marketing and Underwriting.

In 2005, he moved to Connecticut to take up the Chief Operating Officer role, then subsequently the role of Chief Executive.

Richard is an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute (ACII) and a Fellow of the Association of Average Adjusters (FAAA).

Justin Gardner

Justin joined Signal Administration in 2017 as Executive Vice President and Chief Underwriting Officer. He has twenty-five years of experience in the insurance market both as a senior underwriter and reinsurance broker. Prior to joining Signal, Justin was Executive Vice President and Head of U.S. Specialty for Willis Re. He also worked at General Reinsurance Corporation for twenty-two years, where he served as Global Ocean Marine Manager and Chief Underwriting Officer. Justin has a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.Sc. in Finance from London Business School. He has served on the boards of the American Institute of Marine Underwriters and American Hull Insurance Syndicate and is a member of the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and National Cargo Bureau.

Carole Kirk

Carole began her career at Deloitte, specializing in international corporate tax and insurance.  She then moved on to a Treasury role for one of her clients, a small reinsurance start up, where she began her specialization in Lloyd’s syndicate accounting.  She was part of the team who sold the company and then moved on to Chubb Ltd., where she was a Divisional CFO for Tempest Re US and then was promoted to Group Controller of the Global Re Segment.  Carole’s last position prior to Charles Taylor was Chief Accounting Officer and Group Controller for Navigators, a global Specialty P&C Insurance company.  She is a New York State CPA specializing in Consolidated Financial Reporting and Analysis, Strategic Planning, M&A, and large finance transformation projects.

Christopher Schaffer

Christopher oversees the Signal Claims Team, as well as serving as CEO of Charles Taylor’s global third party administrator and Sage Adjusting, LLC.  Chris is an accomplished business executive and attorney with more than 25 years of experience in workers’ compensation, corporate law and litigation, insurance regulatory law, maritime law, government contracts, business management and finance.  Before joining Charles Taylor, he had a successful career marked by executive leadership roles including President, General Counsel, Executive Vice President, Shareholder and Director of nationwide claims administration and insurance businesses.  He is licensed to practice law in South Carolina, the District of Columbia and Maryland.

Tony Filiato

Richard Lubert

As Signal Mutual’s Senior Vice President of Safety & Member Performance, Richard utilizes his leadership and global experience across industries in complex work settings to partner with Members to envision and implement cultural change that optimizes human and organizational performance, fosters operational excellence and an incident free environment. He assists in creating an inclusive and accelerated plan that transforms safety attitudes by aligning the health and safety approach to the Member goals. This effort gains personal commitment by employees and results in increased safety performance, promoting an incident-free environment while achieving organizational KPIs (productivity, quality, competitiveness, reputation).

Previously, Richard worked for General Electric for 30 years in multiple functions including Legal Counsel, Human Resources, Sourcing, several global HSE roles, leading to his appointment as GE Energy’s Senior Executive for Health, Safety, Environment & Sustainability. Leading HSE for the business, he partnered with executives, clients, unions, and governmental agencies while providing strategic leadership for 500 facilities in over 100 countries.  Under his leadership HSE was transformed into a customer facing, value-added differentiator in bidding, winning and executing projects on a global scale. Building innovative and scalable systems and solutions that were leveraged throughout GE’s and customers’ operations, incidents were reduced 95%, projects were delivered on time, and his enterprise risk method identified and mitigated technical, operational, and strategic risks that avoided operational, reputational and significant financial impacts.  After leaving GE, he consulted for other major companies to assist in their safety transformation processes to become leaders in their industries through collaborative efforts with cross functional teams, unions, and other stakeholders, establishing safety as a value-added partner. 

Richard is married with two daughters.  He is an active participant in philanthropic causes. He has served on the Special Olympics’ Board of Directors, coached girls competitive travel softball, helped raise funds to support schools in Africa, and regularly volunteers in community events.  He lives in Boston with his family.  He received his Bachelor of Science from Purdue University, Juris Doctor from Union (Albany) Law School, and Master of Business Administration from Columbia University. 

Rick Hayes

Working out of the Wilton, CT office, Rick is responsible for managing and overseeing the operations and business performance for Signal Mutual. Much of his work is dedicated to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization across all the different business functions. Prior to joining the Signal team, Rick helped to lead and grow the Insurance Advisory practice at PwC. Working with top US and Global Commercial Insurance clients, Rick brings extensive experience in the operations and strategy space, spanning the entire insurance value chain and across multiple lines of business.

In addition to his experience in consulting, Rick has desk underwriting and account management experience, having spent time as an Excess Casualty underwriter at Arch Insurance Group.

Rick is passionate about constantly searching for the newest and best way to consistently enhance the Membership experience and to continue to drive excellence across the organization.

Kathleen DeLuca

Erik Lassow

Jennifer Charlonne