Joan Lamm-Tennant
Role: Associate
Site: CDL-Wisconsin
Stream: Risk
Joan Lamm-Tennant is a global entrepreneur with over 35 years of experience in building, operating, advising and governing business with a proven track record in synthesizing strategy and innovation with result-focused execution. Joan has provided leadership in a number of roles including CEO, founder, professor, strategist, advisor, chief economist and corporate director. Her technical expertise as a financial economist spans pricing and capitalizing risk transfer mechanisms as well as the design of risk transfer solutions utilizing the signal in the price of risk to achieve desired outcomes.
From December 2015 to May 2020, Joan was the founder and CEO of Blue Marble Micro Ltd, a social enterprise that digitalized and implemented the end to end risk transfer solutions protecting smallholder famers in the value chain of multinational corporations against environmental risk. In that role, Joan wrote the business plan for creating the socially impactful commercially viable business based on the principles of shared value creation. She secured the investors, provided strategic vision, formed the team and managed operations. Under Joan’s leadership Blue Marble successfully strengthened the value chain of corporates while extending risk protection to the underserved. Design innovations included incentives for behavioral change to drive economic wellbeing and digitalization of the insurance solution for efficiency and scale.
In addition to advising Blue Marble, Joan currently serves as a Corporate Director on the Boards of Equitable Holdings, Inc., Element Financial Management Corporation, Ambac Financial Group, Hamilton Insurance Group, Ltd. and The Institutes. Her Board experience includes Chairman of the Compensation and Corporate Governance Committee and member of Underwriting, Investment, Risk and Finance and Audit Committees. Previously, Joan served on the Boards of Selective Insurance Group (from 1994 to 2015) and Ivans, an insurance technology provider (from 2001 to 2013). She was instrumental in the sale of Ivans to Ability, a portfolio company of Bain Capital. Joan served on the Advisory Board of CoverWallet, insurance technology startup, (from 2015 to 2019) which sold to AON.
Prior to founding Blue Marble, Joan was the Global Chief Economist and Risk Strategist for Guy Carpenter & Company, a global brokerage and advisory firm. Prior to Guy Carpenter, Joan worked for General Reinsurance, a multinational reinsurer, as the founder and President of their consulting division that delivered risk and capital advice to (re)insurers in the US, Europe and Asia.
In parallel to her industry experience, Joan had an academic career of over thirty years. She was a tenured Professor of Finance at Villanova University where she held the Thomas Labrecque Chair in Business. Most recently, Joan was an Adjunct Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania where she held the Laurence and Susan Hirsch Chair in International Business.
Joan is the recipient of the 2017 Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2016 Wharton MBA Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2013 APIW Insurance Woman of the Year, and the 2012 International Insurance Society Kenneth Black Award for service and commitment to the advancement of the global industry.
Joan holds a Ph.D. in Finance and Investments from the University of Texas. In addition, she holds an M.B.A. in Finance and a B.B.A. with Honors in Accounting from St. Mary’s University.