Gateway to Understanding

The RIMS Canada Conference is planning to transform The City of Edmonton from the ‘Gateway of the North’ into a ‘Gateway to Excellence’ in September 2010.

The architects of the plan are RIMS Canada Conference Cochairs David Buzzeo, senior manager of risk management operations for Alberta Finance and Enterprise, and Gwen Tassone, the risk and insurance manager for the City of St. Albert legal services department. Together, they are organizing the 2010 RIMS Canada Conference, which will be held at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton, Alberta from Sept. 26-29, 2010.

Contacted for the purpose of a profile, Buzzeo and Tassone clearly preferred the spotlight to shine on their project, about which they are obviously enthused.

“The way the economy has been of late, and the impact that it had on the business world and risk managers from every part of the industry, we wanted to offer something that was very high in value and excellence, but for a good price,” says Tassone, whose career in risk management can be traced back to May 1999. “We’re really trying to push the value-added concept.”

And thus the ‘Gateway to Excellence’ metaphor was born, adds Buzzeo, who started in the insurance industry as a claims adjuster in the early 1970s, and who transitioned into risk management in 2003.

“Edmonton is known as the Gateway to the North,” Buzzeo says. “We have Gateway Boulevard in Edmonton. Edmonton has many references to gateways. Most importantly, this is a metaphor: it is a gateway to what we are trying to pass on, which are integrity, discovery, resources, ingenuity and success. Those are the five-stepping stones in our program.”

The 2010 conference speakers and program will be organized around these five concepts. “So, for example, with ingenuity, [the speakers and seminars] are themed on innovation,” Buzzeo says. “This includes what’s new and innovative in our risk management industry.”

What is new in the industry? “P3s: private/public partnerships,” Buzzeo replies. “There are also new ideas with respect to risk financing. We are bringing in an actuary to talk about how we actuarially account for our potential liabilities in a self-insurance fund. There will also be a presentation on other ways we can transfer a risk, ART (alternative risk transfer).”

Tassone elaborates on another one of the five themes.

“Discovery, for example, ties in with technology,” she says. “We are having Leonard Brody, who is a futurist, as one of our plenary speakers. Also on that same theme, we will have a technology centre in our Exhibit Hall, so that any of the new stock, programs or tools that could be available to assist risk managers in taking what they do a step further will be available for them to see and touch and use first-hand.”

Buzzeo and Tassone say the plenary speakers have been chosen in an effort to generate discussion and debate. Certainly one of the conference’s thought-provoking plenary speakers, novelist and essayist Sir Salman Rushdie, knows something about risk. Rushdie endured death threats and a fatw_ issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in February 1989. Khomeini issued the fatw_, calling for Rushdie’s assassination, on the basis of Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses. Rushdie’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, was inspired in part by the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Rushdie will be speaking on ‘The Ethos of Risk,’ Buzzeo says.

Another controversial author, Jeff Rubin, is a plenary speaker. Rubin’s book, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, presents the argument that our entire global economy has been dependent thus far on an abundant supply of cheap oil. The thesis is bound to challenge risk managers in the heart of Canada’s oil-producing country in Alberta.

Similarly close to home, CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge will give an address on risks in Canada, including economic and political risks, Buzzeo says.

The organizers are now negotiating an opportunity for the anticipated 650-700 delegates to meet and greet the plenary speakers.

Buzzeo and Tassone say the conference’s education seminars will similarly follow a path less travelled. Twenty concurrent sessions are now planned, a number that might reach 25 by the time the conference starts. The sessions will all be at the Shaw Conference Centre, although one will involve a “field trip” outside the centre in an effort to learn about risks related to water purification.

As for the entertainment, well, other than a scheduled appearance by jazz saxophone player P.J. Perry, the rest is a surprise, says Buzzeo. “There is entertainment planned for Tuesday’s evening banquet that we are trying to keep under wraps because we want there to be a surprise element to it,” he says. “It’s first-class, world-quality entertainment.”

And so now that the RIMS Canada Conference has been profiled, as per Buzzeo and Tassone’s request, who is orchestrating it?

Buzzeo’s career in the insurance industry started when she joined the Co-operative Fire & Casualty Company as a claims adjuster in 1973. Four years later, he went on to become the president and manager of Buzzeo & Associates Ltd., which provided claims services throughout the province of Alberta and the Northwest Territories. As of November 2000, Buzzeo & Associates Ltd. became a wholly owned subsidiary of Underwriters Adjustment Bureau (UAB) Ltd., where Buzzeo was a member of UAB’s senior management team.

Buzzeo describes 2003 as a “pivotal point” in his life; that is when he made the transition into a risk management career. He joined Alberta Finance and Enterprise in 2003 as a senior manager of claims management, sliding into the role of senior manager of risk management operations at Alberta Finance and Enterprise in 2006.

Tassone’s career in insurance began with a brief stint as a client service representative (CSR) in personal lines at Houston Insurance Brokers in 1996 and Wrigley Insurance Services in 1998. Soon thereafter, she became an insurance and risk analyst at the University of Alberta in 1999. “I took the insurance and risk management program at Grant McEwen College in Edmonton,” she says. “I graduated from that program in 1999 and actually moved right into the risk management department at the University of Alberta.”

From there, Tassone moved in 2001 to the City of St. Albert, where she was appointed to the newly created position of insurance and risk administrator. She has since remained at the City of St. Albert, where she has been the city’s risk and insurance manager since August 2005.

Tassone has been involved with the work of the Northern Alberta Chapter of RIMS since 2000 and RIMS Canada Council and subcommittees in various capacities starting in 2005. Buzzeo has been a full member of RIMS Canada since 2003, when he joined the risk management division of Alberta Finance. Prior to that, as an adjuster, he was an associate member of RIMS.

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The way the economy has been of late, we wanted to have something that was very high in value, but for a good price.