In a career now spanning a half a century, John started in underwriting insurance on international cargo movements for a large insurer in Chicago. Over the next decade, he learned underwriting of Marine insurance for commercial vessel and port operations as well. That initial experience and expertise was then employed in insurance brokerage for the shipping and transportation industries including the founding and growing a retail insurance brokerage from the mid-80’s until the end of the century. A native of Chicago, he also lived and worked in Florida and Colorado.
Part of that experience included insuring live animals in international trade, his first being in the late 70’s when he insured pigs from a source in Iowa being flown on a chartered aircraft to South Korea. This laid the cornerstone for his current activities. In 2006 he founded IDEAL Agriculture & Marine which he currently manages out of southern Wisconsin. Its operational and corporate offices are in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio and also has marketing offices in Middle Tennessee and Central California. It is today a division of the Wichert Insurance Group, providing specialty coverages with a strong emphasis on domestic and international agriculture and agri-business exposures and animal mortality as National Program Manager, MGA, General Agency and Delegated Authority Lloyd’s Coverholders.
John is active in many industry and trade groups, and has served as a past President and board member of the International Trade Association of Greater Chicago and the immediate past Secretary-Treasurer of the Livestock Exporters Association of the US, among numerous others.