A journalism degree from Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas, Venezuela, laid the foundation for Mariana Fernández’s career in communications and client services. Since 2014, she has worked in insurance, serving as CEO and exclusive agent of Highland Insurance Group, a bilingual, women-led agency she helped establish at its current Baltimore location in 2022.

The agency, which expanded through a book-of-business acquisition in January, serves families across auto, home, renters, business and life insurance. Fernández serves on Allstate’s National Advisory Board and has earned recognition from the Mexico Consulate and City of Baltimore for her Hispanic community involvement.

What is the biggest challenge facing your industry today?

The insurance industry is facing several major challenges today. First, misinformation makes it harder for customers to truly understand the value of proper coverage. Many people focus only on price without realizing what they may be giving up in protection, which often leads to problems at the time of a claim. At the same time, there has been a rise in fraud and frivolous lawsuits, increasing costs across the board and making the environment more complex for both carriers and agents.

Finally, since COVID, consumer behavior has shifted. Many customers have become more price-driven and tend to shop more frequently, which makes it harder to build long-term relationships based on trust and education. As an industry, we have a responsibility to guide clients with honesty, helping them make informed decisions and understand that insurance is not just about price but about real protection when it matters most.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice I’ve ever received is to focus only on what I can control. Life will have hard days, even hard seasons, but those moments don’t define the outcome. You can go through a difficult day, week or even a month, and still have your best year if you stay consistent and keep moving forward.

That mindset has helped me lead with clarity and not react to everything around me. It reminds me to focus on my actions, my attitude and how I show up every day. And through it all, my faith keeps me grounded, knowing that God never fails and that everything is part of a bigger purpose, even when I don’t fully understand it in the moment.

How do you define success?

I define success as having the freedom to be present for my son and my family, while continuing to grow a strong and meaningful business. But more than anything, success means being able to give my team that same quality of life and the same opportunities to enjoy their time, their families and their peace.

I don’t measure success by awards or money. I measure it by time, peace and freedom. It’s about waking up with purpose, having the flexibility to be there for the people I love and building a business that aligns with my values. To me, success is also being recognized for our honesty, our service and the way we care for people, not simply for being the cheapest option, but for the trust we build every day.

With more than 35 years of handling complex commercial litigation and insurance matters, Cheryl Lambert has built a practice that spans Fortune 500 corporations and small businesses alike. Lambert represents clients across cross-jurisdiction actions, regulatory matters, contract and real estate disputes, liability assessments and eminent domain proceedings, including questions of scope and valuation.

A Wake Forest University School of Law graduate, she earned her J.D. with honors in 1982 and served on the Wake Forest Law Review. She holds a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of North Carolina. Lambert serves as her firm’s co-liaison for the Harmonie Group and sits on its board. She’s a past board chair of the Injured Workers’ Insurance Fund and Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund.

What is the biggest challenge facing your industry today?

The single biggest challenge facing law firms today is adapting their business models to rapid and simultaneous structural change. Firms are confronting mounting pressure from evolving talent expectations, increasingly sophisticated clients and transformational technologies, most notably artificial intelligence, while still trying to preserve profitability, culture and long-term sustainability.

Ultimately, the greatest challenge facing law firms today is achieving sustainable profitability while redefining how legal value is created, delivered and priced.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

“Find your voice — and then use it.”

At its core, this advice recognizes that professional success is not achieved solely through technical competence or hard work but through the willingness to speak with clarity, conviction and purpose. Finding one’s voice means understanding what you stand for, what judgment you bring to the table and how your perspective can add value. Using it requires courage, the courage to advocate, to challenge assumptions and to lead even when doing so is uncomfortable.

Throughout my career, this guidance has shaped how I approach leadership, client service and civic engagement. It reminded me that silence rarely advances accountability, fairness or progress, and that influence carries a responsibility to be exercised thoughtfully and decisively. By finding and using my voice, I learned not only to represent others effectively, but also to mentor, to serve and to contribute in ways that strengthen institutions and communities. This advice has remained a constant reminder that leadership is not defined by position, but by the willingness to speak when it matters most.

How do you define success?

Success is not about winning a case, a title or an award but about earning trust consistently year after year. Longevity of trust, earned over time and maintained across changing circumstances, is a central indicator of success.

Success means building and strengthening institutions that endure beyond individual tenure. Whether within a professional organization, a nonprofit board or the broader community, success means leaving systems more resilient, effective and principled than they were before one’s involvement.

Success means using influence responsibly. Professional stature and authority should be viewed not as ends in themselves but as tools to advance fairness, mentorship and opportunity for others. Leadership is exercised with intention, restraint and a long-term perspective.

Finally, success is characterized by quiet confidence rather than visibility for its own sake. Respect, credibility and contribution define success more fully than titles or metrics.

In one sentence, success is earning trust, exercising influence responsibly and leaving people and institutions better than you found them.

Growing up on a dairy farm instilled in Steven D. Linkous the work ethic that would define a four-decade career at Harford Mutual Insurance Group, where he now serves as president and CEO. Linkous joined the company in 1985 as a computer programmer, rising to become its 10th president in 2006. Under his leadership, direct written premiums have grown from $112 million to $436 million, with operations expanding across 12 states and Washington, D.C. In 2023, he oversaw a merger with a Louisville, Kentucky, workers’ compensation carrier.

Linkous serves on the Harford Community College board of trustees and the Baltimore Equitable Insurance board of directors, among other boards.

A career built at the intersection of trade credit insurance, financial risk management and trade finance, Sarah Murrow has led high-performing teams through transformational change at the country, regional and global levels. She serves as president and CEO of Allianz Trade in the Americas, where she channels a strong commitment to innovation, operational excellence and agile ways of working into driving commercial success.

Murrow holds a Master of Business Administration from the Johns Hopkins University, a credential that underpins the strategic perspective she brings to one of the industry’s most consequential leadership roles.

Monica Pacheco leads Pacheco & Associates, an independent insurance agency based in Gaithersburg that has served clients in the Washington metropolitan area since 1998. The agency offers personal and commercial coverage including auto, home, renters and business insurance, and provides service in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Pacheco & Associates is a licensed Nationwide partner and an authorized Maryland Auto Insurance producer, helping residents access coverage through one of the state’s largest networks of independent producers.

Starting a career as a claims associate in 1986, Nancy L. Pierce has risen over nearly four decades to lead one of the nation’s largest auto insurers. Berkshire Hathaway announced in December 2025 that Pierce had been appointed CEO of the Bethesda-based GEICO, succeeding Todd A. Combs.

She had most recently served as chief operating officer, overseeing claims, underwriting, product management, customer relationship management and regional operations. Pierce previously held executive vice president and senior vice president roles, and led regional operations on the West Coast and in the mid-Atlantic. GEICO’s full leadership team now reports directly to her.

With nearly two decades specializing in real estate, construction and development insurance, Katherine Santarelli leads Wye River Insurance, guiding a firm that has grown from two employees in 2020 to 17 today. Before joining Wye River, Santarelli led the real estate and construction practice at RCM&D, a risk-management company ranked among the nation’s top 100 brokers of U.S. business, where she directed builders’ risk programs for multifamily and retail projects and negotiated insurance requirements in construction contracts.

Risk & Insurance named her one of the top five real estate insurance brokers in the country in 2019. She holds a Construction Risk and Insurance Specialist designation and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia.

What is the biggest challenge facing your industry today?

The biggest challenge facing our industry today is also one of our greatest assets: our people. A company’s success ultimately comes down to the strength of its team and the culture that supports it. Talent, collaboration and shared purpose are what drive innovation and long-term growth.

At the same time, the shift toward remote work and digital communication has made it easier for teams to feel disconnected. When people aren’t interacting regularly, it can be harder to maintain the sense of community that helps ideas flow and keeps everyone aligned.

That’s why we prioritize time together in the office. Our team is in the office a minimum of three days a week, which allows us to collaborate, share ideas and stay focused on our goals. Those in-person interactions strengthen relationships and help maintain the culture that moves our business forward.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard recently came from Alan Schnitzer at the Travelers Leadership Conference. He shared the story of legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner and the idea that enthusiasm is common but endurance is rare. Messner approached climbing with the mindset that today’s summit becomes tomorrow’s base camp. That perspective has stuck with me. Progress often comes from steady, determined steps forward and a willingness to keep climbing, even when the work is not glamorous or widely recognized.

How do you define success?

Success is difficult to define because the goalposts are always shifting. What feels like success at one point in your career may look different as new challenges and opportunities arise. For me, success is about continuing to move forward, staying focused and helping the people around you grow along the way. That constant evolution is what makes business, and leadership in particular, so rewarding.

Kurt C. Small brings more than 25 years of healthcare leadership experience to his role as president and CEO of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. Small spent nearly seven years at Elevance Health, most recently serving as president of Medicaid, where he oversaw a business of approximately 8.5 million members.

He previously held executive roles in Elevance Health’s commercial and federal segments, and served in executive leadership at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and Highmark following more than a decade at Aetna. Small earned a Bachelor of Arts from the College of William & Mary and a Master of Business Administration from the Yale School of Management. He chairs the American Heart Association’s Baltimore & Greater Maryland Division.