Meet The Team

Bruce F. Broussard, Jr. has more than 30 years of P&C and Life & Annuities insurance experience focusing on insurance data solutions. Bruce has served in various roles, including solution & data architect, project & program manager, and insurance application manager.

Prior to founding Percipience, Bruce led the Data & Analytics practice at MVP Advisory Group and served as SVP & General Manager of the Data Solutions Business Unit for Insurity. He led the product strategy, development, client implementations, and sales for Insurity’s DataHouse product (formerly IEV). DataHouse became the leading P&C data solution under Bruce’s leadership. Previously Bruce was an Associate Partner for IBM’s Insurance Consulting Practice, where he led IBM’s global insurance data practice. Bruce also served as VP, Application Development for Pan-American Life Insurance Company, responsible for all US and International systems.

Bruce holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and completed the IBM Executive Program at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and received his Machine Learning certification from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Bruce holds FMLI and ACS designations.

Ajay Kelshiker has more than 30 years of IT experience and 20+ years of insurance experience across a number of roles. Ajay has deep expertise in insurance analytics, data warehousing, master data management, data integration, reporting and analytics. Ajay has served in roles including solution & data architect, project & program manager and Vice President of Information Services.

Prior to founding Percipience, Ajay was a partner at MVP Advisory Group and served as the Regional Vice President of Sales for the Data Solutions Division of Insurity. He led solutioning and sales for Insurity’s DataHouse product (formerly IEV). Previously, Ajay was an Associate Partner for IBM’s Global Insurance Consulting Practice. Ajay also served as VP, Information Services for Capitol Indemnity Corporation.

Ajay holds a Master of Business Administration in Information Systems from Warwick Business School in Warwick, UK and a Bachelor of Science (Honors) in Production Technology and Production Management from Aston University in Birmingham, UK.

Michael Earl is a Senior Solution Architect with more than 22 years of experience in Data & Analytics for the P&C insurance industry. He has worked extensively with some of the largest personal and commercial lines carriers including Allstate, Geico, Travelers, QBE, and UNUM Provident providing solutions for Data Modeling, Business Intelligence, Data Governance, Underwriting, and Claims Management. Michael has designed and implemented end to end data solutions using a variety of technologies.

Michael’s involvement has been vital to projects streamlining big data operations processing millions of transactions per day in the Insurance, Financial, and Media industries.

Michael has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Western Connecticut State University and owns a small farm in New England.

Steve Cary is a Data Architect and Data Scientist with 24 years of experience as a consultant to insurance companies and to other companies in the Banking, Credit Card, Crude Oil Production, and Electric Power Distribution industries. He has worked on projects that have supported the Property and Casualty, Auto, Life, Health, and Reinsurance lines of business.

Steve has gathered business requirements for, designed, and helped implement and test a wide variety of data warehouses, operational data stores, and data marts. This work has often included the design and/or implementation of data integration/ETL processes, as well as query and data mining-based data analytics. The clients for whom he has worked include State Farm, American International Group (AIG), TIAA-CREF, Chartis Insurance, USAA, and Humana. He did this work for 20 years with IBM and three additional years as an independent consultant before beginning his work with Percipience Consulting, LLC.

Steve holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Operations Research. He is also a retired US Army tactical intelligence officer.

Brad Kern PMP® is an Azure Architect/Data Engineer and Technical Delivery Leader at Percipience with over 35 years of experience as an application architect and senior engagement manager in firms such as Microsoft and IBM. Brad has a range of consulting experience in many industries, including insurance, banking, law enforcement, and education. At Percipience, Brad is responsible for cloud architecture and also serves as a technical delivery leader to help customers get the best experience from their Data Magnifier implementation.

Prior to his role at Percipience, Brad’s insurance industry experience has primarily been with companies such as State Farm, Allianz, and Northwest National Life. Brad has led many cloud engagements to help customers move their on-premises workloads into the cloud, led the architecture of rewriting a homeowner’s insurance application for a major property & casualty insurer, managed the development and implementation of a strategic counterterrorism application for a major law enforcement agency, and managed the development and implementation of a parent/teacher portal for a major school district in Florida. Brad has technical expertise in areas such as Azure data engineering tools and architectures, application architectures, .Net, C#, PowerShell, SQL Server, to name a few.

Brad holds two Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee in Management Information Systems and Finance. Brad also holds a PMP® certification, Microsoft Azure Data Engineer certification, IBM Certified IT Architect, and Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer.

Susan Ford has spent her multi-decade career as an industry executive and consultant, providing organizational and staff leadership through the development and execution of business and technology strategies and the leadership of teams to deliver critical initiatives. She has extensive experience in Property & Casualty insurance, program management, full IT systems management, and business analytics.

Prior to joining Percipience, Susan worked at Accenture, on the data and analytics team focusing on insurance, through leadership and collaboration with internal data and solution architects, and client representatives to ensure the delivery of business objectives. Before Susan’s work as a consultant, she served as the Product and Data Management Vice President at a large regional carrier serving eight states, where she had full responsibility for all P&C lines of business, including personal and commercial lines.

Susan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Information Systems from the University of Northern Iowa. She also holds FLMI and CSM designations.

Courtney Trent has over 29 years of experience in program management and data/business analytics across multiple industries including Banking Consumer Loans & Products, Insurance, Property Management and Petroleum Exploration. She has led large scale data acquisition and transformation projects, as well as developing certified data environments for regulatory and compliance reporting.

As Director of Business Information at Citigroup, Courtney and her team developed the Consumer Lending Analytics data environments and the accompanying Data Governance program in response to federal regulatory oversight changes. She has provided data management consulting and contract services for insurance and bank organizations, including QBE North America and Wells Fargo, where Ms. Trent was responsible for data integrations and master data programs during primary system conversions. Courtney is also an entrepreneur responsible for building three successful enterprises including a property management, a restaurant and vacation resort company.

Courtney holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance from the Univ of Texas Austin and has a professional project management certification. She has served on boards for local Chamber of Commerce and Property Owner Assoc and was named an Honorary Wing Commander for San Antonio Joint Base.

David Svetcov is an Enterprise Information Architect at Percipience. David previously served as a Sr Data & Analytics Consultant at MVP Advisory Group. He has more than 30 years of experience in Enterprise Data Architecture, Integration Technologies, Relational and Multi-Dimensional Databases, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Performance Management, Data Governance Planning and Master Data Management. He has extensive P&C industry knowledge. David is a member and participant in the ACORD Information Model and promotes its alignment with an organizations enterprise architecture and supporting concepts.

Previously, David was a principal consultant delivering IT solutions to multiple international insurers. He also served as the Senior Solution Architect at Insurity.

David holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the City College of NY and is a Dale Carnegie Instructor at the Dale Carnegie Institute.

Sherri Wimes has over 25 years of human resource experience with focus areas of insurance, financial services, start-ups and retail operations. She has experience consulting with talented leaders to build and deliver sustainable human capital initiatives involving workforce design, change management and talent management initiatives that maximize efficiency, provide a return on investment and enhance service delivery.

As Vice President of Talent Management at Ameritas Life Insurance Corp., Sherri had responsibility for creating a center of excellence human resource/shared service strategy that provided internal and external customers with optimal service levels. She also led the human capital analysis and integration related to several mergers and acquisitions. Sherri utilized a business-based approach to talent management by ensuring the business and people strategies were in alignment.

Sherri holds a BA Human Relations from Doane University, along with professional certifications including Senior Professional Human Resources, Society for Human Resource Management – Senior Certified Professional and Certified Executive Coach.

James Hogg is an Executive Advisor Percipience Consulting. James has 30 years of experience in the Insurance and Financial Services industries. James has broad-based technology, process and operational experience as a Group Vice President, CIO for a top 100 multi-line insurance company and leader of the IBM Claims Practice.

James has successfully managed projects with several of the largest personal P&C, medical and life insurance companies in the US and Canada. These projects have been in operational strategy, application systems implementation; including claims and policy administration systems, data base, and producer administration and commission systems.

James was a core member of program team that managed a large-scale transformational program that included application maintenance, new application development, and SOA Architecture technology strategies. James had primary engagement accountability for projects that included the integration of a new claims system into the legacy environment and the project was successfully completed in 50% less time than traditional point-to-point integration projects.

James holds a Juris Doctorate in Law with emphasis on International Business and Trade and Tax Law from the University of Baltimore, a Master of Business Administration in Business, Management, Marketing and Related Support Services from the University of Delaware, and a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts & Sciences/Liberal Studies from Washington College.

Andrea Wulff works with Percipience to ensure best practices and process improvement throughout the Percipience operations environment. Andrea also serves as and executive assistant to the Managing Partners and Partners of MVP Advisory Group where she is an integral part of the shared services team. Andrea has participated in multiple implementations of back office systems, tools and processes. She is experienced in Operations, Human Resources and Marketing.

Andrea has 30 years of experience as assistant to c-suite level executives, of which 19 years have been in the insurance industry. Andrea previously worked in the corporate office of Hub International Limited, a leading global insurance brokerage.

Having attended St. Xavier University and Fox College, Andrea states that her best education came from assisting the Chief Officers of the Legal, Operations, Human Resources and Finance Departments of a growing company – fortunately not all at the same time.