Scouting for Growth

Will Ross: The Federato Playbook — RiskOps, Appetite, and Winnability for Profitable Growth

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Will Ross, Co-Founder & CEO of Federato, and if you’re an underwriting transformation leader—drowning in Excel, stale pilots, and disconnected data sources—this episode is for you.
Will Ross isn’t here to sell you hype. He’s here to show what it looks like when AI actually delivers: faster quotes, better decisions, happier underwriters, and measurable results before the next board meeting.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Thinking back to when Amazon released the Echo with Alexa and a bunch of us bought them and took them apart to figure out how it worked reminds me of how Wild West the early days of AI was a decade and a half ago. Now any undergraduate student taking computer science will have some exposure to AI. One of the first things they might learn is how to do simple tasks like that on very little computational resource. I love jumping into our products like that to understand how they work.
Break down what AI means: There’s an idea of intelligence or grasping a concept or knowledge, then there’s artificial – doing something in place of a human. You can take it a step further and look at ‘generative’ – generating a thing, or predictive – predicting a thing, agentic – giving it agency and allowing it to complete a task. 
What is it that humans do today and, theoretically, what could humans do if they had unlimited time to do their jobs? For underwriters, the process is similar across many line of business: you analyse an exposure, loss history and loss control to come up with a rate perspective, etc. Where can AI systems interact with that process?
BEST MOMENTS
‘One of the things I think is really scary with AI today is its perpetuation of news cycles and how fast it spreads.’ 
‘No matter how sceptical people are, the vast majority of people are already using these technologies to do their jobs. By bringing them into the room, making them aware of what this technology does, and letting the interact with it, that’s a powerful thing.’
‘There are going to be jobs that change, but we shouldn’t think about it as AI replacing our jobs, we should think about it as someone using AI to do our job who will replace us.’
‘What we call AI today will change and change again because it always has; Deep Blue used to be called AI and is now called a chess simulator.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
William Ross is a product and operations leader obsessed with solving the toughest problems in insurance with a mix of pragmatism, speed, and machine learning. As a core member of the Federato leadership team, Will focuses on one mission: turning underwriting from a slow, manual grind into a dynamic, data-driven advantage.
At Federato, Will is helping specialty and commercial carriers build resilience and growth into their underwriting operations, showing chief underwriting and transformation officers that AI doesn’t need to be another failed pilot—it can be the competitive edge that secures market share today.
LinkedIn
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Sara Mikulski: One Source of Truth, Zero Excuses

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sara Mikulski, CTO at Kingstone Insurance, about the moment in her career that convinced her that the claims ecosystem could be rebuilt around a single, trusted data spine.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When I started my career, success looked like stabilisation: getting to a point where we all understood what was happening in which system, where the data was, and just making it work. It wasn’t a long-term scalable solution, but I didn’t want to come into the organisation and disrupt it. It wasn’t ready yet, the first 18 months were about learning what was working and what wasn’t before making a move to address the concerns and questions in a scalable way.
Between then and now, we’ve changed the entire platform and focused on ensuring that there were clear processes, good data in the right places, so we could automate more and enable future AI. This has made our adjustors so happy, as well as us, from an IT perspective, where it’s easier to maintain, help, and administer, etc.
Many large AI initiatives that impact your core systems don’t always go as expected. The biggest learning we’ve had, as an organisation, over the last year was to not run before you can walk. Sometimes you think AI can fix the problem or the process, but when you start to talk it through or dissect it, you find out you could simply tweak the system to be better for the people using it or explore a different way of doing the process.
BEST MOMENTS
‘There were less emotional decisions in the first place because we took our time and really thought things through.’
‘You have to focus on how to make that one place your place – making sure the data that in there is clean, true, what data is there, what data your adjustors need to go outside of the system for and why.’
‘Efficiency is king right now, which is why AI is getting such a movement behind it; you’re trying to find places where you don’t have to do something manually, or something that takes hours and condensing it to seconds.’
‘AI will play an enormous role in current and future processes at all insurance carriers, but you still have to go back to the basics and figure out if you’re just trying to put a band aid on the problem or if you’re trying to solve it long-term.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Sara Mikulski is Chief Technology Officer at Kingstone Insurance and is responsible for managing our IT organization and accountable for the company’s systems and data strategy, IT security, infrastructure, development, support, and vendor management.
Sara brings 15+ years of experience in IT, leading effective teams and improving IT operations. Most recently, she was the Deputy CIO at UPC Insurance, where she was responsible for delivering numerous projects aimed at consolidating platforms and reducing technical debt. She also held leadership and technical IT positions at Esurance. Ms. Mikulski also worked at several other companies in various IT-focused roles.
LinkedIn
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Arvind Sontha: Kyber’s AI Automation Transform Insurance Claims

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Arvind Sontha, COE and co-founder of Kyber, an AI startup redefining how carriers handle claims correspondence.
The insurance industry is undergoing a seismic shift as carriers face mounting pressure to deliver faster, more transparent, and compliant communications to policyholders and clients, making the need for digital claims transformation greater than ever.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
If you think about insurance and tailoring, the underlying model of risk is effectively a ‘user personal model’. We started with an obscure line of insurance that didn’t exist yet, or did around personal cyber insurance. We wondered what it would look like, rather than SMB or commercial cyber insurance, as individual underwriting and risk modelling.
We got lucky in finding a great partner in branch insurance very early on. Over the course of our time engaging with them, we ended up turning into an extension of their team. We were able to work closely with them; they trusted us to quickly understand their problems and iterate to deliver quick solutions, while at the same time, they understood that there would be quirks with products that weren’t fully fleshed out, which they could iron out over time. It was a symbiotic relationship.
If an adjustor has to take an hour to put a document together, you have to clear a 1.5-hour space in your calendar to do that. Life is hectic, you have meetings and other tasks to do, and so that 1.5-hour block keeps getting moved back, same thing happens to managers. If you can take it from 1.5 hours to 30 seconds for a high-quality letter and a one-click approval, you can slip that into any part of your calendar. That’s a really underrated part of the process.
Some of the things we want to do in the future include things like managed parameters. We think it’s obtuse for all the carriers to handle fraud language individually all the time, for example. Kyber could manage that for you to make sure everything’s automatically compliant and good to go. Statutory language really enables the full organisation to be prepared to catch each other.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Kyber is an AI native, document generation and delivery platform made for claims teams, that’s what we do.’
‘Nobody doubted that I could build the complex AI to underwrite and quantify the risk; what they needed to figure out was whether I could sell insurance, which is why I got my broker’s licence!’
‘The results have been better than I expected, we’ve seen 65% faster drafting times, 80% consolidation of their templates across a 50-state operation, and 5x reduction in letter cycle times for documents.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Arvind Sontha is co-founder and CEO of Kyber, an AI startup that is redefining how carriers’ NTPAs handle claims correspondence. Arvind is at the forefront of digital transformation, leading Kyber’s mission to automate and streamline the entire lifecycle of claims forms and letters.
Kyber’s clients report that the impact of AI automation is undeniable: Claims teams using Kyber have reduced letter drafting time by up to 85%, cut review time by 60%, and achieved a 3x faster outreach to policyholders.
LinkedIn
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Charlie Wendland: How AI and Human Empathy Are Transforming the Future of Claims

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Charlie Wendland, chief claims officer at Branch Insurance.
The world of claims management is undergoing a seismic shift, with AI at its heart. Insurers leveraging AI have reported a 75% reduction in claims handling time and 50% increase in fraud detection accuracy. Cutting claims processing times allows adjustors to focus on complex decisions and customer care.
Charlie talks about technology only being part of the story. The future of claims is about continuous transformation, balancing innovation with compliance, and making sure that as we innovate, we don’t lose sight of empathy and trust.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The combination of investigation, problem solving, and most importantly, being there for people in their worst moments – as a claims adjustor – felt both intellectually engaging and genuinely meaningful. It really drew me to the role.
We’re small and can’t afford to build a fully fleshed-out claims organisation. So, we made strategic investments to automate administrative tasks that typically weigh down our adjustors, affect road loss outcomes, and drive expense inefficiencies. We listened to our adjustors; we conducted many time studies to identify what’s bogging them down; we proactively sought out inefficient processes and looked for technology to improve them.
We’ve taken an iterative approach to everything that we’ve built, understanding that it’s not going to be perfect when we first launch, but we’re going to be really sensitive to what is not perfect and seek perfection even though we know that’s not possible.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Find administrative tasks that weigh down your adjustors, free them of those through technology, and they can spend more time on complex issues and customer care.’
‘We get adjustor’s opinions on everything that we do, for the most part, which sounds inefficient, but it’s really not because we do it in a very thoughtful way.’
‘70% of our first notice-of-lossis  now either done electronically or through a voice AI.’
‘With a startup, change is ever-present because we’re trying to find a way to do something and we’re able to change quite quickly, but the hurdles are all self-inflicted, so if we’re not communicating effectively, that’s on us.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Charlie Wendland has 20+ years of expertise transforming claims operations across commercial and personal lines. As Chief Claims Officer at Branch, he leads an organisation that's reimagining the insurance experience through technology and customer-centric innovation while delivering optimal claim outcomes.
Charlie’s leadership philosophy centres on driving operational efficiency that benefits both customers and the business, building collaborative teams that deliver exceptional results, and pioneering approaches that redefine industry standards.
Throughout his career, Charlie has consistently delivered growth while enhancing customer satisfaction. I'm passionate about modernizing insurance and mentoring the next generation of industry leaders.
LinkedIn
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Barbara Schonhofer & Carmen Powell: Empowerment, Leadership, Inclusion & Future Growth

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Barbara Schonhofer and Carmen Powell, two influential voices who have navigated and thrived in the ever-evolving insurance industry.
In today’s conversation, we explore the sector’s evolution, the future of work, and best practices for continuous networking and development.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When I started my career in 1972, men didn’t know how to behave as women came into their own in business and took frontline roles. It wasn’t so much misogyny that I faced; it was more like old geezers having a laugh; they didn’t know how to welcome women into their workplace because it was less usual. I found my way by being more humorous and smarter in my responses, so I sidestepped a lot of the banter in my early career. There were only a few predatory men; most just didn’t know how to behave in front of women.
I have always celebrated being different. Anything that was an idiosyncrasy was put down to the fact that I was Spanish, and that suited me fine! That served me well because I didn’t have to follow the norms. However, when I interviewed for a very large organisation in the UK, the HR director asked me how I would cope with men making a pass at me. I said that I was coming here to work and that if anybody crossed the line, I knew how to deal with that.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The men that were kindest to me didn’t help me, and the ones that gave me a tough time did business with me. I learned to keep my friends close and my enemies closer.’
‘The most wonderful boss I had was a woman, the rest have been men, but, like Barbara, they gave me a hard time and pushed my boundaries enough, so I knew I was resilient enough.’
‘With everything, you take two steps forward and one step back.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Barbara Schonhofer’s career in financial services covers four decades, operating as a business leader and later as an executive search consultant to the insurance markets. When she began her career, she set out to better understand the complexities of much-needed culture change in insurance. During her years in financial services as an executive search consultant, Barbara challenged conventional practices and identified the need to bring together women leaders in the London Market to network.
Alongside ISC-Group, Barbara co-founded and co-Chaired GAIN, a non-profit membership organisation that encourages a better understanding and inclusion of neurodiverse individuals in the insurance industry. She is a Freeman of the City of London and a member of the Worshipful Company of Insurers, where she co-founded its female network, iWIN. LinkedIn
Carmen Powell is an experienced international marketing and business development professional whose strategic expertise is underpinned by a practical, positive approach to achieving challenging goals, including establishing new markets and reversing declining revenues whilst successfully navigating large, complex organisational matrices.
Carmen has a passion for building societal prosperity and strengthening the ethical behaviour of organisations through making a difference to their bottom line. Ethics matter. Carmen constantly strives to deliver value in ever-changing corporate environments while also making a positive difference in our world. LinkedIn
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Yandy Plasencia: Data Reconciliation for the CFO

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Yandy Plasencia, founder and CEO of DataHaven Software.
In today’s conversation, we talk about Yandy’s journey and vision as well as how mid-sized insurance companies can explore and empower their finance teams, especially their CFOs, by automating data reconciliation and unlocking real-time insights.
KEY TAKEAWAYS         
For the most part, it all comes down to the basic ledger/sub-ledger challenge. The core systems are transactional and contain all the information about what took place, which payments were paid out, when a claim came in, and everything needed to verify that a claim has coverage within the rules defined by the policy. If the data isn’t easy to extract and digestible for the right audience, it will be challenging for that audience to interpret, reconcile, and do so in a timely fashion.
In smaller carriers, there will be more technical folks who are not necessarily business-oriented. There’s always a gap between what the business and technology folks are looking for, and although technology does a very good job of getting the data where it needs to go, it doesn’t always meet the needs of the finance and accounting folks. There an ongoing friction between both departments.
You need to build an intelligence layer with well-defined relationships across every data point related to financials. If it affects financials, you need to have a relationship, ontology, or something that tells you how these data points are interrelated. If you don’t have that, then it’s only creating a problem for something else that’s going to come up very soon.
The main issue with spreadsheets with visualisation tools is that those tools solve the problem short-term until they don’t, they are extremely helpful until they become painful, and they become a bottleneck for the organisation to grow eventually. The tools don’t have change processes in place as data sets grow and organisations expand. They also become a personnel risk because only 1 or 2 people in the company understand it.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Data is a powerful tool, and it’s “make it or break it” for a lot of companies, especially in insurance, where the devil is in the details.’‘Being able to trace an expense back to the root system and getting a full transactional detail for that specific number is the most reliable way to do something.’‘It’s only labour-intensive if you try to do this completely manually and you don’t leverage artificial intelligence in the right ways, and if you don’t have a defined framework to do this, if you do, it’s much easier.’‘It’s not rocket science… It’s just data science.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Yandy Plasencia is a visionary entrepreneur and software architect with deep expertise in AI, data engineering, insurance technology, and regulatory compliance.
At DataHaven, Yandy and his team are creating an insurance-specific intelligence layer that automates reconciliation, accelerates financial analysis, and helps leadership trace changes in loss or expense ratios directly to operational events.
LinkedIn
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Mike Gulla: Power Outage Coverage Reinvented Amid 78% Surge

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Mike Gulla, CEO of Adaptive Insurance, whose team is redefining what it means to be resilient in an era of climate uncertainty and operational volatility.
We’ll explore why now is the time for parametric and adaptive insurance, what inspired the creation of Adaptive, and how emerging technologies like AI, big data, and cloud computing are transforming the insurance landscape.
KEY TAKEAWAYS         
Mike founded Adaptive in early 2024 to help businesses build financial resilience against climate change by leveraging parametric products and unique data assets.
Starting a business comes with many challenges – revenue planning, product selection, and insurance. Our focus is on helping owners understand how environmental factors, such as extreme weather or business interruptions, could impact them over time.
Power outages show that even with backup systems, grid failures can cause major disruptions – from dark streets to reduced customer traffic.
As climate shifts, populations are moving into areas with new weather risks. My focus is on creating innovative insurance products that turn these challenges into opportunities for good
BEST MOMENTS
‘The consumer needs knowledge to understand what the things are that are ultimately going to impact their business.’
‘Speed is huge, which is why we use parametric products, a business owner needs to be able to make a decision very quickly after an event occurs. When you combine knowledge with speed, it helps them make a better decision for their business.’
The insurance industry has suffered from how fast things have changed.’
‘Parametric insurance products are similar to streaming services in that they allow the consumer a new opportunity to have access to a different type of coverage that specifically focuses on something that might impact their business.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Mike Gulla, CEO and Co-Founder of Adaptive Insurance, has over 20 years of experience in the insurance industry and is passionate about transforming how insurance works by leveraging technology and innovative strategies. His career is marked by a commitment to making insurance more adaptive, efficient, and customer-focused.
Mike’s leadership at Adaptive Insurance reflects his vision for a smarter, more responsive industry—one that meets the evolving needs of clients in a rapidly changing world. Known for his forward-thinking approach and dedication to excellence, Mike continues to inspire teams and drive meaningful change across the insurance landscape.
LinkedIn
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Sterling Parker: Why Tech at Work Is Reshaping Flexible Work

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sterling Parker, Senior Vice President of Global Solutions and Services at Ivanti.
Sterling is a recognised leader in workplace technology and digital transformation, with deep expertise in helping organizations of all sizes – from global enterprises to fast-growing startups – navigate the evolving world of work.
In this episode, we dive into the findings of Ivanti’s latest report, which gives insights into how leaders can build workplaces that are not only more efficient but also more human, flexible, and future-ready.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Ivanti’s latest “Technology at Work” report reveals a striking insight: while 73% of office workers and 83% of IT professionals consider flexible working “high value” or “essential,” only 23% of employees say their current job is highly flexible - highlighting a major flexibility gap that organisations must address to attract and retain top talent. The study also explores the widening flexibility gap, the rise of shadow AI, and the critical balance between optimising technology and empowering people.
Leaders need to hear the feedback from their teams. In terms of what’s preventing them – whether it’s perception or reality – from having flexibility in their day-to-day job. If you’re trying to address something without first hearing what your team demands in terms of flexibility, then you will have a hard time marrying the demand to the business objectives. That’s a delicate balance.
If you’re not defining what success looks like for an individual, how are you going to be able to measure, as you pivot to more flexible work, whether or not that is really leading to the outcomes you need as a business to continue to invest in that flexibility?
To redefine flexibility, it comes down to the mutual benefits involved in how individuals define ‘flexibility’. From what I’ve seen, it happens at a team level, especially when you’re working on different objectives.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Lack of investment from businesses is leading to this 23% feeling like they don’t have any flexibility.’
‘There’s real cost in time spent with family, there’s real cost in the commute, and people weigh those options.’
Since COVID, individuals are more willing to leave businesses for flexibility. Refusing to adapt will increase the likelihood of losing skilled employees, which will cost the business. ’
‘When top talent leaves, or isn’t being attracted, then you’re going to have an innovation stagnation.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Sterling Parker is the Senior Vice President of Global Solutions and Services at Ivanti, where he leads the company’s worldwide support, services, and solutions strategy. With a deep background in IT operations and customer experience, Sterling is responsible for ensuring that Ivanti’s clients—ranging from large enterprises to small businesses—can securely and efficiently manage their digital workplaces in an era defined by rapid technological change and evolving workforce expectations.
Discover more about Ivanti’s most recent report here.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Sam White: Redefining Insurance, Leadership, and Innovation

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sam White , CEO of Stella Insurance. Sam is not just a leader in the insurance industry; she’s a trailblazer, entrepreneur, and advocate for creating a fairer, more inclusive world.
In today’s conversation, we’ll dive into Sam’s incredible journey as an entrepreneur, her vision for Stella Insurance, and how she’s challenging the status quo in a traditionally male-dominated industry. We’ll also explore her thoughts on leadership, innovation, and the future of insurance.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
We didn’t realise, when we set Stella up, just how revolutionary it was because we had an entirely female management team all in our 20s and 30s, very spirited and high energy, going out and doing business in a very male-dominated marketplace. There are gender differences and I think we come at things with a different perspective, women do business differently, approach things differently, and have different needs and risks that they’re exposed to.
What I love about the concept of insurance is the idea that a group of people come together and put money in the pot so that if one of them is vulnerable they can be supported. That community ideology is very appealing. When you look through the lens of women, you see a set of circumstances where my general experience when it works well with a large group of women that are all aligned on the same goal and support each other is magic.
In terms of building good relationships, the principles apply. Firstly, you can’t build a good relationship with somebody who hasn’t got a good relationship with themselves and isn’t prepared to accept, acknowledge or work on that.
My first business was launched from my sister’s conservatory where I picked up the phone to brokers and asked if they’d let me handle their claims. The benefit of that is that you don’t need to get funding and you can do it your own way, you’re learning on the job and experiencing direct feedback. The downside is that the foundations you’re building on may not be ideal.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I was diagnosed with dyslexia as a kid and I think that creates a different type of mindset in terms of problem solving as well as resilience.’
‘I like complicated problems, and insurance is one hell of a complicated problem!’
‘Imposter syndrome is much higher in women than men, they second guess themselves continually. Most women are educated to not back themselves from the age of 7-8 and societally we also questions women far more than men.’
‘The irony is; the process of the ‘do’ is the thing that gives you the confidence to keep on doing the doing. But, you have to do the first thing and make it through your first really big challenge.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Sam White is a dynamic, visionary entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building and scaling successful businesses. As the CEO of Stella Insurance, Sam is a trailblazer in the insurance industry, known for her innovative approach and commitment to creating meaningful change. Under her leadership, Stella Insurance has become a trusted and award-winning brand, recognized for its customer-centric ethos and dedication to empowering women in a traditionally male-dominated sector.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Amélie Breitburd: How Coopetition Could Double Europe’s Insurance Market

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Amélie Breitburd, the former CEO of Lloyd’s Europe, and a leading voice in the movement to rethink how we insure against tomorrow’s biggest shocks – from climate and cyber to the long-tail risks the industry still avoids.
In today’s conversation, we’ll unpack her journey to Lloyd’s, explore the institution’s evolving role in a risk-saturated world, and dig deep into the bold ideas behind her latest work.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Every day, people should focus on their specifications and should be reminded of it. When I see syndicates doing business only in the US, they could do business in Europe almost for free because, from a capital perspective, diversification helps.
We’re here to help people. People wouldn’t do anything: Take a bike, drive a car, or fly to Mars without insurance. It’s a key enabler. As leaders in the insurance industry, I believe we can show a great sense of purpose.
There was a period when companies were mainly focused on buying, which was killing teams. I think we’re definitely in the partnership era now, which is great for startups because they can work for different companies, increasing diversity and helping people learn from each other.
Insurers have a lot of data, but it’s a bit outdated. Risk is evolving because the automotive industry, for example, is moving towards autonomous cars; data about car behaviour is no longer as important as it used to be; the software and batteries that will be in cars are more important, so we must build another set of data. Then there are things like flying to Mars and carbon capture, where there is no data because we don’t know how we’ll be doing them.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Risk is at the heart of what insurers do, and risk is about diversification.’
‘The statistical aspect is that when you are together, you’re taking risks together and lowering the cost of capital.’
‘The journey today is like moving from paper to pdf, but the next change perspective is moving to more digitalised exchanges between various parts of the company.’
‘Coopetition is the idea that if we work together as competitors, we can access a market which is currently inaccessible because it’s not affordable, we can price the risks differently to make them more accessible.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Amélie Breitburd is a strategic powerhouse in Europe’s insurance and risk management ecosystem, driving a bold agenda to double the size of the continent’s insurable market. With a sharp eye on the protection gap, Amélie brings an unflinching perspective on how to future-proof European economies—through syndication, public-private partnerships, and radical coopetition.
A thought leader who thinks beyond tradition, Amélie fuses financial acumen with game theory principles to challenge how we scale solutions to climate risk, cyber threats, and long-tail systemic exposures. Her work on the Digital Insurance Exchange Market (Euro DIEM) envisions a next-gen insurance infrastructure—anchored in data access, distributed underwriting, and multi-layer diversification. LinkedIn
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

The CamCom x ERGO Story: Scaling AI from Vision to Value

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Geetha Sham, MD and President of CamCom in Europe, and Sathes Singam, innovation scout and programme manager at ERGO Group.
In this episode, we will explore how ERGO’s Venture Client model turned a promising pilot into a production-grade capability, then we will investigate what it really takes to deploy AI in regulated multi-market environments, and how governance – if used right – can become a growth accelerator, not a roadblock.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
During initial discussions with our first insurance customer, we realised the inspection process was time-consuming, labour-intensive, prone to human fatigue, resulting in long, expensive cycles and inconsistency. This gap is now filled by our AI model, which provides a machine vision eye, enabling a mobile device to accurately capture images of vehicles, leading to damage assessments and reducing false positives.
We want to democratise image capture; hence, we have built our product so it can operate on any type of forum and on mobile devices made since 2016. That makes us a leader in our own area, staying focused without scattering ourselves in the name of doing everything ourselves.
There has been global adoption of AI, though what it does and how it is used varies, as every industry sees the value it adds. The standard way of implementing it is simple: it must align with the business and should not hamper existing business or processes within the industry/group. Edge cases must be addressed differently and modified so they are not completely controlled by standard feedback learning.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Startup collaboration, in my experience, should become top of the management agenda.’
‘It’s crucial to have someone locally who knows the culture in their particular country, and knows the people that need to be addressed.’
‘It’s all about involving all relevant stakeholders in clear and transparent communication.’
‘Each country has local laws, so there’s not only customisation, but there’s also localisation that has to be addressed. That’s where the governance model comes in handy.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Geetha Sham is MD and President of CamCom in Europe. She is a seasoned technologist and scale-up strategist who has held senior roles at Oracle and Mindtree and is now building out CamCom’s European footprint from Düsseldorf.
Sathes Singam is an innovation scout and programme manager at ERGO Group. He is the lynchpin behind ERGO’s deployment of CamCoM across the Baltics, Europe’s first testbed of this solution.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Joel Agard: Driving into Zurich Insurance’s Venture Client Engine

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Joel Agard, Group Head of Innovation at Zurich Insurance, who has been driving bold, transformative startup collaborations across 40+ markets.
His work has reshaped the way a global insurance giant works with startups, proving that innovation isn’t just about flashy tech – it’s about building real, meaningful partnerships that deliver results.
From navigating the early days of Zurich’s Innovation Championship back in 2018 to scaling the program during a global pandemic – and now leading the charge into the future – Joel brings passion, strategy, and a touch of risk-taking to every conversation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The 2018 football World Cup inspired us to piggyback on the competition concept to raise awareness of corporate/startup partnerships. Back then, working with startups in our industry wasn’t the norm; we were working with big technology companies. We asked ourselves, how can we show the art of the possible and show that working with startups can really work? This is when we invented the Zurich Innovation World Championship.
In the beginning, the pace that startups wanted to – and could – go didn’t always resonate with the pace Zurich wanted to go. We had to align expectations and create a safe environment where we could test fast and where it was OK to fail.
I’ve fallen in love with cool technologies so many times, and I still do: I’m a geek. But, we had to learn that if these shiny, amazing technologies don’t really solve a problem for our customers or internal stakeholders, they’re not fit for purpose for us. It might be too early or not a good fit for us.
BEST MOMENTS
'We at Zurich bring our reputation, brand, and insurance expertise from 150 years. Startups bring agility and speed because they are born in a digital world.’
‘Failing in a big corporation often doesn’t have a good image. We’ve proved that failing fast and cheaply is achievable and beneficial for startups. It’s now a normal part of our process.’
‘The Covid pandemic accelerated digital transformations, there were a lot of opportunities out there to accelerate our initiatives, so we increased the number of startups and pilots.’
‘It’s crucial to understand the gaps and problems you want to solve because we’d be wasting each other’s time otherwise.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Joel Agard is Group Head of Innovation at Zurich Insurance.
With a career dedicated to fostering groundbreaking solutions, Joel spearheads Zurich's Venture Client Startup Engine, a program that drives innovation across 40+ markets worldwide.
His work focuses on bridging the gap between startups and corporate needs, enabling Zurich to leverage cutting-edge technologies and solutions to stay ahead in the ever-evolving insurance landscape.
LinkedIn
Zurich Innovation Championship
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures