Steve Menzies
For Steve Menzies, there is an easy commerce between his leadership in the corporate world and his dedicated philanthropy. A lifelong entrepreneur, Steve’s achievements include the creation of Applied Underwriters in 1994 and North American Casualty Company in 1998, today global risk services firms that help businesses and people manage uncertainty through business services, insurance, and reinsurance solutions (see auw.com, nacasualty.com, cg.com, and auw.global). Among his accomplishments, Steve created a top-rated U.S. nationwide insurer providing tens of thousands of employers and their hundreds of thousands of employees with coverage to become the only such specialist ever to achieve an AM Best A+ rating. Between 2006 and 2019 Steve was partners with Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway—the youngest CEO ever within the Berkshire organization—and in 2019, became the only CEO to buy his business back from Berkshire Hathaway.
As a CEO dedicated to positive social outcomes and serious corporate responsibility, Steve has been cited repeatedly for his care for injured claimants, for setting high risk management standards in the workplaces his companies insured, and giving business owners a financial benefit for their observance of best practices. Steve was the first CEO to establish a direct-to-claimant pharmacy within the insurance industry to monitor the prescription, provision, and use of opioids for injured claimants, identifying the opioid crisis a decade before it became a recognized worldwide epidemic.
Steve is equally invested in his employees and takes a personal interest in enriching the communities in which they work and live. Steve is currently developing a new home for his company’s operations campus in Omaha, Nebraska with room for up to 2,000 of his employees. The 500-acre mixed-use development known as Heartwood Preserve is among the largest urban developments in the U.S., and will offer a one-of-a-kind destination for its residents to live, work, shop, and enjoy many recreational and cultural facilities (see heartwoodomaha.com). Unique in concept and design, Heartwood Preserve has won seven distinguished awards for innovation.
Steve has long recognized the importance of philanthropy and is deeply committed, and his thoughtful and philosophical approach has afforded Steve commercial success while achieving a careful balance of the various ethical considerations between obligations to people in need while still addressing the many offsetting issues such as recidivism. Steve has chosen to apply his accumulated resources, entrepreneurial skills, and connections to form the Steve Menzies Global Foundation to solve complex social problems facing people across the globe (see boldthinkers.org). Beginning from his observations of the shortcomings of ever-growing governments that are inconceivably large and mired in their own, self-interested bureaucratic processes, Steve’s foundation works to uncover the root of social problems—problems that others are unable to perceive, or, just find too difficult or too overwhelming, and has focused his efforts on the difficult problems of greatest need where few or no alternative exists.
Though his foundation, Steve’s efforts have so far focused on three initiatives: 1) Americans abroad held hostage by terrorists or criminal gangs or wrongfully detained by foreign governments. This initiative has resulted in the formation of the Global Reach foundation in 2023. 2) The analysis of the social effects of personal technology and the development of educational materials for global distribution with a specific emphasis on parents and children. In 2021 the St. Francis Day Foundation was formed in partnership with Pope Francis to address this worldwide social crisis induced by the misuse of social technology (see stfrancisday.org). 3) The reform of the American criminal justice system through efforts of deflection and collaboration. Preliminary development work proceeds this area with a full engagement planned to begin in 2025 or 2026.
For the exemplary work Steve has done on behalf of injured workers and for his provision of insurance in inner city neighborhoods, Steve was presented the St. Vincent De Paul medal, the highest award of the College of Mount St. Vincent, and the Guarini Medal from John Cabot University of Rome, Italy. He has received numerous commendations from many insurance and financial entities, including top recognition in the insurance and financial services industry’s leading publications, most recently awarded the Workers’ Compensation Exemplar from Work Comp Central in 2024, and also the Free Enterprise Award from the Insurance Federation of New York in 2022.
