Ashish Vaja CIC, TRS

Experience

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  International Academy of Chess

  Jan 2002 - Jan 2007

  Instructor

  Designed curriculums, teaching in schools, camps, groups, and privately. Lead instructor who would train other teachers on how to effectively teach chess to different age groups and different competitive levels. Traveled with chess teams to state and national events. Students have won hundreds of chess tournaments, many state level and national titles. Two students when on to become world youth champions representing the US in Youth Olympiads.

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  Mayflower Insurance

  Jan 2003 - Jan 2007

  Customer Service Representative

  Licensed in Property & Casualty a few days after my 18th birthday. Managed customer service inquiries, claims, auto, home, and small business insurance quoting. Conducted door-to-door and cold call prospecting.Conducted on-site property inspection & photos post-binding and used the opportunity to ask for referrals from the customer's neighbors.Designed and maintained quote quick quote forms for auto, home, umbrella, and different small commercial niches.

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  Geekster IT

  Jan 2007 - Jan 2015

  Chief Executive Officer

  Specialized in inbound and outbound marketing funnels, SEO consulting, also managing online presence for insurance agencies and trucking companies.Developed and tracked insurance marketing campaigns and utilized A/B testing increasing conversion. Designed and maintained technology solutions allowing work from home and sales agents in the field. Technologies included: VoIP (RingCentral & 8x8), Remote Access Tools (RDS, LogMeIn, GoToMyPC), and hardware and software VPN solutions. Conducted needs analyses to improve business processes and services, including independent research, customer feedback, and developing information architecture.Designed content management plans for reducing internal IT support requests, making operations more agile through improved data accessibility, and improving marketing spending through more customized SEO-friendly content produced internally. Show less

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  Mayflower Insurance

  Apr 2015 - Apr 2020

  Insurance Agency Principal/CEO

  Transformed the agency by realigning the focus to 80% commercial insurance and 20% preferred personal lines accounts, allowing the agency to grow from $2 million to $12 million after being stagnant for several years.#1 producing Indiana agent for Acuity Insurance in 2017, highlighted in Acuity's “Heavy Hitters.” Expert in transportation insurance served on the Motor Carrier Insurance Education Foundation (MCIEF) Technology Committee.Provided authoritative leadership in leveraging publicly available data from American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to build internal and external products, platforms, and services.Strong front-line underwriter known by MGA’s for complete submissions that went above and beyond standard Experienced asking for financials, IFTA’s, maintenance records, corrective action plans, safety information, working with loss control, and more.Transitioned from a paper-based company to an entirely paperless and digital agency.Leveraged APIs to design automations removing double data entry and automating regular tasks.Implemented content lifecycle internally and externally, decreasing staff onboarding time andcross-training staff and reducing customer inquiries.Designed and implemented workflows and automated accountability through software solutions.Automated sales process by collecting data points from earliest touch points allowing for strategic use of friction based on risk profiles and lead personas.Increased average customer account size by over $10,000 through data analysis whilereducing average agency loss ratio by implementing customer and lead scoring.Designed sales strategy utilizing Salesforce, Hubspot, Zapier, Formstack, box Enterprise, and custom databases, significantly decreasing marketing costs.Obtained, negotiated, and maintained hard-to-obtain: direct carrier contracts and custom program contracts and developed strong relationships leading MGAs. Show less

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  Phat Loot DeFi

  Jul 2021 - Dec 2022

  Chief Blockchain Officer

  The position required work across broad functions and processes in areas where they often did not exist, requiring exceptional intensive effort supporting internal and external groups concurrently.Managed ever-changing priorities between executives, senior leadership, investors, and stakeholders. Acted as the arbitration for managing stakeholder expectations and development.Led a cross-functional team of game designers, artists, game developers, blockchain developers, content creators, economists, and marketing.Managed business development team, spoke at significant events like NFT NYC as the face of the company, and sought out partnerships to increase visibility and interoperability, thereby increasing revenue.Reported to CEO and provided only general direction/vision with wide latitude for independent judgment with work of great difficulty and mission-critical responsibility.Managed development team scoping & designing solutions, facilitating communication between the development team and other executives.Technology senior expert on blockchain strengths, weaknesses, and application to other executive team members and seniors within the company. Designed multi-chain & off-chain scalability solutions. Show less

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  North Technologies B.V.

  Oct 2022 - now

  Chief Blockchain Officer

  Led a cross-functional team of designers, front-end developers, back-end developers, blockchain developers, dev ops, data analysts, marketing, project managers, and business analysts.Managed ever-changing, conflicting priorities between executives, senior leadership, and stakeholders.Planned and led the UX/UI design and iterations by analyzing user feedback and research in the rapidly changing blockchain space for a high-frequency trading and data analytics product.Designed a hybrid cloud & bare metal infrastructure solution for managing 14 TB of data in a high-performance, high-availability environment, saving over $100K/month in AWS costs and improving performance.Led an agile engineering team within budget and tight deadlines while balancing technical debt. Show less

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  Dream Assurance

  Mar 2023 - now

  Building out a commercial insurance division from the ground up.

  • Chief Operating Officer

    Jul 2023 - now

  • Senior Vice President

    Mar 2023 - Jul 2023