Ingersoll Named VP of Corporate Innovation

WALNUT CREEK, California, Aug. 6 -- CSAA Insurance Group, an insurance company, issued the following news:

CSAA Insurance Group, a AAA insurer, has named John Ingersoll its vice president of corporate innovation. Ingersoll has served as interim innovation leader at the company since May.

As vice president of corporate innovation, Ingersoll will lead the company's innovation growth strategy as it seeks to provide new sources of value to AAA members. He will report to the company's chief strategy and innovation officer, Debbie Brackeen. Brackeen also oversees the company's corporate venture capital and incubation group, which focuses on the mobility, insurtech, artificial intelligence and blockchain sectors.

Ingersoll joined CSAA Insurance Group as its brand marketing executive in 2013. He led the work to provide better insights into customers' experiences with the company, and to use that data to improve products and service and deliver better tools for serving AAA members.

He was among an inaugural group of employees to launch the company's Velocity program, a "growth engine" that brings employees from various business lines together for six months to learn agile thinking and to take entrepreneurial approaches to generating business ideas.

"John has demonstrated excellent strategic thinking, creativity and flexibility as we continue to evolve the way we do business in a rapidly changing insurance market," Brackeen said. "This, combined with his robust understanding of insurance and the marketplace, make him the ideal person to lead innovation and to make sure we are in a position to continually deliver value to customers."

Ingersoll has worked in insurance for his entire career, beginning as an insurance regulatory attorney working on company formations, new products, and mergers and acquisitions. Later, he held a range of corporate leadership roles in the areas of business development, sales, operations, marketing and customer experience. In addition to working at regional and national carriers, he was on the pre-IPO leadership team for InsWeb Corporation, one of the pioneers in lead aggregation for auto insurance.

He has a bachelor's in English from the University of California, Berkeley and a doctorate of law degree from UCLA.

"I've spent much of my career focused on understanding customers and the insurance marketplace with the goal of changing the way people think about insurance," Ingersoll said. "It's so exciting to apply that same pursuit to the front end of our business as we seek to continually improve our offerings and stay perpetually relevant to AAA members."