Nationwide Hackathon

Executive Judge Bios and Photos

Jeff Wilcoxon

Jeff Wilcoxon is the Vice President Strategic Partnerships on Nationwide’s Corporate Development team. He and his team drive strategy and execution for strategic partnerships aimed at supporting business strategies and identifying new sources of value for Nationwide. The partnerships team is accountable for identifying prospective partners, structuring deals across a range of complexity, setting customer and business requirements for our partnership platform, and monitoring and delivering value from in-market partnerships over time. 

Prior to this role, he was a Nationwide Corporate Strategy vice president supporting Corporate Development, Innovation, Marketing and Customer. Jeff joined Nationwide in 2017 from General Motors, where he led the Applied Insights & Innovation group for the Global Connected Consumer Experience team. Prior to GM, Jeff’s path included banking, entrepreneurship, operations consulting and strategy consulting. In his “spare time”, Jeff works with his brother by playing the roles of CFO and CMO for Johnson’s Real Ice Cream, a company founded by their great-grandfather and grandfather in 1950. He also enjoys tennis and traveling with his wife and four kids. 

Jeff has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, cum laude, with a minor in Business Administration from Vanderbilt University, and a Master of Business Administration focused on Operations and Entrepreneurship from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.

Sarah Jacobs

Sarah Jacobs is Vice President of Personal Lines Product Development. She has over 22 years of Property & Casualty experience at Nationwide across Product, Underwriting, Claims, Servicing and Operations, with a proven track record of strategy, execution, and improving results through innovation and collaboration.

As leader of the Personal Lines Product Development team, Sarah is responsible for our industry-leading telematics program, smart home and other product enhancements, and business insights. This includes the development of capabilities to support continuous, proactive monitoring of product performance to deliver actionable business insights, and a robust competitive intelligence framework to identify emerging trends, issues, and opportunities. These insights are used to transform and advance risk assessment capabilities across the personal lines value chain and develop new products that meet the rapidly evolving needs of our customers.

Sarah earned her MBA from Regis University and holds the CPCU designation.

Nigel Walsh

Nigel is the Managing Director for Insurance at Google Cloud, responsible for leading the firms to approach Insurance, leveraging the best in market capability from Google's Cloud proposition, addressing mission-critical Insurance challenges, from claims and underwriting to leveraging our AI and ML know how - driving better business outcomes. Nigel also works with the broader Alphabet companies to bring their experience and insights to partner with our existing insurance customers.

Prior to this, Nigel was a Partner in Deloitte Digital where he led on a number of areas for the firm including Global Future of Insurance and InsurTech. He has contributed to a number of books on insurance and technology including The InsurTech Book and the AI Books published by Wiley. He also co-authored a report on the Sharing Economy and the oppo􀅶unity for Insurers for Lloyds of London. He has a background in end-to-end technology transformation from core systems through to digital transformation initiatives including helping clients to identify and launch new products to market and establish new businesses from scratch, for insurers and more recently non insurers.

You can find Nigel talking about Insurance regularly online as Co-Host for InsurTech Insiders Podcast - here, through his articles and PoV on LinkedIn here, or regular conversation on all things Insurance & InsurTech on Twitter here.

Brandon Banks

Brandon Banks leads the Property & Casualty Innovation organization within Nationwide’s Enterprise Innovation & Digital Organization.  In this capacity, Brandon is responsible for driving sustainable innovations to advance strategic imperatives of the P&C and Pet businesses. Brandon joined Nationwide in May of 2021. Prior to Nationwide, Brandon held roles of increasing responsibility in the property & casualty and health insurance sectors.

Most recently, Brandon was accountable for the innovation practice within The Hartford’s Small Commercial business division creating human centered risk management products for underserved market segments. Previously, he held the role of lead strategist to Small Commercial with the primary responsibility to drive growth initiatives across core lines of business and distribution channels.

Brandon’s career in strategy and execution began in health insurance with Aetna, a CVS Health Company. Through an array of roles that spanned a decade across technology, strategy, and public policy, Brandon contributed to merger & acquisition due diligence, vertical and horizontal integrations, and enterprise program delivery to modernize the company for consumer-driven health.

Brandon earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Yale University School of Management and a Bachelor’s degree in International Business from Bentley University.

Jennifer Yaross

Jennifer serves as the CFO supporting the Office of Strategy and Corporate Development at Nationwide Insurance. In her role, Jennifer supports the Innovation, User Experience, Digital, Strategic Partnership, Ventures, Mergers and Acquisition, Strategy, Nationwide Brokerage Solutions and Pet Insurance teams. In this capacity, she serves on the leadership teams providing council and thought leadership regarding business model viability, financial soundness and value creation while providing strategic input into the direction of these businesses/capabilities in line with their mission to serve as strategic enablers to the broader lines of business at Nationwide.

In her previous role, Jennifer served as the CFO supporting Investments and Innovation. The role was charged with oversight of the Finance, Controls and Business Planning functions for both areas. Jennifer was the leader managing the Investments and Innovation operating plans and forecasts, serving on both leadership teams and partnering on the vision and execution of strategic priorities. Jennifer was responsible for driving all cross-functional initiatives and change management efforts in Investments, as well as providing oversight for all Board, client and departmental communications.

Through past opportunities, Jennifer served as the Investment Controller charged with setting the strategy for the Investment Controllership department and led a team of 30 associates that consult on complex strategic investment initiatives. Jennifer's department was responsible for the production, reporting, analysis and internal controls associated with GAAP and Statutory records for a 100 billion dollar investment portfolio that includes bonds, mortgage loans, alternatives and derivatives. She also served as the AVP, Technical Accounting Policy and Research Controller and led a team which influenced and monitored pending accounting guidance and the adoption of new accounting guidance. She also supported the Nationwide Business Units on technical accounting analysis that arose in relation to significant transactions. Jennifer has 20 years of experience in the insurance industry in various roles of increasing responsibility at Nationwide and as an audit manager in the Chicago office of Deloitte.

Jennifer was influential in developing and executing cross functional strategies focused on communication, preemptive recruiting, education and career development that impact more than 250 associates across the combined Nationwide Controllership areas. These strategies included the formation of a pipeline recruiting strategy, an education program focused on a Nationwide-centric curriculum utilizing internal expertise and knowledge sharing, and the deployment of a Controllership specific competency program used by associates to navigate development discussions and influence career decisions.

A graduate of The Ohio State University, Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Accounting degree and has her CPA license. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and held a position on the AICPA's Insurance Experts Panel. Jennifer serves as the Executive Sponsor for the Columbus Office All Women Associate Resource Group and serves on the Boards of Goodwill Columbus and The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio. She is married and resides in Upper Arlington with her husband, Todd, and their two sons, Alex (10) and Jackson (8).

Brian Disbrow

Brian Disbrow is the Associate Vice President, Information Technology for the Enterprise Partnerships organization within Nationwide.  In this role, Brian is responsible for Nationwide's API strategy, and the technology stack to support Nationwide Brokerage Solutions, Strategic Partnerships, and Ventures/M&A. Brian has been with Nationwide for over 20 years, his career spanning architecture, application development and infrastructure & operations.