Who We Are

Meet our Board of Directors

How We Were Founded - and Why

Before 1996, members of the California Association of Independent Insurance Adjusters were discussing the lack of standards for professional excellence, education, and ethics among the ranks of professional claims adjusters.

They felt that anyone could claim to be an insurance adjuster, and that companies employing adjusters had no standard means by which to measure their professional competence. A Steering Committee was established, consisting of Gil Malmgren, Malmgren Group, Oakland, California: Peter Evans, D.L. Glaze/ASU Group, Novato, California: Daniel G. Price, CPCU, Pacific Claims Service, Inc, San Diego, California; John Joiner, Rooney & Anderson, Eureka, California; Robert L. Gresham, Jr. CPCU, R.L. Gresham & Company, Las Vegas, Nevada; and Eugene Riggs, AIC, Napa, California. After much soul searching, they formed the RPA, now known as the Society of Registered Professional Adjusters.

Not a "social club"

From the beginning, RPA had tangible professional underpinnings. Far from creating a social club, Malmgren, Evans, Price, and their peers set out to shape a serious organization focused on ensuring the professional excellence of its recognized members.

Over time, a national group of founding members established criteria under which claims adjusters could be awarded the "RPA Designation," the formal recognition that the adjuster meets all the established criteria for professional distinction.

Strict Requirements for the RPA Designation

Professional adjusters are awarded the RPA Designation after a set minimum number of years of service as professional adjusters. They also must successfully complete a number of yearly Continuing Education courses and pass a highly sophisticated, professionally administered comprehensive three-hour examination. Specific requirements are here.

By early 2002, when this site was launched, RPA had awarded the coveted "RPA Designation" to over 1300 adjusters worldwide.

What does RPA do? Click here.

Meet Our Board of Directors

Daniel G. Price, CPCU, RPA, AIC - Chairman of the Board

Daniel G. Price is currently Senior Vice President for marketing for American Claims Management and the President of the Pacific Claims Service division of ACM. He has been with that company since 1976. He received his B.S. in physical anthropology with pre-med studies from the University of California, Davis. Price has extensive multiline claims experience, including auto, general liability, workers' compensation, life and health, and medical/dental malpractice investigations. He has been awarded the Associate in Claims Designation by the Insurance Institute of America and holds the CPCU designation awarded by the American Institute of Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters. Price also is past president, San Diego Insurance Adjusters Association; past president, San Diego Pond, Honorable Order of Blue Goose, International; past president, Affiliated Adjusters, Inc.; President, National Association of Independent Insurance Adjusters, and past president, California Association of Independent Insurance Adjusters.

Mike Csom, President

Mike Csom has spent 37 years in the claims business. Retired as Chairman of The ASU Group in 2001, he is past president of the NAIIA. He is presently active as permanent conference chair of NAIIA, and the PLRB planning committee. Mr. Csom is a graduate of New Haven College with advanced study at Western Michigan University.

Richard Sunny, Treasurer

A 25+ year claims veteran, Richard Sunny is Operations Vice President/Manager of Claims, San Francisco, CA, for FM Global Insurance Company. A 1978 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned a dual BS in physics and BS in biochemistry/biophysics and MBA (1990), Sunny is a recipient of the Arkwright Insurance President's Award. Among his catastrophe coordination credits are Hurricane Hugo, 1989; the San Francisco earthquake, 1989; Hurricane Andrew, 1992; the Chicago flood, 1992; Southeast snowstorms, 1993; Los Angeles earthquake, 1994; Reno floods 1997; Hurricane Georges, 1998; and Hurricane Floyd, 1999. Sunny helped set up FM Global's Ground Zero Operations Center in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. A charter board member of RPA, he has been on the Board since 1998 and was named Treasurer in 2001.

Gary R. Kerney, Education Committee Head

After graduating from Rutgers College, Mr. Kerney began his career as an independent adjuster and value appraiser with GAB Business Services, Inc. He has been with Property Claim Services (PCS) since 1981. At PCS, he has been responsible for catastrophe identification, loss estimating, and catastrophe response and mitigation activities. He manages PCS divisional operations while remaining involved with catastrophe issues affecting both the private and public sectors. Kearney holds the professional designation of Associate In Claims (AIC) from the Insurance Institute of America. He is a member of the Loss Executives Association and currently serves as that organization's President. He is a member of the Response and Recovery Committee of the Institute for Business and Home Safety. In addition, Kearney is an associate member of the National Emergency Management Association, and he serves on NEMA's Private Sector Committee.

Douglas G. Houser, General Counsel

Douglas Houser is a senior partner in the Portland office of Bullivant Houser Bailey P.C., a well-known West Coast law firm with offices in California, Oregon and Washington. He received his B.A. from Willamette University in 1957 and J.D. from Stanford School of Law in 1960. Houser focuses his practice on large "bet the company" types of disputes, using his years of experience, practical common sense and negotiating skills to obtain effective, imaginative solutions to complex problems.

Houser is frequently involved in the resolution of complex disputes involving large claims. For example, he is acting as arbitrator in the $64 million claim for the Ted Williams tunnel collapse in Boston. Houser has tried cases in 20 different states and been involved in hundreds of trials, mediations and arbitrations in North America, Asia, the United Kingdom, Europe and South America. He is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and American Law Institute. He is on the Board of Trustees for Willamette University, a member of the Board of Directors of NIKE, Inc., and on the Board of Overseers of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice.

Charles M. Donohue, Board Member

Charles M. Donohue joined John P. Woods Co., Inc. in July 1985 as Vice President in charge of claims, prior to which he was a vice president for a professional reinsurance company and was involved in both treaty and facultative reinsurance. Donohue also was associated for 15 years with Liberty Mutual and The Home Insurance Company. Donohue is a graduate of Baruch College, City University of New York with a B.B.A. in business administration. He has served as president of the Excess Surplus Lines Claims Association and is an active member of the RAA and IRU Claim Association.

Donna Popow, Board Member

Donna Popow: joined the American Institute for CPCU and the Insurance Institute of America in 2002. As a Director of Curriculum, she maintains the textbooks, course guides, and examinations for the Introduction to Claims course and the Associate in Claims (AIC) designation program.

Ms. Popow also serves as the Director of Intellectual Property for the Institutes. Before joining the Institutes, Donna was vice president and litigation manager, Home Office Claims, for the Marine Office of America Corporation/CNA in Monmouth Junction, N.J. Her previous positions include serving as a claims consultant for The Graham Company in Philadelphia, Pa.; managing attorney for the law firm of Lewis and Wood, also in Philadelphia; and deputy executive director of the Unsatisfied Claim and Judgment Fund, New Jersey Department of Insurance, Trenton, N.J.

Donna has also held claims-related positions with Hanover Insurance Company in Piscataway, N.J.; Accredited Movers, a franchise of North American Van Lines in Parsippany, N.J.; and Liberty Mutual Insurance Company in South Plainfield, N.J. Donna earned an A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College in 1977. She received the Insurance Institute of America's Certificate in General Insurance in 1983 and became a Property Claims Law Associate in 1985. She was awarded her J.D. by Seton Hall Law School in 1988 and was admitted to the Bar in New Jersey and Pennsylvania the same year. Donna earned IIA's AIC designation in 2002, and the American Institute's Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU®) designation in 2003.

Dean C. Ramsay, CPCU, RPA, Board Member

Dean Ramsay has been involved with P&C claims for over 30 years, since graduating from Northern Michigan University in 1974 with a B.S. in Business Administration/Management.

After college, he joined GAB Business Services, Inc. (now GAB Robins) and became a manager and general adjuster before joining The St. Paul in 1983 as a property/general liability supervisor in Milwaukee. Ramsay then moved to the Denver western region where he was a property supervisor for several years before being named Property Claim Manager in 1986 for the St. Paul Companies subsidiary, Atwater McMillian, Inc., a surplus and excess lines underwriting company.

In 1988 he was made part of The St. Paul home office property corporate claim management team, where he assumed a number of leadership roles including: Property Claim Manager, Environmental Claim Manager, Senior Property Claim Manager, Director of General Adjusters, Director of General Adjusters and Catastrophe Operations, Assistant Vice President, and Vice President of Property Claims for The St. Paul. With the recent St. Paul merger with the Travelers, Mr. Ramsay has been named a 2nd Vice President in the St. Paul Travelers Commercial Property Major Case Unit.

Ramsay's industry activities currently include membership on the Loss Executive Association (LEA) executive committee board, where he serves as Secretary. He is also on the Advisory Committee of the National Forum for Property Loss Professionals, and participates on the AIA Property claim subcommittee.

Dean Ramsay was awarded the CPCU designation from the American Institute of Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters in 1994 and the RPA designation in 2001 from the Society of Registered Professional Adjusters.

Elise M. Farnham, AIM, ARM, CPCU, CPIW, Board Member

With more than 30 years of experience in the risk management and insurance industry, Elise Farnham is presently a National Account Executive for GAB Robins, North America, in its Total Claims Management division.

Farnham began her career in the insurance industry in 1973 with Crawford and Company, where she became a multi-line adjuster. In 1978, she was promoted as the first female claims branch manager for the company. She has worked in Texas, New York, and Georgia in various management positions, and has held senior level positions with The Harmonie Group and CSB Group.

Ms. Farnham is currently Governor for the Southeast Region of the Society of CPCU and Past President of the Atlanta Chapter of CPCU. She has served on several national task forces and most recently served on the Ethics Certification Task Force and the CPCU Claims Section Committee. Elise is a member of the ARM, AIC, and CPCU Advisory Boards, which assist the American Institute for CPCU in reviewing and planning ARM, AIC, and CPCU course material. She serves on the Board of Ethical Inquiry for the American Institute for CPCU.

Farnham is Past President of the National Association of Insurance Women (International) (1998/1999) having served on the Board of Directors for five years. She was Regional Vice President of Region 1. Prior to that, she served two terms as President of NAIW-NYC. Currently, she serves as a member of the Board of Directors and Parliamentarian for the Insurance Professionals of Atlanta . In 2002 and 2004, she was named Insurance Woman of Atlanta and, in 1993, she was chosen National Claims Professional of the Year. .

Ms. Farnham is an associate member of The Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) and is a member of its professional development faculty, teaching the “WC Management” course. She is a member of the Georgia Pond of the International Order of the Blue Goose. She is a frequent speaker and her articles have been published in Business Insurance, Claims Magazine, CPCU Claims Section Quarterly, and Today's Insurance Professional.

Doug Jackson, Board Member

Douglas Jackson is President of Southwest Claims Service, Inc., a Southern California based independent insurance adjusting company that provides claims adjusting and consultation services to commercial and personal line insurers with a primary focus on property and casualty lines. With 28 years of insurance claims experience, he has worked for both commercial and homeowner insurance carriers. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business through California State University , Long Beach.

Currently the President of the California Association of Independent Insurance Adjusters (CAIIA), the organization that spearheaded development of the RPA organization, he has a commitment to the elevation of the claims adjuster community through education and mentoring. He was instrumental in the recent implementation of the SEED program (Seminar for the Evaluation of Earthquake Damage in compliance with CCR §2695), coordinated the education program, and was one of a team of instructors that provided education to the claims community throughout the state of California . He was also part of a team assembled by the California DOI to write the new test for claims agent (adjuster) licensing. Having sat on the original CAIIA Board of Directors that authorized the formation of the RPA, he has a personal interest in seeing that the vision of the organization be embraced and honored.

Page updated May 13, 2005