Henna Karna

Managing Director, Global Insurance and Risk Management Industry Solutions, Google

Role: Associate

Site: CDL-Wisconsin

Stream: Risk

Henna A. Karna is a highly respected global leader with more than 25 years of experience leading innovation across digital/data in high-tech, CPG, risk management, and insurance industries (across P&C, specialty, life, health, retirement, consumer, commercial, brokers, vendors, and independent agents). She has led businesses and advised Fortune 100 companies on digital innovation and disruption and has designed and developed patent-pending technology and applications in the field of genetic algorithms, behavioural analytics, deep neural nets and digital data technologies.

Henna currently serves as Managing Director, Re/Insurance & Risk Management Solutions at Google, leading Google Cloud’s global Insurance Strategy, products and solutions roadmap, including a cloud-based SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) data and analytics platform for insurers, reinsurers, brokers, etc. Previously, she served as Executive Vice President, Partner, and Chief Data Officer at AXA XL, the property and casualty, specialty risk, risk management and consulting entity of global insurance giant AXA SA (OTCQX: AXAHY), with $147.9B in revenues and 165,934 employees. Henna led a team of 300 and was the architect and strategist behind the end-to-end digital strategy, design, execution, and business evolution and led all aspects of the firm’s digital transformation (talent evolution, data and digital strategy, and business impacts). Her development of the digital-data ecosystem and engagement platform, a big data and analytics multi-sided/tiered platform for end-customer digital applications and data commercialization, has won several industry awards, including CELENT Model Insurer – Innovation (2019). Henna also was top three finalist for the Insurance Nexus Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2019 and recently Top Insurance Women Executives in 2020.

Over the course of her career, Henna has served as President of Verisk Digital Services at the data and analytics and risk management firm Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ: VRSK) where she envisioned and developed the industry’s first real-time, patent-pending digital analytics application. Prior to that, as Vice President, Digital Customer Strategy for Verisk Analytics, she led go-to-market strategy and execution of a $650M portfolio of products across 16 lines of businesses. Previously, she served as the Managing Director & Global Actuarial CIO for AIG (NYSE: AIG), where she led the development of a transformation to drive $44M in annual bottom line benefits across more than 50 systems in 12 countries. Earlier in her career, Henna held positions at Affinnova, John Hancock Insurance and held Cryptology related roles for the government. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Statistics in the entrepreneurial program at Babson College.

Henna has served as an advisor for the Creative Destruction Lab and Global Insurance Accelerator, and is a member of the MIT Dean’s Circle, Forbes Technology Council, Pi Mu Epsilon, and MENSA. Her work has been published in more than three dozen cognitive science and mathematics research publications, as well as CEO and CFO magazine. She has been a keynote speaker at key international, industry events, including DigIn, Insurance Analytics Symposium, Women in Leadership ACORD, and Global FinTechs. Previously, Henna was listed in Insurance Networking News’ “Top 15 People in Insurance Technology” and “Top 20 Executives”. Recently, her mission at Google was shared as the cover story for the global insurance publication, Carrier Magazine.

Henna holds an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a bachelor’s in Mathematical Sciences from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and a master’s and doctorate from University of Massachusetts.

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