Board of Advisors

RAMON A. PEREZ, PHD, CPCU, CLU

Dr. Ramón A. Pérez is Co-founder, Chairman & CEO of First Insurance Group, Inc., an insurance brokerage firm with operations in Puerto Rico. Dr. Pérez is also a Director of Manuel O. Matos, Brea & Asociados (an insurance brokerage firm operating in the Dominican Republic), Director of Risk and Reinsurance Solutions Corporation (a Miami, Florida based re-insurance intermediary), and Country Manager for Puerto Rico of the Willis’ Global Retail Network. Dr. Pérez holds a PhD and Master of Insurance Degrees, both from Georgia State University, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration (Finance) from the University of Puerto Rico.

HAROLD D. SKIPPER, PHD

Dr. Harold D. Skipper is former Professor of Risk Management and Insurance and former Chairman of the Department of Risk Management and Insurance at The Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University where he also held the C.V. Starr Chair of International Insurance. He retired from GSU in July 2005.

Dr. Skipper’s academic focus has been on insurance-related public policy issues. Besides several dozen articles, his publications include the three books: Privacy and the Insurance Industry, International Risk and Insurance: An Environmental/Managerial Approach, and Life and Health Insurance.

Dr. Skipper has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris and at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. In addition, he serves as a Research Fellow with the Chinese Center for Social Security and Insurance Research at Peking University and as a member of the Advisory Board to the Center for Insurance Research at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.

His non-academic experience includes a three-year appointment, while on leave, as an Economics Affairs Officer with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva, where he worked with developing countries to address their insurance regulatory issues. He has worked closely for several years with the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on insurance policy and trade issues. He also has worked with the World Bank, the U.S. Department of Commerce, state and international insurance supervisors, the NAIC, as well as several major corporations and law firms.

He is past President of the American Risk and Insurance Association and past Vice President of the International Insurance Society. He was the moving force in 1996-97 in the creation of the Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association for which its Board of Governors awarded lifetime membership to him and, more recently, named a research award in his honor.

His bachelor’s degree is from Georgia State University and his masters and Ph.D. degrees are from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania where he was a Huebner Fellow.