Speakers

Karen Eckert is Senior Vice President of Personal Insurance Agent Distribution at Travelers. She oversees the Agent Distribution organization for Personal Insurance, which includes seven regional sales teams, inside sales, a national partners sales team, an agency enablement circle and a home office field sales operations group. Her team is comprised of 260 sales professionals who support over $14 billion in premium across more than 20,000 independent agency locations in the U.S.

 With over 35 years of agency experience in both Business and Personal Insurance, Karen joined Travelers in 2009 to lead the Central and Northeast Select Regions. She later became the head of PI Field Sales Operations before assuming her current role leading the Personal Insurance Agent Distribution Team in 2023.

Merril played in the NFL for 8 seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears; he was also a football analyst for ESPN for 21 years. Hoge is an inspirational speaker who speaks all over the country, impacting people and companies to grow through self-reflection and taking action to Find Their Way. He is also on the board of the Chuck Noll Foundation for Brain Injury Research and a member of the NFL Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. In 2018, Hoge helped launch Your Call Football and is the author of Find a Way: Three Words That Changed My Life and Brainwashed: The Bad Science Behind CTE and the Plot to Destroy Football. Hoge continues to find new ways to make a positive impact with his mind, heart, and energy. Through his educational work or motivational engagements, he is a force for positive change and inspiration. He lives in Fort Thomas, Kentucky.

A graduate of the University of Illinois, Brent has over 24years of experience in the insurance industry and has conducted hundreds of training sessions for producers, account managers, and agency leaders. Brent is a Certified Leadership Coach of the Maxwell Team and an accomplished public speaker who has shared the stage with John Maxwell and Seth Godin. He has been interviewed on popular podcasts such as Evolved Broker, Agent Growth Academy, and the Agency Intelligence Podcast Network. His thought leadership has also been featured in prominent industry publications, including Business Insurance America, and through his regular contributions to the Winning Strategies column in RoughNotes magazine.