NOLHGA’s 2026 Annual Meeting & MPC Meeting

As Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Western & Southern Financial Group (Western & Southern), John Barrett serves on a wide range of boards and is highly active in the business and non-profit communities.

Barrett joined Western & Southern in 1987 as its Chief Financial Officer. He was named President in 1989, Chief Executive Officer in 1994, and Chairman in 2002. Under his guidance, Western & Southern has become a recognized leader in consumer and business financial services, providing life and health insurance, annuities, mutual funds, investment management, financial planning, and retirement solutions through its member companies.

Barrett serves on the Board of Directors of Cintas Corporation, with past board memberships that include The Andersons, Inc.; Cincinnati Bell; Convergys Corporation; Fifth Third Bancorp; and Touchstone Investment Trusts. He is a director and past chairman of the American Council of Life Insurers, a member of The Business Roundtable, a member of The Financial Services Roundtable, and a trustee for Americans for the Arts. He also serves as a member of the Board of Overseers for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. He is past president of the Association of Ohio Life Insurance Companies and a member and past chairman of the Ohio Business Roundtable.

A very active leader in the rejuvenation of downtown Cincinnati, Barrett launched the United Way Women’s Leadership Council to increase giving among top female contributors. He also founded The Herbert R. Brown Society in Cincinnati to encourage greater African-American engagement with the local United Way.

Dozens of Cincinnati area organizations and community causes benefit from Barrett’s civic leadership. Currently, he is spearheading a $105 million fundraising campaign to help the University of Cincinnati’s Barrett Cancer Center and other members of the Cincinnati Cancer Consortium pursue National Cancer Institute designation for cancer research excellence.

Christine Cappiello has spent more than 30 years working in and with the Connecticut General Assembly. She began her career in the Connecticut Legislature in 1990 and went to work for Anthem in Public Affairs in 1998. In her current position, she is responsible for all relationships at the Connecticut General Assembly and Connecticut State Agencies, the Connecticut Exchange, and the Connecticut Congressional Delegation. Her duties are mainly supporting, defeating, or mitigating legislation that affects the company and serving as the liaison between the company and the company’s regulator, the Connecticut Insurance Department. She also works closely with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) for Anthem nationally.

Cappiello’s other responsibilities include supporting the State Plan President and his team on external relationships with key stakeholders, including the Governor, other Constitutional offices, and many municipal and labor leaders as existing and potential customers. She also works on internal projects and resolves regulatory inquiries such as rate submissions, working closely with the State Plan President, Legal, and other business units.

Cappiello serves on the Boards of NOLHGA, the Governor’s Partnership for Prevention, The Connection, and the Connecticut Association of Health Plans; she also serves on the Boards of the California, Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Missouri, and Nevada guaranty associations. She graduated from the University of New Haven with a Bachelor’s Degree in political science.

John Deitelbaum is Head of Financial Services Law at Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. He is responsible for managing the legal teams supporting MassMutual’s career agency and third-party insurance distribution systems; MassMutual’s wealth management, pension risk transfer, and stable value businesses; reinsurance; and MassMutual’s marketing, data science, and digital corporate teams.

Deitelbaum previously led the Retirement Services and Insurance Products & Operations Sections of MassMutual’s Legal Department. Prior to his roles at MassMutual, he was at Barings, MassMutual’s investment subsidiary, where he led legal teams on SEC regulatory matters and private placement, private equity, and bank loan investment activities. From 1998–2000, he served as General Counsel of MassMutual’s subsidiary, David L. Babson & Company Inc., an SEC-registered investment advisor.

Before joining MassMutual, Deitelbaum was an associate at the law firm of Day, Berry & Howard in Hartford, Connecticut. He earned his B.A. degree, cum laude, in Political Science from Duke University; his J.D. from New York University School of Law; and his MBA from the New York University Stern School of Business.

Deitelbaum is Chair of the Boards of Directors of the Delaware, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania guaranty associations. He also serves on the Board and Executive Committee of the Guaranty Association Benefits Company (GABC).

As a member of the firm’s Global Macro Strategy Group, Juhi Dhawan leads Wellington Management’s analysis of the U.S. economy. Her work on growth, inflation, interest rates, and economic policy is a core input to portfolio managers and analysts across the firm. She is an active participant in investment strategy groups and works closely with investors to translate her work into investment ideas and themes. Additionally, she is a member of the firm’s Audit Committee.

Prior to joining Wellington Management in 1995, Dhawan held positions at the International Monetary Fund (1991–1992) and the World Bank (1992). She received her PhD (1995) and AM (1991) in economics at Brown University. She also holds a BA from the University of Delhi (1989).

Vince Kadlubek is a Founder of Meow Wolf, an art collective that has transformed into an award-winning art and entertainment production company that specializes in immersive, open-world walk through experiences. He acted as leader and CEO for Meow Wolf though its formidable years, having created the business plan for Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return and leading the team towards the project’s completion in March 2016.

In January 2017, Kadlubek formed Meow Wolf, Inc., as a full-fledged arts production company and creative studio positioned to create the largest, most innovative and audacious monumental art exhibits in the world. After raising Series A funding, he announced two new Meow Wolf exhibits in Las Vegas and Denver, which both opened in 2021.

Kadlubek has been a force of vision in the realm of experiential art, and in 2020 he launched a creative consulting agency called Spatial Activations as a platform to usher in a new era of experiential art in modern developments and everyday life. He is most passionate about co-creating fully realized alternative realities that bring paradigm-shifting transformation and inspiration to the world.

Annie Lee, JD, President and Chief Executive Officer, is responsible for advancing Colorado Access' corporate mission and providing executive oversight for all programs. She is known as a trusted and collaborative leader with extensive experience working within the Medicaid landscape in Colorado.

Prior to joining Colorado Access in 2022, Lee served as Executive Director of Community Health and Medicaid Strategies at Children’s Hospital Colorado for over five years. In that role, she led partnerships with schools, local public health agencies, and primary care providers to develop and support holistic models of care that address social determinants of health. She also served as Senior Director of Medicaid and Charitable Coverage Programs at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, where she led a payment reform initiative and advanced growth of Kaiser Permanente’s Medicaid and Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) membership. Prior to that, she worked at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing on both the CHP+ and Medicaid programs.

Lee was appointed to serve on the Board of the State of Colorado’s health insurance marketplace, Connect for Health Colorado, in 2017. She received her Juris Doctor (JD) from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and her undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Katharine Wade became President of the National Organization of Life & Health Insurance Guaranty Associations (NOLHGA) in August 2023. She is responsible for leading NOLHGA to fulfill its mission to support state guaranty associations in protecting policyholders in multi-state insolvencies and promoting the values and interests of the guaranty association system.

Wade is an insurance executive with more than 30 years of experience in insurance operations, compliance, public policy, and regulation. In her more than 20-year career with Cigna, a Fortune 100 global insurer, she oversaw federal and state government affairs, public policy, and compliance for the health and group life and disability businesses.

After Cigna, she served nearly four years as Connecticut’s 32nd Insurance Commissioner, responsible for consumer protection and the regulation of an industry that generated $170 billion in written direct premium in one of the nation’s top insurance markets. As Commissioner, she chaired the Health and Managed Care (B) and International Insurance Relations (G) Committees and served on the Executive Committee of the NAIC. She represented the state insurance regulatory system in testimony before Congress. In addition, she served as a member of the Executive and Policy Development Committees of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and on the U.S. Treasury Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance.

Prior to joining NOLHGA, as a Principal at Dunraven Strategies, Wade worked with large global insurers and start-ups to navigate regulatory complexity and understand how insurance markets work. Her work included launching companies and products, managing the risk of various regulatory issues, and providing strategic counsel on emerging business or regulatory issues.