Tyler M. Chalk.

My dad started his State Farm agency in 1976, and I grew up around the business before joining it myself in 2002. Over the next two decades I worked across the industry: Marsh's private client practice, specialty lines at Lane McVicker (later acquired by NFP), then commercial insurance at ISU and Maroevich O'Shea & Coghlan (later acquired by Symphony Risk) in San Francisco. Commercial is where I spent most of my time and did most of my best work, though I've placed just about everything: personal lines, life, health, and plenty of coverage that was genuinely hard to get done.

In 2015 I joined Embroker as employee #6, the company's first insurance hire. Embroker was the first true commercial insurtech: it raised over $150M and grew to more than 125 employees across the country and overseas. I took over direct sales and helped design and create what we called the "brain of a broker," the technology that turned a manual, fragmented placement process into something faster and more accurate. Ten years there taught me what insurance can be when it's built around modern tools instead of paperwork.

I built the California wildfire homeowners program because my own coverage has been non-renewed twice. A home isn't just a liability on a balance sheet. It's the foundation of a family, where your belongings and your memories live. And in California, it usually holds a great deal of equity, often the largest share of a family's net worth. So it matters, and the wrong coverage puts all of it at risk. Too often, homeowners are left with no real option but a California FAIR Plan policy with an attached DIC, a combination that virtually guarantees a bad outcome if a loss occurs.

I went independent in 2025, and today I work in partnership with Panta, a Y-Combinator-backed insurtech. The goal was to put it all together: the placement experience, the carrier relationships, and a conviction about where this is heading. I believe AI-augmented tools are about to let a good broker deliver ten times the value: deeper coverage insights, real audits, more accurate placements, meaningful cost savings. I've always been a strong broker, and these tools make me one of the best. I'd rather use them in a practice where every client gets real attention than anywhere else.

Career arc

• 2002–2008 State Farm, Chalk Agency (Pinole, CA)
• 2008–2010 Marsh, high-net-worth personal lines
• 2010–2012 Lane McVicker, specialty / HNW lines (yachts, aircraft, fine art)
• 2012–2014 ISU Insurance Services, San Francisco
• 2014–2015 Maroevich O'Shea & Coghlan
• 2015–2025 Embroker, Strategic Account Manager → VP of Direct Sales (employee #6, first insurance hire)
• 2025–present Independent producer (Powered by Panta); telematics consultant at AutoRisk Solutions

Education

CSU East Bay, Bachelor of Music, Trumpet Performance. I picked the music degree because that's what I cared about at the time, and built the insurance career on top of it. The through-line, which I didn't see at the time but believe now: domain mastery compounds regardless of where you start. The instinct to practice hard things the same way every day, and the patience to keep refining a placement until it actually fits, is the same instinct.