Welcome to the inaugural year of Workers’ Comp Executive’s Most Influential People in California Workers’ Compensation. We started by selecting a number—the top 50--but quickly realized that there were more than that. The process wasn’t easy, considering the large pool of qualified people we had to choose from. This project was a joint effort by publishers, editors, journalism interns, programmers and designers who worked on weekends and through vacations to complete it.
We tried to select categories that covered every aspect of California workers’ comp. Some categories were easy to choose and easy to fill. Others were more difficult due to the existence of experts who frequently ply their trades successfully behind the scenes. We designated 13 categories for our nominees: attorneys, employers, insurance carriers, lobbyists, legislative staffers, regulators, self-insureds, associations, utilization review experts, labor representatives, claims experts, doctors and brokers.
After spending several weeks sifting through sources and consulting other experts, Workers’ Comp Executive assembled a list. The criteria were based on prominence in the industry, including expertise in a particular area, contributions and influence on legislation and policy, and leadership and representation. Some of our nominees encompassed all of these criteria while others were influential and recognized in a few.
Once the individuals were selected, the real work began. We came up with a series of questions to ask each individual based on the categories we had chosen. A set of questions were asked of all nominees and a series of separate questions based on their category. We also included biographical information on each person. To add a personal touch, we asked for a favorite book or quote. Some gave us both. We had two college journalism interns working with us on the project—John “Jack” Duffy from Notre Dame and Paul Stremple from the University of California, Los Angeles. We also had a high school intern Kevin Hollingshead from Granite Bay High School tracking down and cleaning up photos and compiling profiles.
They spent eight hours a day tracking people down and scheduling and conducting interviews. Some of our nominees were not comfortable answering some of the questions and others declined or did not have time to participate. But based on the influence of the individuals, we opted to include them anyway along with a picture and as much information as we could gather.
Some of the nominees were extremely detailed in their responses while others were notable for their brevity. As we have noted, we had to make some tough choices.
Our thanks to all those nominees who took the time to participate in our project, especially those who worked around tough schedules.
Click here to view Workers’ Comp Executive’s Most Influential People in California Workers’ Compensation.