The Team

PilotLegis Team

Aon Team

Alison Buchanan

Chair

Alison Buchanan is the Chair of PilotLegis RPG and a member of the Board. Alison also serves as Chair of Pilot’s Claims Management Committee. She is a shareholder with Hoge, Fenton, Jones & Appel, Inc., where she serves as the firm’s General Counsel and is Chair of the firm’s Business Litigation Practice Group. Alison focuses her practice on business litigation, professional liability/professional malpractice, and legal ethics.

Alison is a Certified Specialist in Legal Malpractice Law, as certified by the California State Bar’s Board of Legal Specialization. She is the current Chair of the Ethics Committee for the California Lawyers Association. From September 2011 to September 2014, Alison served a three-year term as a member of the California State Bar’s Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct (COPRAC). Alison is a member of the Santa Clara County Bar Association and was the 2016 and 2015 Chair of its Professionalism Committee. Alison is also a member of the Bar Association of San Francisco. Alison frequently lectures throughout the state of California and publishes articles on the subject of attorney ethics. Alison recently completed six years’ of service on the Board of Directors for the Humane Society Silicon Valley.

Alison earned her undergraduate degree from University of California at Irvine and her J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Jessa Baker

Vice Chair

Jessa Baker is the Vice Chair of PilotLegis RPG and a member of the Board. She is the Chief Operating Officer at Applegate & Thorne-Thomsen, a boutique affordable housing and community development firm based in Chicago. As COO Jessa leads the firm’s strategic planning, operations, succession planning, compensation design and talent strategy. She is a member of the management committee and partner compesnation committee.

Prior to joining Applegate & Thorne-Thomsen Jessa advised law firms and their leaders in the United States, Caribbean and Latin America on strategy development, mergers, governance, talent structure design, associate and partner compensation systems, partnership issues and financial matters as a consultant with LawVision and Hildebrandt Baker Robbins.

Jessa holds a BS in Human and Organizational Development from Vanderbilt University, a JD from University of Wisconsin and an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.

Margaret Hepper

Executive Director

Since August 1999, Margaret Hepper has served as PilotLegis’ Executive Director. Her responsibilities include recruiting and underwriting new members, developing risk management programming for the membership, overseeing the group’s day-to-day administration, and strategic planning. Ms. Hepper sits ex officio on PilotLegis’ Board of Directors and all other committees.

Ms. Hepper served on the ABA Standing Committee for Professional Liability from 2004-2007, during which she twice served as Conference Chair.

Prior to PilotLegis, Ms. Hepper spent seven years in the field of law firm risk management, working with midsized and large law firms around the country. Between 1986 and 1992, Ms. Hepper practiced law in Minneapolis-St. Paul. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and William Mitchell College of Law.

Ryan Kovach

Assistant Executive Director

Ryan joined PilotLegis as the Assistant Executive Director at the beginning of 2024 and sits ex officio on PilotLegis’ Board of Directors and all other committees. He brings over 15 years of experience in risk management at AmLaw 100 law firms. His teams handled key risk functions including client intake, conflicts, the review and negotiation of outside counsel guidelines, anti-money laundering due diligence, and security questionnaires. Ryan conducted risk audits mandated by the firm’s captive insurance group for all domestic and international offices.

He is a graduate of Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago Kent College of Law and Loras College. Additionally, Ryan is a Certified Information Privacy Manager, Certified Information Privacy Professional – United States and obtained an Executive Certificate in Leadership and Management.

Brandon Martin

Assistant to Executive Director

Brandon Martin joined Aon in 2013 as an Executive Assistant. After graduating with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Communication Studies he has supported numerous business units which include Customer Service, Shared Services, Implementation, Workday, HR Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Professional Services, in addition to C-Level executives. In his current role with PilotLegis, Martin assists Margaret Hepper with ongoing marketing efforts, event management, and any administrative needs for the PilotLegis organization.

Gulden Apprendi

Vice President

Gulden Apprendi is an Associate for Aon’s Professional Services Group in New York. She represents mid-sized law and consulting firms focusing on Professional Liability and Cyber Security insurance lines. Prior to joining Aon in early 2016, Gulden worked as an assistant at a global law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. Gulden has a Registered Professional Liability Underwriter designation and holds degrees from Florida International University and Birkbeck, University of London.

Phone: 212.441.1393 Email: [email protected]

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Jim Belding

Senior Vice President and Executive Director

James C. Belding is a Senior Vice President and Executive Director in the Commercial Risk Solutions, Professional Services Group at Aon, specializing in all aspects of the placement of professional liability insurance for law firms.

Phone: 201.460.6726 Email: [email protected]

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Matt Corbin

Senior Vice President

Matthew K. Corbin is a Senior Vice President with Aon’s Professional Services Group. As a member of Aon’s loss prevention team, Matt consults with Aon’s law firm clients on a wide range of professional responsibility and liability issues. Before joining Aon in 2013, Matt was a partner with Lathrop Gage LLP in Kansas City, Missouri, and Overland Park, Kansas. He was a business trial and appellate lawyer handling commercial, business tort, employment, construction, insurance, professional liability, and regulatory matters. Before joining the firm, Matt clerked for the Hon. Mary Beck Briscoe of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the late Hon. G. Thomas Van Bebber in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.

Phone: 816.225.5815 Email: [email protected]

Dan Klauss

Managing Director

Daniel D. Klauss is a Managing Director working in California’s Bay Area for Aon’s Professional Services Group. His exclusive focus since 1988 has been advising and representing mid-sized and large law firms on insurance and risk management issues. Prior to that, Mr. Klauss worked in the general property casualty industry as an underwriter, a claims examiner and an instructor for the Insurance Institute of Canada.

Phone: 415.215.2881 Email: [email protected]

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Fran Murray

Senior Vice President and Executive Director

Fran Murray is a Vice President in Aon’s Professional Services Group focusing exclusively on Property, Casualty, and Specialty Lines insurance products for his law firm client base. Fran started his career as a property adjuster, adjusting law firm claims in New England. He transitioned to an underwriter of law firms for a leading global insurance carrier for eight years, and now for the past four years has exclusively represented Aon law firm clients on a wide variety of risk management needs.

Phone: 212.441.2555 Email: [email protected]

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Brian Padgett

Associate

Brian M. Padgett is an Associate on Aon’s mid-sized law firm team where he works on employment practices/management liability and professional liability insurance placements. He joined Aon in May 2017. Prior to joining the company, Brian spent nine years as an aviation insurance underwriter.

Phone: 212.441.2129 Email: [email protected]

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Doug Richmond

Managing Director

Douglas R. Richmond is Managing Director of Aon’s Professional Services Group and leads Aon’s loss prevention team. Before joining Aon, Doug was a partner with Armstrong Teasdale LLP in Kansas City, Missouri (1989–2004), where he had a national trial and appellate practice. Doug is the lead author of the book Professional Responsibility in Litigation (2d ed. 2016), and the co-author of an insurance law treatise, Understanding Insurance Law (6th ed. 2018). He teaches Legal Ethics at the Northwestern University School of Law and a seminar on Liability Insurance Law at the University of Florida College of Law. Doug earned his J.D. at the University of Kansas.

Phone: 312.339.2003 Email: [email protected]

Tom Ricketts

Senior Vice President and Executive Director

Tom Ricketts is the Cyber Practice Leader and co-leads the Property and Casualty Department within the Professional Services practice in New York, providing risk management and insurance advice for all Property and Casualty lines of coverage to the division’s clients; including placing cyber insurance for more than 100 law firms from AmLaw 10 to AmLaw 200.

Phone: 212.441.1744 Email: [email protected]

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Mark Webster

Vice President and Director

Mark A. Webster is a Vice President with Aon’s Professional Services Group. As a member of the group’s loss prevention team, Mark consults with Aon’s law firm clients on a wide range of professional responsibility and liability issues in an effort to identify and minimize the risks threatening law firms. Before joining Aon, Mark was a partner with Lathrop Gage LLP in Kansas City, Missouri, and Overland Park, Kansas. He was a real estate and corporate lawyer handling real estate financing and purchase transactions, commercial leasing, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate formation and governance.

Phone: 913.201.3446 Email: [email protected]

Chester White

Senior Vice President and Executive Director

Chester D. White is a Vice President working in New York City for Aon’s Professional Services Group. His exclusive focus since 2006 has been advising and representing mid-sized and large law firms on insurance and risk management issues. Prior to that, Mr. White worked in the general property casualty industry as a broker. He has attained the RPLU and ARM designations.

Phone: 212.441.1551 Email: [email protected]