March 14, 2025
'Wednesdays with Woodward' takes Hartford-based Travelers Institute on the road
Harriet Jones
Joan Woodward, right, speaks with Erika Fleig at Travelers Claims U in Windsor while live streaming a webinar
“Good afternoon and welcome to Wednesdays with Woodward. I'm Joan Woodward, president of the Travelers Institute.”
That introduction has been going out over Zoom each week for five years now, ever since the Travelers Institute did what its leader Joan Woodward calls a “pandemic pivot.” The weekly, one-hour webinar offers conversations at the intersection of insurance, business, and public policy.
“At first we had a couple hundred followers, our agents and brokers,” Woodward said. “And then we opened it up to customers, we opened it up to students. We have partnerships with risk management schools in the country, so those people can learn.”
Now the webinar regularly attracts 7,000 registrants per session, and that followership has prompted Woodward to get more ambitious, most recently with a live-streamed visit to Travelers’ own Claim University facility in Windsor.
The webinar — for this event backed by a director, camera crew and production team — followed Woodward as she was guided around Claim U’s learning labs by Erika Fleig, vice president learning and effectiveness, and Lamelle Williams, senior learning facilitator, taking in Claim U’s 200,000 square feet of hands-on learning labs which feature crashed vehicles, flooded homes and burnt garages.
“This particular vehicle was submerged in saltwater – caused some corrosion in the hydraulic system, making it a total loss,” said Fleig, gesturing on camera to a yellow bulldozer parked in the facility’s heavy-equipment lab.
During the hour-long live session, she and Williams walk Woodward through the kinds of training that claims adjusters do in the hands-on environment.
“I just wanted to showcase all the good work we do here,” Woodward said after the livestream wrapped. “We take it to the next level.”
The Hartford-based Travelers Institute itself is about to celebrate its 15th anniversary. It was founded to advance public policy dialogues around insurance and broader business issues, and Woodward sees this kind of public education as a central part of its mission.
“The initial idea was to be a thought leader in our industry. Not just insurance, but financial services writ large,” Woodward said. She joined Travelers in 2008 from Goldman, Sachs & Co. to establish the Institute as the company’s public policy platform. “Consumer education is really key and important, as well as understanding the regulatory environment.”
Woodward had been at Goldman Sachs for 10 years, where she became the founding executive director of the company’s Global Markets Institute. Prior to that she worked on Capitol Hill for 12 years where she was deputy chief of staff for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. She holds bachelor’s degrees in economics and political science and a master’s degree from American University.
She says that varied portfolio has prepared her for the public profile and education role she’s taken on with the Travelers Institute.
Now that the Wednesday webinar has expanded beyond its pandemic beginnings, Woodward says she’s taking it in new directions and following her personal interests in many of the sessions, including highlighting Women's History Month, the importance of sleep and a grab-bag of other topics.
“Career development, getting more diverse voices in our industry, geopolitical risks - understanding what that means for inflation and supply chain and the insurance industry,” she said.
The Institute’s wider education and public policy initiatives currently focus on several pillars: cybersecurity, distracted driving, workforce, small business, autonomous vehicles and disaster preparedness.
And it’s issues around workforce that will occupy the session when Woodward next takes her show on the road.
On April 7, she’ll be at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell, and then host a livestream webinar from the NYSE board room with guests who will explore the evolution of the workforce from labor market fluctuations to shifting employee expectations.
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