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Karen Barbour, President
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ABOUT THE BARBOUR GROUP TEAM
Karen Barbour is founder and president of The Barbour Group, LLC which she established in 2002 as an independent insurance agency focusing on construction bonding and commercial insurance. Barbour has led the company to achieve success in providing surety bonds for the construction industry in more than 30 states and four international countries.
For ten years prior to establishing The Barbour Group, LLC, she was an owner of Barbour Construction Corp., trading as Specialized Metals. The Company performed work throughout the MidAtlantic region as a steel erection and metal fabrication subcontractor.
Barbour is active in construction trade associations to help address business issues impacting the construction industry. She has served as vice chair of the board of the Minority Building Industry Association and on the boards of the American Subcontractors Association of Baltimore and the Washington Building Congress. She is a past president of the Mid-Atlantic Surety Association.
Barbour has received numerous awards and distinctions for her contributions to the success of contractors in the building industry, including selection as one of 10 women entrepreneurs to participate in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ 2009 program. Barbour was named 2008 Maryland Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration; she is the first surety agent to receive this SBA top honor. In both 2008 and 2009, Inc. magazine named The Barbour Group, LLC as one of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., and The Barbour Group, LLC is a two-time recipient of Maryland’s TOP 100 Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) award.
Barbour is active in public policy and promotes legislation that improves the business climate for contractors and other small businesses operating in the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond. She has initiated, authored and driven landmark legislation in Maryland and on Capitol Hill. In 2009 she worked with U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin to develop an amendment to The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to improve the Small Business Administration’s ability to provide contractor bond guarantees. In 2005, with the help of State Delegate Dan Morhaim, Barbour authored Maryland House Bill 169, which authorized Maryland’s procuring agencies to accept alternative bond products on State funded projects. Both laws enable small business, woman-owned, veteran-owned and minority firms more success in capturing bonding capacity.
Barbour serves on the Board of the Carroll County Economic Development Corporation and on the State Advisory Board for the Maryland Small Business Development Center (SBDC). She volunteers her time as an expert lecturer and advisor to the SBDC and to Maryland’s Procurement Technical Assistance Program. Both organizations assist Maryland small businesses who seek to do business with federal, state and local government agencies.
Barbour is consistently a top fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) for Maryland and a member of Women’s Initiative Supporting Health (WISH), a community support organization that promotes health and wellness for under-served women.
Barbour holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Loyola College of Maryland and a Masters degree in business administration from the University of Baltimore, with induction into Sigma Iota Epsilon, the university’s honorary management fraternity.
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Christopher Smith
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Since joining The Barbour Group, LLC, in 2005, as vice president of business development, Christopher R. Smith has served as head of its property and casualty insurance sales, and has overseen its marketing functions.
Mr. Smith’s expertise in implementing marketing strategies and recognizing business development opportunities has been instrumental in leading The Barbour Group to achieve a three-year growth rate of 352 percent from 2005 to 2008. Mr. Smith employs those same business strategies and risk assessment abilities to help clients eliminate major liability and property exposures. Mr. Smith is also an experienced surety broker who specializes in obtaining surety bonds for construction companies with annual revenues less than $25,000,000.
Prior to joining the Barbour Group, Mr. Smith was a marketing professional at Eli Lilly and Company, a global pharmaceutical corporation, where he held roles of increasing responsibility in sales, marketing, and business development. While there, Mr. Smith led a team that was responsible for the development of insurance reimbursement programs for such clients as CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, Wal-Mart, K-mart, Giant Supermarkets, and Walgreens.
A strong advocate for Maryland’s Small Business Development Center, Mr. Smith volunteers his time as an adjunct faculty member at both Harford and Carroll Community Colleges, where he teaches courses on property and casualty insurance and small business risk assessment. Mr. Smith also serves on the board of the Carroll Area Transit System, a nonprofit corporation that provides community transportation to residents of Carroll County, Maryland.
Mr. Smith has completed executive education studies at The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and graduated summa cum laude at Adrian College with a degree in business administration.
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Debby Nash
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Debby Nash is the vice president of operations at The Barbour Group, LLC where she manages all administrative activities related to servicing insurance and surety bonds. Ms. Nash also serves as the firm’s in-house accountant.
Prior to joining The Barbour Group, Ms. Nash was an accountant at Nash Contractors, Inc., a family owned general contracting business, for 13 years. While at Nash Contractors, she gained an in-depth understanding of the construction business and the service savvy to continually meet and exceed customer expectations.
Ms. Nash applies her combined knowledge of the construction industry, accounting, and customer service to ensure operations at The Barbour Group align with current customer needs. Ms. Nash guides customers through the challenges that often exist with bonding a project and shares her keen insight in working with underwriters.
Through the use of technology to automate company workflows, Ms. Nash directs and coordinates the office in a manner that improves efficiency and ensures incoming and outgoing customer requests are handled properly.
Ms. Nash has spent her entire career focused on working with members of the construction industry to improve productivity and contribute to their success. Ms. Nash studied accounting at Catonsville Community College.
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Gil Genn
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The Barbour Group, LLC has retained Gil Genn, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates and founding partner of Genn & Murphy, LLC as the company’s lobbyist. Mr. Genn focuses his practice on representing individuals and corporations to federal, state, and local legislative, regulatory, and judicial bodies. Mr. Genn’s clients include Fortune 500 companies, “incubator” firms, and those seeking venture capital.
Mr. Genn’s wide ranging areas of representation complements The Barbour Group in areas of transportation, procurement, energy and utility restructuring, corporate law, labor, municipal matters, and environmental law. Together, Mr. Genn and Karen Barbour work on alleviating barriers to bonding in the construction industry by affecting positive regulatory and legislative change.
Mr. Genn and Karen Barbour, of The Barbour Group, LLC were instrumental in persuading Senator Cardin to introduce the amendment to The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that increased SBA bond guarantees to support projects from $2 million to $5 million in size with discretionary authority to cover individual contracts up to $10 million, and increased SBA bond program eligibility size standards from $7 million in annual sales to meet the NAIC codes for small business. Mr. Genn received the Martindale Hubbell’s highest attorney rating, “AV.” He is a member of the DC Bar, Maryland State Bar, and the US District Courts and Federal Circuit Courts for DC and Maryland. Mr. Genn also received the 1995 Legislator of the Year award presented to him at the White House by the National Commission Against Drunk Driving.
Mr. Genn received a BA, magna cum laude, from Duke University and a JD from the University of Maryland Law School. While in school, Mr. Genn served as legislative aide to US Senator Birch Bayh.
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Andreas Dailey
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President and Founder of Executive Insurance Benefits, LLC.
Mr. Dailey, has been an insurance and financial professional since 1987, spending most of those years with The Prudential Insurance Company of America. During this time he learned the fundamentals of the insurance industry assisting clients with life insurance, disability income insurance, health insurance, annuities, mutual funds, and long term care insurance by performing financial & business needs analysis.
In 1996 he founded Executive Insurance Benefits, LLC. Executive Insurance Benefits, LLC concentrates in the designing and implementation of group insurance benefits, such as Group Health, Life, and Disability Insurance from the top carriers doing business in the Mid-Atlantic area. One of his passions is assisting business owners protect their business interest from the financial disruptions that typically occur following the death or disability of an owner, partner, or key employee. Mr. Dailey offers business strategies such as Retirement Plans, Executive Compensation, Buy-Sell Agreements and Business Continuation funding. In addition, Mr. Dailey holds a CLTC certification designation in Long Term Care Insurance.
Mr. Dailey has been offering group employee benefits and personal financial services throughout the Mid-Atlantic area for more than twenty-two years. He is a qualifying and lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), the premier association of financial professionals, since 1996, and is active in his church, numerous volunteer and community organizations. He's married to Lisa and the father of 3, Andreas Jr, Kyle and Candice. He is licensed to do business in Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Florida & Texas.
IFS-A163408 Ed 04/2009
Andreas Dailey Sr. offers securities products and services as a Registered Representative of Pruco Securities, LLC (Pruco). Executive Insurance Benefits, LLC, is not affiliated with Pruco. Other products and services may be offered through a non-Pruco entity.
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