collage of business people shaking hands News from Allianz Partners, Amalgamated Life Insurance, American Family Life Insurance, American National Bank of Texas and more.(Photo: Shutterstock)

Quite a few new hires, promotions, partnerships, and anniversaries in the employee benefits and retirement industry. Take a look:

Akin Gump announced that Jon Chatalian has joined the firm as senior counsel in its labor and employment practice in Washington. He most recently served as Deputy Assistant General Counsel with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), responsible for overseeing, managing and coordinating the work of legal and actuarial teams for all multiemployer pension plan program litigation, compliance and regulatory matters. In addition to his multiemployer pension plan work, Mr. Chatalian represented the PBGC before U.S. bankruptcy and district courts in various ERISA cases.

Allianz Partners  announced that Jeff Wright joined the company as Chief Financial Officer and that Jim O'Connor has joined as Head of Operations.  Wright succeeds Diane Babson, who took an assignment with another Allianz Partners business unit, while O'Connor fills a new role helming the company's expanding Operations Division.   Prior to joining Allianz Partners, Jeff worked at Genworth Financial, where he was CFO of the US life insurance division.  Prior to joining Allianz Partners, Jim worked in the financial services industry, where he redesigned processes to improve customer experience and reduce complexity, cycle times and costs.

Amalgamated Life Insurance Company announced the appointment of Ray Moore as Sales Executive, Voluntary Worksite Products. Moore will be marketing Amalgamated Life's voluntary worksite products across the U.S. Southern Region. Moore previously served as vice president, Field Operations & Sales at Employee Benefits Systems.

American Family Life Insurance Company is partnering with Votaire, a financial wellness and benefits platform, to offer Votaire participants a new option for purchasing life insurance online via Life Direct. The Votaire app analyzes users' financial health through a series of questions and identifies gaps in their financial forecasts based on what they have and what they aspire to have. If a gap is identified in life insurance, Life Direct is presented as an option to help fill that gap.

Aon appointed Dave Guilmette as President of Health Solutions.In addition to previous consulting roles, Guilmette spent more than nine years at Cigna Corporation in a series of positions with increasing responsibility.

American National Bank of Texas announced its partnership with BPAS and Lincoln Financial to service the YOUR kPlan 401(k), a group trust. BPAS will provide bundled plan administration and recordkeeping services and Lincoln Financial will provide unbundled recordkeeping services. National Benefit Service (NBS) will continue providing third-party administration services for the platform.

Burnham Benefits is expanding to offer a property and casualty division, Burnham Risk, with the acquisition of Pacific Unified SeaTech, effective September 1st, 2019. SeaTech CEO John Huttinger joins as Executive Vice President and Partner.  Sara Owens becomes Chief Operating Officer and Partner, effective September, 1st 2019, with a dual role as Vice President of Corporate Development at Burnham Benefits.

Cavignac & Associates announced Diana Dix, SPHR, SHRBP, HCS, has been appointed human resources risk advisor. Dix previously served as human resources business partner at ADP Payroll Services, where she was employed for 13 years.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas announced it will suspend normal business operations for two days so its staff of professional job-search coaches can provide free career advice to callers from across the country. The firm's 34th annual national job-search call-in will be held on December 26 and 27, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CT. The telephone number is 312-422-5010.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) named Anna Rappaport as this year's winner of the annual Lillywhite award. Named after Ray Lillywhite, a pioneer in the pension field, the award honors employee benefits professionals for extraordinary lifetime contributions to Americans' economic security.

The HR Policy Board announced several important senior leadership changes, with the appointments in March 2020 of Tim Bartl as Chief Executive Officer of the Association (replacing Dan Yager, who will move into a senior advisory role), and Ani Huang as Chief Executive Officer of HR Policy's Center On Executive Compensation.

Ideagen, a global supplier of integrated risk management software, has announced a new Board appointment following the retirement of one its non-executive directors. Jonathan Wearing will step down at the end of November after 16 years, with former AVEVA Group Plc chief executive officer, Richard Longdon, replacing him – moving into his position officially from November 1st.

Randstad announced a collaboration with CISCO to help military veterans launch careers in cybersecurity. CyberVets USA is a CISCO-led partnership of cybersecurity, IT and non-profit organizations which share a passion for supporting military service members and veterans through free training and certifications. Randstad is now providing those veterans access to career resources following their completion of the program. CyberVetsUSA currently operates out of Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, with expansion plans for Arizona, California and Texas.

Torchlight has partnered with KeyBank to provide a caregiver support platform for its 18,000 employees. The platform provides "roadmaps" for a wide variety of care situations or issues, advice from caregiving experts, and help finding national, regional and local resources.

The Women in Pensions Network (WiPN) recently marked the organization's tenth anniversary on October 1. The Women in Pensions Network (WiPN), founded in 2009, is a national non-profit organization with over 1,000 members, 50 sponsors and a reach of 4,000 retirement industry professionals. WiPN welcomes members from all segments of the retirement industry.

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C.J. Marwitz

C.J. Marwitz is a writer and editor.