Kate Stillwell is a structural engineer and entrepreneur working at the intersection of physical and financial resilience. As a structural engineer, Kate has worked with Greg Luth & Associates, Degenkolb Engineers, and Holmes Consulting. In catastrophe modeling, she has worked at EQECAT (now CoreLogic) as the Product Manager of earthquake models worldwide, and she was the founding Executive Director of the Global Earthquake Model Foundation at the ROSE School in Pavia, Italy.
Kate founded and leads InsurTech startup Jumpstart, the first company to bring parametric insurance to consumers, starting with earthquake risk in California. Jumpstart was acquired in 2021 by Neptune Flood, where, as President of Parametric Insurance, Kate is now responsible for new product development and for continuing to lead sales of Jumpstart’s parametric insurance.
As a side project, Kate co-founded FireBreak, a consumer app for wildfire self-inspection, mitigation, and insurance eligibility.
Kate is a Past President and Fellow of SEAONC and a co-founder of the Building Ratings Committee (BRC), which later became the Resilience Committee. With other BRC members, Kate co-founded the US Resiliency Council. Kate is also a longtime member and Housner Fellow of EERI.
Kate holds an MS in Civil Engineering from Stanford University, an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota.
Your working career started in a traditional engineering office. Before we move on to the present, what did you learn then, or better yet, who did you meet that proved useful later?
Mentors and muses come in all ages and experience levels. Some of my fondest co-workers are the most unorthodox – like Greg Luth, my first boss. Another person who influentially shaped my career was former Degenkolb CEO, Chris Poland. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but his involvement in real estate and public policy circles inspired me to see the bigger “pond” in which structural engineers work. Safe buildings are necessary for a resilient society, but they’re not sufficient without equitable governance, social ties, and economic stability. Another key player who shaped my journey is Laurie Johnson, particularly her post-Katrina research in New Orleans on social effects of mega-disasters.
After several years in the AEC industry, you shifted focus and went off to business school at Berkeley. May we ask why?
Precisely to learn about and participate in those “wider circles” that structural engineering touches – to apply the time and talents of engineers to the social and economic dimensions of disaster recovery. I’m pretty sure such a vague purpose statement would not earn admission to business school today, but lucky for me, that was the dark ages.
Were you planning on going back into structural engineering?
Yes! I was too proud to leave my credentials behind! Structural engineers have pivotal gravitas in policy making, which mere business people can only imitate. As it turns out, it has been many years since I have used my SE license in practice, but I keep a toe in the door by participating in SEAONC and staying in touch with my structural engineering friends.
There is a lot of talk these days about community resilience. But more than talk about it, you actually did something. Would you tell us a little more about your motivations and goals?
It goes back to Katrina, a major galvanizing force not just for me, but for many resilience-minded professionals. As I watched real-time footage of the levees breaking, I felt a visceral pit in my stomach, seeing the social inequities and thinking, “after the next big earthquake, my hometown of Oakland will be the next New Orleans.” I knew that the next big earthquake would be a triple-whammy to society and the economy: 1) FEMA is the first to admit that public aid is too little too late; 2) earthquakes are excluded from insurance; and worst of all, 3) a majority of Americans have less than $1000 in liquid savings – not just the poor, but people in all walks of life. Our personal finances have no buffer to face widespread disruption. Flash-forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, which made this truth all too evident.
When did you decide to start your own company? And what compelled you to do this?
As far back as 2006. When Katrina struck, I had just started business school. The following semester, in a real estate finance class by late professor Dwight Jaffee, I learned about catastrophe (“cat”) bonds, large-dollar-amount hedging instruments where companies swap their natural hazard risk for financial risk. In one of the first cat bonds, dating from 1997, Tokyo Disneyland arranged a deal where if a M7.3+ earthquake occurred in a specified geographical box in the next three years, they would receive $100M from the counterparty, which would make up for some of their lost operational revenue. Of course, they had to pay to offload their risk, by way of an “interest rate” on the $100M, but it was a way of protecting their cash flow and avoiding debt. A financial buffer!
That’s when I made the connection. We needed “micro” catastrophe bonds for earthquakes (and floods)! That’s how Jumpstart originated. But it was ten years before the technology and data were sufficiently mature to bring the idea to reality at scale.
How does Jumpstart work?
Jumpstart sells earthquake insurance that makes immediate $10,000 lump sum payments in areas that experience ground shaking greater than a pre-specified amount. The payout does not require physical damage but rather is intended to pay unexpected expenses and “jump-start” the recovery process.
Starting any business is challenging enough, but entering the capital-intensive and highly regulated insurance industry is an entirely different matter. What did you learn that our readers would benefit from?
The importance of intention cannot be understated. When your intention is clear, well-articulated, and authentically motivated to make good in the world, doors will open that would otherwise stay closed. As one example, we engaged with the insurance regulator early and often, whereas a conventional insurance incumbent might take the conservative view of not engaging – as a strategy to avoid the risk that regulators might scrutinize unrelated profitable operations. As a result, we were unblocked from proceeding with our unorthodox approach, whereas the incumbent, in an abundance of prudence, might conclude not to proceed at all.
Just as structural engineering attracts people whose intrinsic motivation is to “just build stuff,” people with an intrinsic motivation to “just make money” are drawn to insurance and finance. Unfortunately, this means the insurance industry is disproportionately populated by people with intentions that conflict with the common good, and this leads to widespread mistrust. More than once, I received feedback from partners – long after a deal was sealed – that the deciding factor to work with us was that our resilience motive was “a breath of fresh air.”
Can you say a bit more about what it was like entering an industry at a level where women are few and far between?
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received in recent memory, and which I continue to lean on today, was an offhand remark in 2014 by my dear friend and EERI member Charlie Huyck, “go with your strengths.” Every person brings their uniqueness to a situation or negotiation. The trick is to be aware of it and learn how to leverage it. For example, I’m a believer that the advantage of sharing information to help “lift all boats” far outweighs the risks of a competitor stealing an idea. As a result, I’m not known as the most aggressive “winner” from a sales perspective, but the phone doesn’t stop ringing for potential partnerships and collaboration.
Getting Jumpstart up and running is memorable in itself. Would you share a few other achievements that would inspire others?
You’re asking me to stroke my own ego … so it’s hard to know how to respond. Make a joke to signal my humility? Pontificate on the virtue of gratitude? Take the bait and regurgitate my CV? Since the point of this question is to inspire readers, here’s what I’ll say: One of the hardest things in life is to act with courage. Even to know what the courageous response would be in a situation. Sometimes acting or speaking with courage causes pain, even if it’s the right thing to do. On a recent episode on the podcast Hidden Brain, guest Todd Kashdan described our current culture as “addicted to comfort.” But pain is temporary and often a necessary part of the process leading to a just outcome. It’s natural to struggle when trying to discern between necessary pain vs. pain that tells us something is really wrong – and in either case, use that pain as a “helpful friend” who guides us toward courage.
Successful firms plan for ownership transition and firm longevity. But a start-up must be entirely different. What needs to be done every day to keep the ship afloat, so to speak?
A close friend, also a startup founder, asked me yesterday for a referral to a bookkeeper. The truth is, the founder of a startup is simultaneously both CEO and custodian. Yes, I enjoy the benefits of plum speaking engagements, but I also – quite literally – took out the trash and did other chores, including, to my friend’s disappointment (but not surprise), balancing the books. On the question of ownership transition, I liken the journey of a startup to a celebrity maintaining a social media account: it’s a continuous investment in perceived value. Startups are valued almost exclusively on intangibles. What is the value of your vision? Your customer feedback? The force of personality of the founders? The loyalty of the employees? You cannot abandon sales and operations, but there’s an additional responsibility (and privilege) of thinking long and hard about non-monetary assets.
Concerning mentoring, we assume that you have had many, and that you mentor others yourself. What is your approach, and what have you found that works best?
Some of the most powerful questions, on either the giving or receiving end, are “What haven’t I asked that I should be asking?” and “How can I be most helpful?” The common thread is a lack of presumption. We’re trained to be experts – to KNOW the ANSWER to things, and I’m one of the worst offenders. But mentorship is all about relationships, and relationships work best when we meet people where they’re at, rather than presuming what they need, or what they want to hear. I sometimes have to force myself – and I don’t always succeed – to stop talking and ask the listener if they actually want advice before I just dish it out.
Work-life balance has been a hot topic for several years. Recently doing just enough to get by is a trend too. What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs?
A repeated theme in my responses so far is the power of awareness: knowing – authentically – your motivation. Your strengths. Your emotions and the signals they’re sending you. The limitations of your knowledge. So many of us, including myself, have poor awareness of our boundaries, and this can lead to resentment and the temptation to “quietly quit.” But there’s the flip side, too: knowing the full extent of our capabilities. Nelson Mandela captured this in his famous inaugural speech, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” The challenge, then, is to become more aware – even if it brings (temporary) pain – of our capability to be the change we want to see in the world.
Regarding your personal legacy, what do you think you will be remembered for, and/or what are you most proud of?
Making something where nothing existed before. It’s what I love about cooking with leftovers. It’s what makes it so gratifying to start a venture. And it’s the fundamental pull of the engineering profession: the creative force made manifest.■