FLORIDA’S SOTO INAUGURATED AS BIG “I” PRESIDENT
Iowa’s Fulwider Installed as President-Elect; Utah’s Nilsson Ascends to Vice President
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 11, 2006—Alex Soto, CPCU, ARM, was inaugurated Saturday as the new president of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (the Big “I”), with Robert E. Fulwider and C. Brett Nilsson, CIC, assuming the offices of president-elect and vice president, respectively. The new officers were sworn in at the Big “I” Leadership Conference in New Orleans.
Soto is president of Miami-Fla.-based InSource, Inc. He was elected to the Executive Committee in October 2001.
Soto also has been active in the Big “I” nationally and in the Florida Association of Independent Agents (FAIA) during his 34-year career as an independent insurance agent. He is a past chairman of the FAIA and also a past director on IIABA’s national board. He has served as chairman of the Big “I” Communications Committee, Branding Task Force and other committees. He was a founder of the Trusted Choice® brand and has been intimately involved in building the Trusted Choice® brand for independent agents and brokers. He and his wife Patty have two adult children and reside in Pinecrest, a suburb of Miami.
Fulwider is principal and president of the Ray Wuestenberg Agency Inc. in West Liberty, Iowa, and of the Fulwider Agency Inc. in West Branch, Iowa. He also is president of Bob Fulwider and Associates, a life-and-health financial-planning agency in eastern Iowa.
Fulwider also has been very active in the Big “I” at the national and state levels since starting his career as an independent agent in 1973. He is a past president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Iowa (IIAI) and currently sits on its Education Committee. He also is the only two-time Agent of the Year in IIAI history (1983, 1990) and was inducted into the Iowa Insurance Hall of Fame in 2003. Nationally, he is a past chairman of the Big “I” Government Affairs Committee and the association’s Crop Insurance Task Force, and he also has chaired several other Big “I” national committees, including Farm/Agribusiness, Personal Lines and Markets Development. He also is a former national board director. He and his wife Jan have one adult child and live in West Liberty.
Nilsson is senior vice president for The Buckner Company, based in Salt Lake City. Prior to being elected to the Executive Committee in 2003, Mr. Nilsson served as president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Utah from 1992-93. He also served as a director on the Big “I” national board for nine years. Nilsson was chairman of IIABA’s Finance Committee, which he chaired from 1999-2003, and served on IIABA’s Communications Committee. He has been intimately involved in the Big “I” Trusted Choice Junior Classic golf tournament for a number of years. Nilsson is a past recipient of Utah’s Agent of the Year and Young Agent of the Year awards, and he received an IIABA Presidential Citation in 2001. In 2003, Nilsson received his state association’s highest individual honor, the Burgener Award, a distinction that has only been awarded five other times in the history of the Utah association. He and his wife, Nancy, live in Layton, Utah. They have four children and four grandchildren.
Founded in 1896, the Big “I” is the nation’s oldest and largest national association of independent insurance agents and brokers, representing a network of more than 300,000 agents, brokers and their employees nationally. Its members are businesses that offer customers a choice of policies from a variety of insurance companies. Independent agents and brokers offer all lines of insurance—property, casualty, life, health, employee benefit plans and retirement products. Web address: www.independentagent.com.
###