Kate Sampson
Vice President, Risk Solutions
Lyft
San Francisco, CA USA
“Don’t put too much pressure on having to know everything. Each role you have will continue to build on your knowledge and allow you to be adaptable.”
Videos
By Roadtrip NationKate Sampson
Milestones
My road in life took a while to figure out.
Born and raised in Massachusetts—attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she graduated with her degree in political science and economics.
During her junior year, she took an internship at an insurance brokerage in Chicago—admits she knew nothing about the insurance industry and hadn’t even considered that as a career option.
After her internship concluded, she was offered a job selling commercial insurance as an account executive at their Boston office.
After working there for a year, she decided to take a huge risk and move to San Francisco—got a job cold calling clients and selling insurance for Marsh Risk & Insurance Services.
Over the course of the next 20 years, she worked in a variety of roles at Marsh, getting experience in as many areas of the business as she could.
Met the founders of Lyft when they became her clients—temporarily left Marsh to work in-house at Lyft, building a risk solutions team.
Was recruited back to Marsh for her “dream job,” running their San Francisco office—but after only a few months, she realized she missed her role at Lyft and the opportunities it had given her.
Decided to return to Lyft, where she now works as the vice president of risk solutions, working to solve the complex insurance problems surrounding ride sharing and autonomous vehicles.
Keep following my journey
Education
High School
Career
Vice President, Risk Solutions
I create solutions to address corporate risks and create new products to help our community thrive.
Career Roadmap
My work combines:
My work combines:
Business
Entrepreneurship
Problem Solving
Day to Day
The best days are those that start with finding a solution to a challenge facing the organization - this solution may have been days, weeks or months in the making! Hopefully, the day also includes devoting some "risk" brainpower to some great new ideas from our product team that will improve the experience for our drivers and passengers. Perhaps we even get a visit from our marketing team who may be prepping for a marketing event where we need to help with contract and compliance review.
Advice for Getting Started
Here's the first step for college students
Don't dismiss any potential career path solely based on the opinion of others...take the time to explore on your own and figure out what makes you happy.
Hurdles
The Noise I Shed
From Society in General:
"You're working at an insurance brokerage? Oh boy..."
Interviewed By
Risk & Reward
Think you know the world of insurance?
