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Employee Spotlight: Zack Issleib

29 July 2025
Please join us in congratulating Zack Issleib, our Employee Spotlight for the month of July!

About Zack

Zack Issleib is a Director of Financial Planning and Analysis at Inszone Insurance Services, joining Inszone in November 2023. Zack’s primary responsibilities include analyzing the company’s finances, modeling financial outcomes, creating budgets and forecasts, and understanding how well the company is doing with its strategic and financial goals.

Before joining Inszone, Zack had various roles in the financial services field. Zack’s most recent position was at Kemper Insurance, where he worked as a Director of FP&A in different areas, including corporate finance, property and casualty insurance, and life insurance. Zack also worked with MB Financial Bank where he analyzed financial statements and managed relationships with local businesses in the Chicagoland area.

Zack earned his bachelor’s degree in finance from Indiana University and later completed his MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. When he’s not working, Zack enjoys playing sports including tennis, paddle, and golf. In his free time, you’ll often find him reading or cheering for his favorite Chicago sports teams.

When asked to share some words about Zack, Jit Hazra, Inszone’s Chief Financial Officer and Zack’s direct supervisor said, “Zack has considerably deepened his understanding of the agency model and began to accelerate our Financial Analytics capability via the FP&A (financial planning and analytics) platform, and we are at the beginning stages of what is yet to come..”

Q&A with Zack Issleib

Q: What initially brought you to the insurance industry?

A: I started my career in Insurance back in 2019 working for Kemper Insurance. I rotated through several positions including Corporate Finance, Treasury, P&C Distribution and Life Distribution before settling on a longer-term role running the distribution finance team for Kemper Life. Primary focus there was identifying the Key Performance Indicators for our life insurance workforce, which included 7 regions, 83 divisions and over 2,000 life insurance agents. That experience gave me a diverse experience when I came over to join Inszone’s FP&A team in 2023.

Q: In what ways do you think your unique background or experiences contribute to your success in your role?

A: Prior to moving into Insurance, I worked for MB Financial in the commercial banking space for 10+ years. In this role, I was responsible for underwriting, portfolio management and business development for middle-market commercial clients in the Chicagoland area. Although a slightly different industry than insurance, I was working with and selling to many of the same client types that our CL producers and AMs work with on a daily basis. This decade-long sales experience allows me to better connect data and results to relate to what our sales team is seeing in the field in their everyday conversations with customers.

Additionally, my role with Kemper set me up with great experience prior to starting with Inszone. When I worked with Kemper on their P&C team, it gave me great insight to understanding how a carrier operates and what KPIs / targeted outcomes they are looking for. I was also responsible for managing all the distribution analytics for their life insurance agents to tie back to various sales initiatives – connecting the dots between conceptual initiatives (i.e. Market expansion, new product launch, territory realignment, etc.) and actual, concrete results (i.e. Geographical opportunity, market share, growth metrics, sales results, etc.). Having different viewpoints of the overall picture has benefited me greatly for my current position with Inszone.

Q: If you could describe your approach to teamwork in three words, what would they be and why?

A: Communication – It may sound cliché but teamwork begins and end with communication. I try to get into the habit of taking a top-down approach to teamwork, which means starting with the overall objective / goal / target / idea and then working into the details on the best way to tackling it. More often than not, someone on the team has a better way to approach it or it’s already being done in a slightly different way that we can tweak. Having that open communication early and often allows our teams to be successful. It’s being able to use communication as the lynchpin to gather the collective experience, creativity and intelligence of the team.

There are also a multitude of things to keep in mind with communication – Style, Approach, Empathy, Alignment, Messaging, Medium. I could go on about the importance of communication for a day and a half.

Hands On Approach – I’m very lucky that the teams I work with here at Inszone are very involved in the operational capacity of their roles. This is not meant to be ‘everyone pulls their weight’ type of comment but rather everyone has experience as a ‘doer’ in their respective field. Successful teamwork comes from everyone taking a hands-on approach as opposed to pure delegation of individual items – thinking about the various components together as a whole vs. individual pieces that need to get done one by one.

Trust – Building trust is paramount to teamwork. This allows everyone to be comfortable and confident in sharing their ideas for the common goal, especially for more ambiguous and larger initiatives. There are often multiple paths that a team can embark upon to get to the result, so that early brainstorming on openly sharing ideas is crucial – especially with subject matter experts in particular processes or systems. Having trust in both yourself and your teammates.

Q: What do you think sets you apart, and how does it benefit your team?

A: With Inszone’s high trajectory growth, my diverse experience in sales and the numerous positions I held with previous companies allows me to approach a variety of situations. I worked in banking and treasury for two publicly traded companies which allows me to be well-versed in capital management and banking responsibilities at Inszone. I’ve also led operational finance teams for both P&C and Life Insurance departments allowing me the expertise/experience in crafting dashboards, reporting capabilities and understanding the main drivers of results, whether they are sales focused or financial reporting based. And my work in previous steering committees for strategic initiatives has given me project management experience to lead teams here at Inszone for new growth or strategic initiatives. These past roles allow me to both take a big-picture view of the task at hand along with the operational requirements needed to execute it. One of the great things about working at Inszone is that no two days are ever the same within our rapidly growing company.

Q: Who has been the biggest influence or mentor in your life, and what valuable lessons have you learned from them?

A: I have been lucky in my career to have several mentors throughout my life within my organizations, education and personal life. A very important lesson I’ve learned is understanding perspective. When approaching a challenge, obstacle or even a success, it’s important to understand the various perspectives of the different parties involved – whether that’s clients, company leadership, business partners, external stakeholders, vendors, or the end audience. Once you can understand motivations and best-case outcomes for the parties involved, your strategy and messaging can be tuned to approaching the best outcome. This also includes fully understanding the ‘why’ of the work that you are doing each and every day.

And this perspective applies 10x as much in life as well…. Try to see the forest from the trees (although easier said than done).

Q: What are some hobbies you do outside of work that you enjoy?

A: Outside of my day-to-day role, I stay involved in several activities – mostly Tennis, Pickleball, and Golf. I currently play on a traveling tennis team in the area (State tournament is end of July) and spend my Saturday mornings at the Pickleball court. My summer weekends typically involve getting outdoors in some capacity, whether it’s staying in the area or traveling to visit friends & family in the city, Wisconsin or Indiana.

Winter weekends can be a little different…. Unlike our friends out west in California and down in Texas, Chicago winters can put a damper on outdoor activities. Being an avid reader helps with these winter months. I like to mix up reading genres but tend to gravitate toward mystery, history (historical fiction and nonfiction) and science fiction. I make it a personal goal to always try to get through the book before the show / movie makes it onto television.

Zack, your dedication, and focus have been key to the success of your team and the company. We’re excited to see your continued success!

Juan Cruz

VP – Marketing & Development

Juan Cruz is the Vice President of Marketing and Development at Inszone Insurance Services. He joined the company in 2016, bringing with him over seven years of experience in direct response marketing. Juan holds a bachelor’s degree in Global Studies with a minor in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

At Inszone, Juan oversees all aspects of marketing, focusing on building a consistent brand identity and creating successful direct response campaigns. His expertise has helped multiple companies enhance their digital presence, grow lead generation efforts, and strengthen their brand visibility.

A passionate traveler, Juan has visited 25 countries and is an avid scuba diver and bike rider. He believes in working hard to enjoy life to the fullest.

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