Gijsbert Cox is an esteemed Industry Leader in Insurance at Appian, a foremost provider of AI process automation software. Boasting over two decades of experience in the insurance sector, Cox exhibits an international focus, coupled with an analytical and pragmatic approach. He is deeply passionate about enhancing the operations of insurance and financial services companies.
In his role, Cox plays a pivotal part in supporting customers, partners, delivery, marketing, and sales teams with their go-to-market strategies and plans, effectively bridging the gap between business and IT. His profound understanding of the Property and Casualty (P&C) insurance process is complemented by his expertise in low-code, process automation, core, and insurtech solutions. This unique blend of knowledge and skills enables him to significantly improve customer experiences and augment the agility of insurance companies.
Cox is particularly driven by initiatives involving growth and transformation plans, business development, team inspiration, and working in international contexts. His overarching mission is to revolutionize and streamline insurance operations through the innovative use of Appian and AI technologies.
After being diagnosed with a meningioma and p1RCC (a rare kidney cancer) in 2014, Bill co-founded rarekidneycancer.org with Dr. James Hsieh in 2016. In 2018 and 2020, with Pete Kane, he brought together 17 teams of more than 100 researchers who used his medical data to determine “genes of interest” related to his disease. He applied ensemble reasoning to evaluate the results of these hackathons (which Bill calls “gamified tumor boards” ) to discover better ways to do cancer research. Bill is currently automating these “gamified tumor boards” using Large Language Models (LLMs). Bill is also involved in several patient organizations and is a CDMRP reviewer.
Prior to rarekidneycancer.org, Bill worked with Sabrina Paseman to use non-invasive Blood fluorescence to detect iron deficiency anemia (Patent 8,306,594) and with Katherine Paseman to expand Pulse oximetry technology to do non-invasive measurement of Hemoglobin and Hematocrit.
Bill’s 50 year career in AI started at age 18, when he worked with Howie Johnson at Rice University using n-grams (like chatGPT) to do classical music composition. He continued his music work at MIT in Steve Ward’s lab exploring generative grammars and constraints. He then applied his Symbolic AI knowledge to Electrical Design Automation as the 16th employee at Daisy Systems. Bill next founded Atherton Technology (which failed) and then Calico Commerce (which IPOed), where he repurposed his music composition system to do sales configuration over the internet (Patent 5,745,765). After Bill took Calico public, he retired and, as discussed above, has dedicated his time to rarekidneycancer.org, patient advocacy and working with his daughters on non-invasive blood analysis.
Carla has 20+ years of experience as an operational leader in developing and implementing RTSM systems in a global pharmaceutical company. Carla is a leader in her organization in supporting the development of vendor management standards and processes for large accounts. She has helped lead major RTSM process improvement initiatives such as innovative approaches to drug assignment verification and vendor integrations. Carla has presented at industry conferences as a subject matter expert on best practices using RTSM solutions for complex strategies in supply chain management. Carla holds a BS in Neurobiology and Physiology from the University of Connecticut and certification as Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt. Carla also holds a Master in Science in Health Administration with a concentration in Health Informatics from Saint Joseph’s University.
Aruna Talapatra focuses on securing market and customer insights on decentralized trials and is working on strategic development and deployment of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s digital supply chain platform clinical trials. Aruna brings over 12+ years of product management experience in the medical device industry and has worked at companies such as GE Healthcare, Fujifilm and Hill-Rom where she has developed Healthcare ecosystems for Medical devices such as MR, Ultrasound, Diagnostic and Non-Diagnostic Cardiology products and Hospital EMR systems. Aruna holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
Rasmus is an accomplished leader with over 20 years of management experience in the financial services industry.
Before joining the company, Rasmus held the role of Executive Vice President at the Danish financial supermarket Alm. Brand. His previous experience includes executive-level positions at the Scandinavian insurance company Tryg and the German Provinzial insurance. Besides these roles, Rasmus has also filed for Board positions in software companies, including Chairman of Nobly.
