Industry professionals who specialize in risk management gathered at the RISKWORLD conference in McCormick Place during the Spring 2025 semester. RISKWORLD took place May 4 to 7, 2025. Over 11,000 attendees and over 300 exhibitors from over 70 countries attended the conference this year.
Risk management emphasizes the ongoing prevention and mitigation techniques used to avoid disasters to high-cost enterprises. “I think risk management is part of any industry and any career path,” Felix Cheng, senior manager of Risk and Procurement at College of Registered Nurses of Alberta (CRNA) and a RISKWORLD attendee, said. The Independent received the opportunity to cover RISKWORLD for the first time ever and bring the inside scoop of risk management directly to the NEIU campus.
Disasters could happen from natural phenomena, terrorism, poorly maintained electric infrastructure, and accidents, just to name a few examples. The conference is about more than just selling high-yield insurance to multi-million dollar corporations, but also bringing awareness to dangers, preventing absurdly expensive repair costs, mitigating worsening disasters, and continuing normal business operations.
One memorable and notable exhibitor was FM Global who brought their mobile simulation lab into the exhibitor hall space. They demonstrated the follow-up events of floods in their models without the implementation of risk management techniques, and then they showed the occurrences after the flood gates were deployed and how property was protected. They also demonstrated the umbrella pattern of fire sprinklers and how the size and shape of the pattern can extinguish a fire more or less quickly.
Dino Stiris, manager of risk management for the Chicago Cubs and a session panelist, shared his experiences during the session titled “Defense Can Lead to Offense! Inspiration from the Professional Sports Industry for Coverages and Risk Management.” Risk management departments are often considered the “department of no” to outsiders because outsiders’ requests get denied.
“I always say you don’t want to be the ‘department of no.’ You don’t want to be like, ‘No, you can’t do this. You can’t do that.’ Because then no one’s going to talk to you, and everything’s behind your back,” Stiris said. “And then you’re like, ‘What the hell are we doing?’ So just being able to have that conversation, talk[ing] to them is extremely important.”
Instead, Stiris encourages giving all employees “a voice in the process” and “working together in [Standard Operating Procedures] (SOP),” while also “being strategic in our approach and our claims,” he said, “[and] identifying potential issues [and] being in front of problems.” Forming the correct strategy in regards to approach and claims was the key to Stiris since he started his role as a risk manager.
It is not just other departments and employees that risk managers must maintain conversations with. “I also would add it’s not just having meetings with departments but having meetings with your C-suite [and] having conversations with them,” Stiris said. Stiris gave examples of questions to ask chief members of the organization, which include, “What’s the business doing? What’s the business future? What [are] the goals? Identifying potential risks around operations, what they’re thinking about doing, investments, things down that line.”
Cheng reiterated the importance of decision-making in risk management. “I think the ability to make decisions that are risk-informed and can help you prioritize resources to where the risk is the greatest is something any industry can benefit from,” Cheng said.
When an emergency is happening in the stadium, alarms go off and fire doors close, and to prepare for emergencies, Stiris talked about preparation procedures.
Tabletop exercises include running drills for emergencies and exploring appropriate responses and response times. “We do tabletop exercises for very scary situations,” Stiris said. “All parties are there, cops, federal, local [and] state. We’ve got other people that we wouldn’t even think would be included. Maybe the CTA’s in there.” The procedures are in place to protect all players, game attendees and employees.
However, it may get more complicated when the Cubs are the visiting team because, for example, “[a] player [may] get hurt in Knoxville, Tennessee.” “I always tell our trainers don’t worry about where you’re going,” Stiris said. “Just go and get the player, take care of them, and we’ll figure out the routes in the back end, but we [do] standard work policy required by each individual state—the employer liability limits.” Policies differ by state, but also they differ by sport.
All sports are different in terms of worker’s compensation. Stiris has some experience with the Chicago Stars, a member of the National Women’s Soccer League. “I help with the Chicago Stars. Those players are not employees of the team. They’re employees of the league,” Stiris said. “So like the worker’s comp policies placed at the league level cover all the players. The teams have to get their own for their employees directly.”
Lisa Fitzpatrick is the CEO of XcelABLE and an exhibitor at RISKWORLD. To her, the purpose of coming to this conference is to see the changes happening in the insurance industry, including political changes and “keeping up-to-date with the [overall] changes in the industry as well as the risks that [are] present in my area of specialty with claims management and injuries,” Fitzpatrick said. Uncertainty is a key component that risk management explores.
Similar to how Stiris does disaster preparation for the Cubs, Fitzpatrick asks certain questions to reduce the uncertainty at her business for her clients. “When will the employee or will my employee get injured, and then what do I do when that employee gets injured? And so it’s really focused on that preventative strategy, but as well as being proactive when the employee does get injured is helping to expedite that care,” Fitzpatrick said.
“So having that more direct relationship with the employer really minimizes that uncertainty because we’re maintaining that open line of communication, which is so important in relationship building. And so having that relationship [and] having that open communication helps reduce that uncertainty.”
The number one piece of advice that Fitzpatrick gave to NEIU students who might be interested in a career in risk management was “[To] read. I’m constantly reading, doing research, and not just reading the information from my industry, but I told a bunch of students yesterday, it’s reading,” Fitzpatrick said. “You know things like the Wall Street Journal or anything, any business, you know, entrepreneurship magazines, industry magazines, and keeping up to date with the research.” She emphasized how her business and others like it follow evidence-based practices, so current research is very important in order to follow business practices that actually work.
Pierre-André Meunier, president and founder of Prev Tech, a professional engineer and an exhibitor at RISKWORLD, gave advice for recent NEIU college graduates who are looking for entry-level positions in risk management. Prev Tech is a Canadian company that deploys electrical systems for agricultural and industrial businesses to detect, prevent and mitigate faults and electric burns in wiring and switches via periodic online system checks. His hiring team looks for “Curiosity. The will to learn, the will to absorb new knowledge. I think some of our senior staff that are more experienced are very generous [about] sharing their experience [and] sharing their field knowledge,” Meunier said. Thus, NEIU students who go to conferences can express their curiosity by meeting industry professionals and exchanging knowledge.
Meunier shared tricks of the trade that NEIU students should learn as they gain more experience after graduation. “If you look at a growth model and a capitalist[ic] approach of running businesses, innovation is the key to be able to create a higher level of perceived value or higher value proposition for your client,” Meunier said. “So, finding pragmatic answers to questions that optimize productivity [and] reduces risk will ultimately bring profitability.”
Risk management, insurance and preventative measures give people a safe haven to reduce worry when disasters happen. “If uncertainty is a path towards not having peace of mind, well, we bring peace of mind because the topic we deal with is electricity,” Meunier said. “And electricity is something that is very abstract. Most of our clients, most operators take it for granted because you connect things to a power grid, it works. But that capacity also has failures and potential risk.” Creating solutions for electricity’s failure points is a major consideration that his company specializes in.
Cheng networked with risk managers of different industries, attended several informational sessions and learned new information within the scope of risk management. “A lot about what people are doing about AI [and] third party supplier risks like these are some of the biggest topics I’ve seen here at the conference,” Cheng said. “I’m learning so much about sort of what’s up and coming in terms of risk trends and risk technologies and how companies are again lining up to deal with new emerging things like AI.”
Cheng emphasized the importance of NEIU students going to conferences to network. “I think networking again is huge. Just being able to meet and rub shoulders with sort of industry leaders,” Cheng said. “And I know there’s a number of universities as well with risk management educational programs here.”
Cheng mentioned his early college years and unawareness of risk management. Cheng’s college degree was in operations management at the University of Alberta, and since then, he has had about ten years of experience in the procurement industry and another ten years in the risk industry. “I think when I was in college, I didn’t even know risk management was a thing or a career that you could pursue,” Cheng said. “I know a lot of risk professionals fall into the risk management career by mistake [or] by accident.” Thus, risk management is a legitimate career that can now be started at the time that students begin college.
Cheng concluded by saying, “Just realizing that how large of a community we’re a part of and how many resources there are and how many different minds there are thinking about [risk management] is a bit humbling.” He wanted to encourage NEIU students to “just continue to learn and try to make it out to an event like this. It [has] a lot of benefits,” Cheng said.
Next year’s edition of RISKWORLD will take place from May 3 to 6, 2026 in Philadelphia, PA.
