Wharton@Work

January 2025 | 

Investing in Talent: Hylant’s Bet on Empowering Leaders

Investing in Talent: Hylant’s Bold on Empowering Leaders

When Bubba Berenzweig became CEO of Hylant, a privately held insurance brokerage company, in 2021, he had a vision. As Mario Kyriakides, vice president of talent development, describes it, “The objective was that we would provide world-class educational experiences to level up business acumen for client-facing professionals. We want Hylant to be viewed by our clients as more than just insurance brokers. Bubba strongly desired for our people to be experts in our clients’ businesses, maybe even knowing those businesses better than our clients do, so that we can best serve them.”

Kyriakides was charged with creating the “Hylant MBA” that would leverage the expertise of a number of top-tier academic partners, providing a range of experiences that would deepen business intelligence. He says, “The fact that Hylant is privately held, fiercely independent, and very much views the investment of our people as a long-term dividend really attracted me to the firm. In our competitive industry, it is imperative that we serve our clients and communities with excellence. We absolutely must be the best at our craft. The level of support devoted to making that happen has been remarkable from both our leadership and board.”

20 Leaders, One Program

A search for a program on managing talent led Kyriakides to Wharton and the live online People Management for Emerging Leaders program. Three weeks later, a 20-person cohort was in attendance. “The program took everything that we had been learning, which included highly technical, functional domains like finance and business strategy, and helped our cohort put it all into practice. You can have all the knowledge in core elements and all the right answers, but if as a leader you communicate it the wrong way or if you do something ineffectively, it is going to keep you from achieving your desired results.”

For Southeast Michigan Market President Jack Miller, who has 24 direct reports, “all of the topics covered were things I deal with every day. I was excited to learn from some of the world’s best thinkers about how to deal with some of those issues, what to look for, and how to achieve desirable outcomes. Hylant is very entrepreneurial, and when I got into my position, they trusted me to do things the right way and by and large I have. But there wasn't a rule book that showed me what to do and what not to do, so it was really interesting to be educated on those topics.”

Miller says a session about managing challenging high performers stood out. “I was dealing with a similar issue the week before that session, so it was very, very applicable. Learning how best to deal with the situation, and being able to quickly turn around and apply what I was learning, was really valuable — and it worked.”

Accelerated Learning and Team Building

For client executive Nick Hylant, the program was “a great way to get to know other people in our organization. We all sit in different cities — I’m the only one from our Cleveland office. So, being able to have that interconnectedness across our 26 offices has been hugely beneficial. We know that if we're presented with a challenge or one of the scenarios we discussed in class, we can call each other and ask for advice. We've built trust with one another. The program facilitated our having really open conversations, which will play a big part in our professional lives. It was also really exciting to be in such an international cohort with individuals outside our organization too. We got to hear how a lot of the problems we face as managers are similar regardless of the industry.”

When Nick joined Hylant in 2019, his father was CEO and his older brother Matt was in the Michigan office. He says he set a goal of not only excelling in his role, but also earning the respect of his colleagues. “I needed to be more than just my dad's son. As a science major in college, getting a better understanding of business acumen and leadership has helped me with that goal, and I've been able to actually use what we learned with our executive leadership team, which consists of 12 family members in the fourth-generation cohort. The team meets once a quarter, and we sometimes have to have tough conversations, especially when it comes to P&L and budgeting. Overall, having more equipped leaders, ones who don't shy away from having tougher conversations, is going to be a tremendous benefit to Hylant.”

Cutting-Edge Content and Learning Experience

Brian Boone, southeast regional CEO, says while the program was “superior” overall, a session on using AI for business communications stood out. “I was able to put it to use immediately,” he says. Boone shared a memo he sent at work the week before, getting feedback both from the other participants and then from AI. “The program provided a safe space to hear how I could improve both the memo and my writing in general, which was fascinating. We learned how better to use AI as a resource for real-world communications, and got feedback on things like word choice and strategy. It wasn’t about grammar and spelling, but rather more about phrasing and making sure you are answering likely questions in a more efficient and helpful way.”

“I was impressed by the quality of the program and how the live online format allowed us to interact with the professors and the other participants,” he continues. “We were able to learn something, get into breakout rooms and test it out, and then come together as a group to discuss it. The program covers a wide range of topics that enhance your skills whether you are a new or experienced manager. I have become more aware of the nuances of people management and how a little drip can create a ripple effect if you don’t handle it well.”