Head of Risk & Insurance
Designer Fund is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage tech companies using design to improve health, sustainability, or prosperity for people. It backs founding teams, particularly those with design backgrounds, across sectors like fintech, healthcare, climate tech, and developer tools.
About Designer Fund
Designer Fund is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in tech companies leveraging design to drive positive outcomes in health, sustainability, and financial prosperity. Its portfolio spans a wide range of sectors including financial infrastructure (Stripe), preventative health (Omada), collaborative tools (Notion), developer tools (Netlify), product management (Linear), payroll and benefits (Gusto), design tools (Framer), and healthcare infrastructure (Commure), among dozens of other companies across fintech, climate tech, healthcare, EdTech, and AI. The firm also runs 'Designer Founders,' a community and platform highlighting designers who have gone on to found and lead companies, reflecting its focus on backing design-driven founders and design-centric startups from early stages through growth and acquisition.
Skills
About the Role
You will lead Via's insurance program, shaping its strategy, structure, and operations, while continuing to expand it as the company takes on new business lines. Reporting to the COO, you'll be close to the parts of the business where risk shows up first. You'll own the insurance program end-to-end, partner with senior leadership on risk strategy, manage brokerage and carrier relationships, build systems and a team to manage claims and litigation, develop a broader risk management strategy, build internal infrastructure for visibility into risk, and stand up analytics to monitor program performance.
Requirements
- Experience building and running an insurance program, ideally with significant operational exposure across multiple jurisdictions
- At least 10+ years of experience in risk management, insurance, or a closely adjacent function
- Comfort operating in ambiguity and scaling a function at a rapidly growing company
- Commercial thinking to balance insurance as both a cost and a risk management tool
- Analytical and data-driven approach leveraging claims, litigation, and operational insights
- Operational mindset to translate strategy into process, headcount, and tooling
- Hands-on and low ego approach
Responsibilities
- Own Via's insurance program end-to-end: assess risk profile, identify coverage needs, and put risk programs in place across markets
- Partner with senior leadership on risk strategy, including coverage decisions and alternative risk transfer
- Manage brokerage and carrier relationships: run renewals, evaluate quotes, negotiate terms, and select partners
- Build the systems and team to manage claims and litigation efficiently
- Develop a risk management strategy that goes beyond insurance, partnering with Legal and Finance to reduce loss exposure
- Build internal infrastructure: policies, processes, dashboards, and reporting for risk visibility
- Stand up analytics to monitor loss ratios, claim frequency and severity, cost per mile, and retention thresholds
- Lead, grow and develop Via's risk team as the program scales
Benefits
- Free medical plans
- 401K matching