Mr. Bent has served with SFM Mutual Insurance Company since September of 2006 as the Vice President and Director of Underwriting and is responsible for the underwriting technical function. Mr. Bent also is responsible for: Rate, Rule and Form filings; Underwriting Regulatory Compliance; Underwriting Project Management; Loss Prevention Technical Functions; and Premium Audit as well as Environmental Resources Management (ERM) functions within the underwriting side of the operation.

Mr. Bent is a former Board Chair for the Minnesota Workers’ Compensation Insurers Association and former President of the Minnesota Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) Chapter. Mr. Bent was elected to the Governing Board for the Wisconsin Compensation Rating Bureau in May of 2017.

Mr. Bent earned a BA degree from Brigham Young University in 1988 and a MS degree in Industrial Safety from Central Missouri State University in 1989, the Associate in Risk Management (ARM) designation in 1999, and CPCU in 2007.

Immediately prior to joining SFM, Mr. Bent was the Vice President of Property, Casualty and Risk Management for Associated Financial Group a regional insurance brokerage firm in the Twin Cities. He also previously served as the Underwriting Manager and Team Leader for the Montana State Fund and, prior to that, worked seven years for EBI Companies in loss prevention, underwriting and management.

Dr. Fred Gerr, MD, is professor of Occupational and Environmental Health and professor of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health and professor of Internal Medicine (Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine) in the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa.  Dr. Gerr is board certified in preventive medicine (occupational medicine) and internal medicine.  Dr. Gerr serves as the occupational medicine residency training program director at the University of Iowa and was the occupational medicine residency training program director at Emory University.  He is a recognized educator who was named Professor of the Year by the Student Government Association of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and was also a recipient of the University of Iowa College of Public Health Faculty Teaching Award.  Dr. Gerr is also a recognized expert on occupational musculoskeletal disorders and occupational neurological impairment and has published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

James Kelly, M.S. has over 25 years of experience with the State of Minnesota in the environmental health field, at both the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). He is currently the manager of the Environmental Surveillance and Assessment Section at MDH, which: develops, maintains, and applies expert risk assessment techniques so that environmental hazards are assessed using sound science; conducts public health activities related to contaminant releases; and tracks the occurrence and characteristics of environmental health issues such as climate change.

Ms. Nan N. Pham is an entrepreneur and community organizer with over 15 years of experience in the beauty industry and has served as a Board Member for the Massachusetts Board of Cosmetology and Barbering. She actively works towards safer practices in beauty salons to ensure health protection for salon workers. She’s also a current member of the MA Healthy Cosmetology Committee and the Vietnamese Health Collaborative. Ms. Pham is currently working with the City of Minneapolis on the Healthy Nail Salon Initiative to promote healthier and safer working environment for nail salon workers. She has worked on many research projects for the prevention of hazardous chemical exposures and health issues. She was on the Board of Director for the Stoughton Chamber of Commerce and the Vietnamese-American Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Nico Pronk is President of the HealthPartners Institute and Chief Science Officer at HealthPartners, Inc. and holds a faculty appointment as Adjunct Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Pronk’s work is focused on connecting evidence of effectiveness with practical applications of programs and practices, policies and systems that measurably improve population health and well-being. His work applies to the workplace, the health system setting, and the community and involves development of new models to improve health and well-being at the research, practice and policy levels.

Dr. Pronk was confirmed by the White House to serve as co-chair of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for the year 2030 (aka “Healthy People 2030”). He is a current member of the Food and Nutrition Board and incoming Chair for the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He is the founding and past president of the International Association for Worksite Health Promotion.
He is widely published in both the scientific and practice literatures and is an international speaker on population health and well-being. Dr. Pronk received his doctorate degree in exercise physiology at Texas A&M University and completed his post-doctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

HealthPartners Institute is one of the largest medical research and education centers in the Midwest, the Institute has about 450 studies underway each year, trains more than 500 medical residents and fellows and more than 500 students, and provides continuing medical education for 25,000 clinicians as well as patient education and clinical quality improvement. HealthPartners, founded in 1957 as a cooperative, is an integrated, non-profit, member-governed health system providing health care services and health plan financing and administration. It’s the largest consumer governed nonprofit health care organization in the United States.

For 30 years, Vikki Sanders has worked at the Department of Labor and industry as the Workplace Violence Prevention consultant for the state of Minnesota. She has worked 7 years as an OSHA investigator and 23 years as a Principal Consultant specializing in Workplace Violence, general industry safety and safety committees.

Vikki currently is the Public Sector Principal Safety Consultant for the Department of Labor and Industry specializing with public sector employers. Vikki has taught over 610 businesses and 55,000 employees on safety topics in a variety of industrial settings including healthcare, education, manufacturing, government and business.

As a Consultant/Trainer and Co-Author of the workplace violence prevention manual, Vikki Sanders offers practical tools of awareness and understanding that help make workplaces safer.