This week I had the privilege of setting up the Creative Confessional at the Global Insurance Accelerator’s InsurTech Week 2019, held in Des Moines. Home to over 80 insurance companies headquartered in the metro, this city is the city to help set up InsurTech startups for success.
I had three full days of getting to know the individuals that made up the 17 companies invited to Des Moines, as much as one can get to know someone through the lens. I saw first handshakes and witnessed that throat clearing before first introductions. I saw pitch notes and hands raised, business card exchanges and glasses raised. I saw that energetic inertia of selling an idea as hard as you’re selling a product, both exhilarating and exhausting in each breath. I saw glimpses of future success and uncertain glances of potential despair. Which is to say, I saw the humanity in it all.
And this is why it was so important to me to be able to pop up that transparent bubble inside the GIA. Because while I knew these individuals were in #DSMUSA to make that next connection that could potentially bring their entire concept come to life, it’s the human connection that I seek to uncover.
Behind the founders and salesmen of pitches and products exist men and women that are fathers, partners, sons and daughters. Humans with stories of success and failure, stories of love and loss. Stories of both longing and belonging. Stories that you want to cling to, hold close, celebrate and believe in. I believe in these individuals and have a greater belief in the potential for innovative strides our Capital city can support, if they believe in those stories, too.
While the stories stay inside the Creative Confessional, the portraiture lives on.
