John Burke currently serves as the President of a 900-member Yale University alumni organization. He
brings to Leppla Capital a deeply creative approach to problem-solving and root-cause analysis; that is,
the process of discovering the root causes of problems and identifying appropriate solutions. This is a
discipline directly applicable to Leppla Capital’s investment consulting business, and which serves our
endowment and foundation clients very well.
John recently finished a 19-year tenure with AIG. At AIG managed projects focused on improving the
efficiency of the company’s complex divisional structure, authoring over 20 training curricula for the
company’s commercial divisions in the process, and competing successfully against major consultants to
design a front-end data-capture and reporting tool to manage, in real-time, AIG’s $2.5 billion worldwide
reinsurance portfolio from its New York home office.
Prior to AIG, John founded and was Managing Director of a division specializing in not-for-profit,
educational, and institutional risks for of one of New York’s leading insurance brokers. The program’s
success encouraged the New York Insurance Department to pass special enabling legislation to study the
potential creation of special purpose insurance vehicles that could design and deliver competitively
priced P&C insurance products to the not-for-profit sector.
John excels in the writing and communication skills vital to the many team-building assignments he has
been given during his career. He has worked for three major insurance carriers: Chubb Corp., Home
Insurance, and AIG, and two regional brokers: Dinner Levison (San Francisco), and Crystal & Co. (New
York).
John received his BA from Yale University and an MBA from Columbia University. An acapella
singer/director in his spare time, John also enjoys being humbled on the golf course; to him, that game
is not “a good walk spoiled” but a place to get better acquainted with one’s true character.