After helping Aon CEO Greg Casereinvigorate the firm, Ted Devine—previously president of Aon RiskServices—left in 2009 to pursue his dream of helping inner-cityyouths become better citizens. Recently, he stepped back into theinsurance industry as CEO of Dallas-based Insureon, an onlineinsurance agency

NU: At what point did you decide to devote moretime to inner-city youths and why?

DEVINE: I've done a ton of volunteering in theinner city of Chicago for almost 20 years. Part of my life'spassion has been giving back, and I was doing that informally.

After a lot of thought, I felt that if I was going to have theimpact on the community I wanted to have, I needed to have sometime to do that. I asked Greg [Case] to [let] me take some time,and I started 1World Sports more than two-and-a-half years ago. Ispent that time building it prior to my new role.

Today, 1World Sports helps more than 5,000 inner-city kids inChicago, and we're beginning to do events in New York and Dallasthis year. We work with at-risk kids in housing authorities orschools to learn the life lessons of sports, and we partner withlocal professional sports teams to do that.

The gist of the charity is that a lot of kids love to play thegame but don't take the time to learn the life lessons from thesport—like the link between academics and practice, such asstudying for a test or a game; nutrition; what it means to be agood sport or a teammate; or to compete the right way.

How does this tie into your career shift from Aon toInsureon?

One of the things I love at 1World Sports is working withindividuals and making a difference. That is the focus ofInsureon.

We are the largest platform for individual entrepreneurs to getinsurance. Every single day, 250 people come to our site, and theyare all small-business people looking for insurance to help theircompany or help themselves start a company or to get the insurancethat they need to protect their family.

I'm chatting with people who just got laid off or are startingtheir own consulting firm, and they've been told they need acertificate of insurance and they don't know what that is, but theyknow they have to have it. We sell BOP [Businessowners policy],Workers' Compensation and Liability.

What is your relationship to the customer?

Insureon is the agent to the customer. There are 40 millionbusinesses in the United States with fewer than five employees—and[that number] is growing at a rate where it is projected that by2019, 40 percent of all businesses will be in this micro-segment.There's a lot of growth there.

These people are not being adequately served by traditionalchannels because the premium is too small; they are also goingonline to find insurance. Today, we are the leading onlineplatform. We work with a few select carriers to make sure ourclients get the coverage they need and that makes the mostsense.

It's a pretty dramatic switch to go from a dynamicglobal company to a smaller concern. What drove you to make thechange?

What I loved about Aon was not that it was big but that we weretrying to change the firm and be the best in the industry. I feelthe same way about Insureon.

For me, that's the charge, the energy. It's not about beingglobal. It's about being able to grow a business and haveimpact.

          —Interviewed by Mark E. Ruquet