Coming off a U.S. presidential campaign in which the “Joes” of the world assumed a very prominent role, perhaps it is only fitting that it was “Joe the Risk Manager” who took over the presidency of the Risk and Insurance Management Society for 2009. As RIMS president, Joe Restoule has a number of goals, but the most important one is to project his own company's culture of innovation and creativity to benefit his risk management colleagues, helping them cope with these “interesting” times of financial stress and emerging exposures.

“I come from an environment where we're allowed to be creative and innovative,” said Mr. Restoule, whose title is leader of risk management for NOVA Chemicals Corp.–one of Canada's largest petrochemical companies. “When we see times such as these, we get excited, because we see not only the troubled waters, but we also see opportunity.”

At NOVA, he added, “we're trained and educated to look for opportunities–where you take something that's negative and perhaps make it into a positive outcome.” Mr. Restoule said he plans to take that “zest for creativity and innovation and continuous improvement to RIMS this year.”