Ep. 580 How Rancho Mesa’s Risk Control Consultant Improves Client Safety

Rancho Mesa’s Alyssa Burley sits down with Jessee Keirstead, Rancho Mesa’s new Risk Control Consultant to discuss how clients can benefit from this new addition to the team.

Show Notes: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Alyssa Burley

Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessee Keirstead

Editor: Jadyn Brandt

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “Breaking News Intro” by nem0production

© Copyright 2025. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Alyssa Burley: You're listening to Rancho Mesa StudioOne podcast, where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your business thrive. I'm your host, Alyssa Burley, and I'm joined by Jessee Kierstead, our new Risk Control Consultant with Rancho Mesa. And we're going to talk about how our clients can benefit from this newest addition to our team. Jesse, welcome to the show.

JK: Hey, how are you?

AB: Doing great and we're happy to have you. So let's start. Will you give our listeners a brief overview of your experience with risk management and what brought you to Rancho Mesa?

JK: Yeah, so I started my career right out of college. I joined a company called Acadia Insurance, which is a regional carrier for W.R. Berkeley. So we worked with all different types of clients. I worked with all lines of insurance there. So I worked with comp and package and auto, did some inland marine. We had a heavy focus on landscaping as well as tree care clients, but saw a little bit of everything when it came to construction and you name it, pretty much touched it out there. So I was there for about five years. And from there, I moved on to a company called HAI Group, which is a nonprofit that kind of focused on housing authorities all across the country. So I traveled. I worked in about 39 states for a few years out there. It was great. Got to work with a lot of underserved people who didn't really have a lot of resources. So we had to be creative and how we figured out ways to help improve their overall safety and compliance efforts across the board. So there really wasn't a directive into what it was, right? So it could be just about anything that they needed help with. We tried to figure out ways to get out there and improve their overall facilities for the people that they served. And through that, we also worked with a lot of nonprofit agencies out of the housing authority groups. So got to work with a lot of different types of agencies throughout the years.

From there, I did some independent consulting for a while. So just about everything, you name it, got out to, got to see a lot of different types of operations. I did a lot of inspections for insurance carriers, so got familiar with what they were looking for in all different types of coverage. And then from there, I turned Berkshire Hathaway. So I was there for nine years. Mostly comp focus, but did a little bit of all lines, but got to work with a lot of different clients out here in California. So I had a lot of nonprofit business as well as landscaping, tree work, all different types of clients. Again, you name it, saw it through Berkshire Hathaway for nine years and got to partner up with Rancho Mesa a lot throughout those nine years and saw you guys from afar, admired you from afar and really was thankful for the opportunity to come here. Kind of popped up and I realize it was an opportunity that I couldn't turn down.

AB: Yeah, that's always nice to hear. And listening to your background, you seem like a perfect fit for Rancho Mesa. I mean, you have covered all the different industries that we specialize in. So it just seemed like it was a perfect match from the beginning. So what kind of services can our clients expect from you if they, you know, they're listening to this episode and they say, “Great. I want to meet Jesse. How can we get some of his services?”

JK: Yeah. So again, like I said, I'd work with you guys from the outside. And one of the things I heard so much about was your SafetyOne app, right? And I was really excited to learn about it coming in because I had a few clients that we worked on together that were already using it. And it seemed like such a great tool, but I had no idea when I came here how great it really was, the capabilities of it and how easy it is to use. All of the great tools that you already have in there are useful. They're easy. People are really excited about it. But once I started getting going with you guys, I realized there's so many ways that we can potentially use this to help bring tools that are free to clients out there in the field, things that they can use every day. Not only are we taking in some of the tools that people already have together, like their inspections or training and digitizing it for them so that they can use it on the go. But we're trying to figure out new ways that are innovative, that are truly one of one, that we can help clients, you know, use on an everyday basis. So I've only been here for two months. So still trying to get familiar with how we can do that and understand what clients are really trying to face out there in the field that they can use this tool to, again, bring to their workforce and make it easy to use.

But we've already put together some things like ergonomic evaluations, right, put together client-specific job site inspections, yard inspections, as well as training and equipment inspections, right? So we're going on, we're working on some things that we can really kind of customize for your operations and get out there and hopefully understand how we can develop these tools to make it useful for you. Some things we're going to be working on are things like webinars and workshops. So we're going to be bringing in experts to really help address relevant, topical, and important hot-button issues that you're facing out there in the field. So not just me. We're going to have people in here who we're going to draw in to, you know, again, try to figure out ways to develop some relevant training for you that are, you know, addressing some of the things that are really happening out there in the field right now. So we're going to be offering compliance support. So guidance on regulatory requirements and best practices.

Just yesterday, I was helping a client remotely deal with an OSHA inspection, right? So they had some issues with how they were responding to that and help them with some guidance on how they can best, you know, deal with this stressful situation. A lot of times there's clients who haven't had that before. They don't understand what to do or what they need to do to best respond to that and really nervous about how to respond. So any guidance that we can offer there, I think, you know, I'm more than happy to do.

We're going to be working on things like workflow workflow improvement. So helping streamline your safety process for better efficiency and consistency. And one of the ways that we're planning on doing that is putting together a risk assessment tool, which we're working on here. We want to try to make those industry specific. But basically what it is is an evaluation of your operations, your facilities, your management practices. And we're trying to identify conditions that could lead to injuries, property damage, business interruption, or just overall financial loss. And in turn, that's hopefully going to help us identify some measures that we can work on together to try to get you to that best in class operation and hopefully avoid some of those pitfalls.

And we're also going to be helping provide you development, program development, and support. So assisting you with those policies and programs that you have to either have in place or don't have in place or needed an update on an annual basis, helping you put together training and overall safety program structure and try to help you improve that overall safety culture.

AB: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're so lucky that we have you here to be a resource for us to draw on when we're creating content for Safety One or, you know, best practices, procedures, things like that. So we're really fortunate for that. And with all of these resources that will soon be available to our clients, can you speak a little bit about why it's so important for our clients to prioritize risk management?

JK: Prioritizing risk management really helps keep people safe. It reduces the potential for incidents or accidents. And it helps avoid those financial headaches that we're all aware of, you know, hopefully it's going to cut down on things like injuries and claims, which in turn leads to better pricing for your insurance and helps cut down those long-term and those short-term costs. It'll help keep your team safer, makes your business look stronger, and help get you to that best-in-class scenario for the, for the carriers, what they're looking to see. The more we're proactive, not only we're keeping people safe, but we're keeping work from getting disrupted. We're showing employees, our internal and external partners and carriers that we really have our act together. We're not just checking boxes, right? And that really does shine through.

And the carriers can really tell the clients that are just checking the boxes versus the ones that are really kind of taking it seriously and taking into heart and investing into it. It shows your employees and the carriers and contractors that you're working with that you're trying to be a partner in and helps build that trust there. But when we focus on risk management, your workplace becomes a safer place and a better place for your team. And it really helps build that strong safety culture that everybody's trying to achieve.

AB: Yeah, absolutely. And I think Rancho Mesa has always tried to be proactive about these things, right? When we're offering our workshops and webinars trying to tell people, “Hey, this is something that we're seeing. Let's address it now before you have a claim.”

And, you know, offering SafetyOne to our clients. So I'm really excited that we're being proactive and not just reactive that, you know, maybe once you do have that OSHA visit, now you're in trouble, right? You've got to try to scramble to do something about it. But if we can help our clients get prepared before OSHA comes out. That's by far a better situation.

JK: Absolutely, yeah.

AB: Yeah. So, Jesse, anything else you would like to add before will you wrap up?

JK: Yeah, no, just like I said, I worked with you guys hand in hand as an external business partner for nine years. And I truly admire the people who work here. I think Rancho Mesa is a special place. People really care about their partners and we care about our clients. I prefer to say partners than clients because I think it isn't this way everywhere else and I think that the people here truly do care and that's something that I always admired from afar. So I am very proud to be a part of this place and I'm really looking forward to being a proactive resource for your business and getting out there and helping you as much as I can.

AB: Yeah. Well, I hope that we have lived up to your expectation or our reputation.

JK: So far so good.

AB: Good Well, Jesse, thanks for joining me in StudioOne.

JK: Thanks for having me.

AB: Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please share this episode and subscribe. For more insights like this, visit us at ranchomesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.