Meet the team

Karen DeFazio

Director of Plan Maintenance

Proud Employee Since 1984


Karen DeFazio manages the Plan Maintenance team at Word & Brown. Her group is responsible for maintaining accurate medical, dental, vision, and life rates, plans, and benefits for all California and Nevada carriers included in the WBQuote online quoting system.

She and her team also work with Product Management on User Acceptance Testing (UAT), collaborates with IT, Marketing, and other departments across the organization, and serve as subject matter experts for many Word & Brown projects.

Karen joined Word & Brown in 1985 as one of the first employees following more than two years working in broker services for an Orange County insurance agent. She first entered the health insurance industry in 1976 at Prudential Insurance, where she was a brokerage department representative and field office manager.


CO-Founders

John M. Word III
Edward J. "Rusty" Brown, Jr.

Executive Leadership

Jessica Word
Marc McGinnis
Vanessa Benitez
Scott Diehl
Joe De La Cruz
Linh Huynh
Paul Tran
Emily Crognale

Regional Vice Presidents

Cindy West
Marc A. McGinnis
Michele Isaly
Tawny Friedly

Leadership

Paul Roberts
Dena Allchin
Karen DeFazio
Lydia Robledo
Dientre Le’on
Ken Venier