About Us

Founded in 2007, the Alan Katz Group LLC offers clients consulting, public speaking and research services with an emphasis on health insurance, sales strategies and public policy. This emphasis stems from the background of Alan Katz, the principal of AKG.

Alan Katz has deep experience in sales and in the health insurance industry. He has been an independent agent, led one of the nation's largest employee benefits general agencies, and served as a Senior Vice President of WellPoint, the nation's largest commercial managed care company At WellPoint, Alan led the individual and small group sales organization and championed their online distribution strategy. His work on managing sales channel conflict was cited by Sales and Marketing magazine when, in 2000, it named WellPoint one of America's Top 25 Sales Teams.

Alan has been a licensed health insurance agent since 1983. He is a past president of both the National and the California Association of Health Underwriters (Health Underwriters is the leading trade associations for health insurance agents and other professionals). In 2003 Alan received the Harold R. Gordon Memorial Award as NAHU's Health Insurance Person of the Year. He was named CAHU Member of the Year in 2000 and, for an unprecedented second time, in 2007.

Alan has been deeply involved in health care reform efforts at both the national and state level. In California he represented agents during negotiations over California’s successful small group health insurance reforms (often referred to as AB 1672) during the 1990s. He later testified before several Congressional committees during the debate over the Clinton Administration health care reform proposal. In 2007 Alan helped lead CAHU's engagement with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's health care reform efforts.

Alan is the author of two respected blogs. The Alan Katz Health Care Reform Blog was launched on January 2, 2007 and earned two distinctions that year. In September, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch named it one of the five “health care blogs gaining attention in the virtual world” and in December the Sacramento Bee’s CapitolAlert.com added the site to its list of top blogs covering California politics and policy issues. In September 2008 RNCentral.com cited the blog as one of the “100 Best Health Care Policy Blogs” while LexisNexis named this site one of the "Top 50 Blogs for Insurance." Employee Benefit Adviser magazine featured Alan and the blog in its February 2011 cover story concerning social media.

Alan has a broad background in government. He was an investigating attorney with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, was Chief of Staff to California Lieutenant Governor Leo McCarthy, and served on the Santa Monica City Council. Alan has also held leadership positions in several community organizations and in various political campaigns

Alan is the author of Trailblazed: Proven Paths to Sales Success which describes the practices, procedures and prossesses shared by successful sales professionals. The book is an outgrowth of  the Trailblazed Sales Project Study, which was spearheaded by the Alan Katz Group.