Joseph Michael

Joseph Michael serves as Head of Advanced Markets at Gideon Strategic Partners, providing technical support services that combine expertise, attention to detail, and industry experience with genuine psychological empathy, preparing customized solutions that are unique to each client. Since 2000, Joe has worked at the highest levels of the life insurance industry, either employed by some of the country's most sophisticated life insurance brokerage firms or acting as a consultant to them.

His hands-on experience includes the design, implementation, and administration of Corporate-Owned Life Insurance (COLI) programs, executive disability income insurance, income annuities, wealth-transfer life insurance, multi-generational asset planning strategies, and Private Placement Life Insurance (PPLI) and Private Placement Annuities (PPA). In the eight years prior to entering the insurance industry, Joe worked with an estate planning firm that specialized in succession planning for closely-held businesses and key executive retention programs.

Upon graduating from college, Joe worked at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, first conducting research for a private trader, then trading for partnership accounts (the precursor to today's private hedge funds). He identified combinations of overvalued and undervalued options on the same underlying security, buying and selling to remain fully hedged, then reversing the transactions when valuations realigned. This experience led him to discover that the same economic principles applied to permanent life insurance: when valued from an economic perspective rather than an actuarial one, the cost of premium outlay is generally less than the long-term combination of benefits, a structural arbitrage in favor of the policyowner.

Joe graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. His honors thesis, 'The Federal Income Tax as an Inflation-Control Device During World War II,' was awarded magna cum laude plus. He grew up on the near west side of Chicago, graduated high school as class valedictorian, and earned varsity letters in cross country and track.