Paul Forte, who served as FedPoint’s CEO for 22 years, before retiring in March, is a renaissance man, literally and figuratively. In 1980, he earned a doctorate in English Renaissance prose, studying the works of Francis Bacon, Richard Hooker, John Donne and others. After a fruitless search for a tenure track position at a university, Forte entered the world of insurance, learning everything he could about managing insurance risk and later multinational pooling.
“It can take a long time to shed whatever stereotypical images a person may have,” Forte says. “The humanities helped me because it provided the ability to use metaphor and to appreciate different values and discourse. It teaches people how to deal with opposing viewpoints tactfully and how to write clearly.”
Forte, who has a massive library at home, says research and learning are compulsions that he has always incorporated into his work. “I believe my [academic] background was directly responsible for some of my success over the years,” says Forte, who helped create hundreds of jobs, and supported charitable giving programs and employee volunteerism in the Seacoast. “And not as an offshoot, but directly helpful. If you study prose literature of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, you are forced to think across disciplines and to take on problems without easy solutions.”
FedPoint, which administers large-scale insurance and benefit programs for more than a million active and retired members of the armed forces and their families, is based in Portsmouth. It launched an annual nursing scholarship last year (totaling $20,000 for four students).
The company has also published op-eds advocating for supporting the nursing industry. It signed the AARP pledge to hire workers of all ages and partners with the NH Military Coaching Alliance to mentor and hire veterans who are transitioning to private sector life. FedPoint is a platinum member of the NH Veteran-Friendly Business Network.
FedPoint’s previous COO Kevin Hill succeeded Forte as president in March, and Forte says the company will be in excellent hands under Hill’s leadership. “The company has a solid base on which to grow.”
For more information, visit fedpointusa.com.