by ALPS Lawyer’s Malpractice Insurance
A podcast for lawyers by lawyers brought to you by ALPS insurance. ALPS In Brief Podcast Intro/Outro Music: Walk In The Park by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://audionautix.com/
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December 17, 2025
Hi everyone. I'm Rio Laine, the Director of Strategic Partnerships at ALPS Insurance. Welcome to our latest installment of the Alps In Brief Podcast. I am joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Sara Smith, and she is also the president of the Montana Society of CPAs. Her theme for her term as president is connection, which is a value that runs through both her leadership and her life. So at ALPS, Sara helps guide a growing company that's redefining what it means to lead with purpose. And when she's not leading finance teams, she's often on a mountain bike trail somewhere in Montana. So exploring new terrain, both literally and figuratively. So thank you so much for joining us, Sara. Sara Smith: Thanks, Rio. Thanks for having me. Rio Laine: Yeah, it's a pleasure. I'm happy we got this chance to sit down and chat about all the exciting things you have going on, and I'm really looking forward to our discussion. Sara Smith: Yeah, me too. Rio Laine: Yeah. So okay, let's start with your story, the beginning. What first drew you to accounting and being a CPA? Sara Smith: That's a great question. When I was in high school, I took accounting and they taught the class with a packet, right? And it had the balance sheet and income statement and all the journal entries. And it was such a neat and clean process, and I really enjoyed that. But when I went to college, I thought, "I am much too exciting to be an accountant. I have way more things that I would like to do and this seems really boring." So I went the long way. I got my undergraduate in marketing and management and got my MBA, and then discovered accounting and pursued my CPA after that. Rio Laine: Oh, awesome. And did you kind of revisit that love of that kind of order and the balance sheet and all the nice orderly parts of it? Sara Smith: Yeah. I think the thing ... There's a misconception about accounting that it is very black and white. And in reality, it's really messy and it has a lot of shades of gray, which make it much more challenging than it looks on paper. Rio Laine: Yeah. Oh, interesting. So before joining ALPS, you spent a lot of time working for a variety of companies, including Target and Montana Rail Link. So I'm very curious, can you tell us a little bit about that path and what eventually led you to ALPS? Sara Smith: Absolutely. So I was an intern at Target when I went to college here at the University of Montana. It was such a fun internship. I mean, we just basically ran around that store and did whatever we wanted. And I thought, "Oh, well, if this is how the work turns out, then I want to join this team." And there weren't a lot of good job prospects when I graduated from college, so I moved to Colorado with Target and went through their store management training program, which was a lot of hands-on management, which was great. I really enjoyed it. It wasn't long into that process though that I realized that this was not for me. Retail was not going to be a long-term career. And I utilized their program to pay for graduate school and I went and got into my MBA program. So I did that for a couple of years, and then 9/11 happened and decided to move back to Montana; and had a friend of a friend that worked at Montana Rail Link and got in the accounting department there. And I didn't love it, to be honest. It was not my favorite place, mainly because of culture. Rio Laine: Yeah. Sara Smith: And so my advisor suggested that I try ALPS, and I've been there 22 years. Rio Laine: Wow. Yeah, it's true. I mean, culture is such an important part of a workplace. And so in terms of ALPS, I mean, obviously the culture was appealing, but also is there anything else that made you feel like it was the right fit? Sara Smith: Yeah. I came in in a strange part of time in ALPS' history. They were on this really kind of creepy second floor and the doors were closed all the time, and it wasn't actually a very welcoming type atmo
June 27, 2025
ALPS COO Chris Newbold interviews ALPS Director of Strategic Partnerships Rio Lane about ALPS's Solo Attorney Wellness Trends Report, which reveals positive trends in solo attorney well-being and explores the evolving concept of wellness in the legal profession.
March 27, 2025
ALPS CEO David Bell discusses navigating the 2020 pandemic, embracing change, fostering a resilient company culture, and exciting future initiatives in an insightful conversation with Rio Laine. This is the first in our new quarterly thought leadership series, ALPS In Brief: The Deep Think. — Transcript: Rio Laine: Hello and welcome. I'm Rio Laine, the Bar Partnership Strategist at ALPS Insurance. And today I have a chance to sit down with our CEO and fearless leader, David Bell, and we'll be talking about what's happening at ALPS, how the last year has gone, our vision moving forward, and also talk about how far we've come since the 2020 pandemic. Hello, David. Welcome. David Bell: Thank you, Rio, for having me on. Rio Laine: Yeah, thanks for joining me. It's always a pleasure to get a chance to sit down and talk with you. David Bell: For me too. I look forward to the conversation. Rio Laine: 100%. Fabulous. So do you want to take a minute, David, to just tell the audience a bit about yourself, how you came to be at ALPS, a little bit about your background. David Bell: Sure. Well, I've been in the insurance industry my entire career since college. I joined Chubb Insurance and was with Chubb for a number of years. And then in the wake of 9/11, Chubb AIG and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners formed a joint venture, and I went with Chubb's Capital to help start at an organization called Allied World, AWAC. And so over the course of a decade living in Bermuda, we built that business up, ultimately took it public. And then skipping a few chapters of this book, ultimately, my wife and I decided to come back to Montana where we first met three decades ago, where she is originally from and where we both went to college. And coming back to Montana, I had the opportunity to take the helm at ALPS. And it has been a true blessing for a dozen years to work alongside the men and women at ALPS and doing what we're going to talk about today. Rio Laine: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so you've been at the helm of ALPS for about 12 years now. And during that time it seems that you've steered the company through a lot of really exciting changes and transitions and also perhaps some uncertainty, probably most notably like the 2020 pandemic. I think we can all agree that was a very interesting time all around. So I'd like to start with talking about the years since the pandemic and the last time we sat down with you, which was in 2020. Now, obviously ALPS is still here and thriving, but I'm curious to know what is something that you feel that you could point to that was the most important factor in helping us navigate that time and also what was something that helped our insureds navigate that time as well? David Bell: The pandemic time? Rio Laine: Yes. David Bell: Certainly just solidarity. I think as a country we came together, as a world, in a lot of cases, we came together. And at ALPS, that was particularly true. To be fair, ALPS has employees in a dozen states, but the nucleus of the organization is in the home office in Missoula, Montana. And Montana did not have a number of the challenges that the larger cities had, particularly with population density. When you have a global pandemic and airborne transmittable viruses, not having the same type of population density did help us. But everybody at ALPS really rose to the occasion. Our technology was ready to allow people to be working remotely. We were also able to bring people back into the office much, much earlier than I think larger cities were able to do. But most importantly, I think people rose to the occasion. They understood that they had the need to balance the challenges and the opportunities that they had confronted at home, and then also the responsibilities that we continued to have at the office. And I was so proud of everybody. It was week by week. We were intensely communicative, always together, always talking about what our objectiv
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ALPS In Brief Podcast Intro/Outro Music: Walk In The Park by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://audionautix.com/
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