About Us

Steve Williams

CEO

Steve is a true pioneer and cutting-edge innovator in the workers ’compensation cost management industry. Starting in 1991, he participated in the development, implementation, and marketing of 1 of the first employer-based workers’ compensation claim management software program, Compensation Control. In 1993, he co-founded Employers’ Assistance Corporation, pioneering the first retail insurance agency created to sell only workers’ compensation insurance and to provide sophisticated workers’ compensation cost management services to its clients. He co-founded Compensation Value Alliance in 1995, the first wholesale insurance agency created to sell only workers’ compensation insurance and to provide sophisticated workers’ compensation cost management services to its clients. In 1997, he co-founded Company Nurse, the first company created to provide Preemptive Telephonic Triage (Pre-triage) services. He pioneered the adaptation of telephonic triage to the treatment of industrial injuries, as well as being primarily responsible for creating the claim management processes that surround it. He was instrumental in the creation of the joint venture with Tenet Healthcare and the attraction of the additional outside capital needed to launch the company and product. In 2004, he created the model and market test that became the Workers’ Compensation Company of America in 2006.

Zanzibar Vermiglio

Chairman of the Board

He is one of the owners of Compel USA and a chief business strategist. He sits on many boards of directors and advises dozens of executives in Fortune 500 companies. He has worked with hundreds of companies over the years of his practice, but only allies himself as an owner for companies that are out to make a needed difference in their respective industries. He is on a mission to make the world work one business at a time and one industry at a time. Crafting Value Proposition into a lethal mechanism for delivering the highest possible deliverable to client has been a primary focus for his attention with Compel USA.

A.J. Peterson

Sales Manager

AJ was born and raised in Tampa, Florida where he grew up hunting and playing baseball. In 2014 he was awarded a scholarship to play collegiate ball with Concordia University Nebraska where he graduated in 2016. His baseball career continued at the professional level as a pitcher for two years with the Hollywood Stars and Ruidoso Osos. He has coached baseball at all levels and is currently the Head Baseball coach at Bear Creak High School in Lakewood Colorado. He is an avid golfer actively chasing scratch and massive Georgia Bulldogs fan. AJ and his wife Amber live in XX and recently welcomed their first child into the world.

Alma Martinez

Executive Director of Operations
Claims Engineering Director

Alma has been with WCCA/Compel USA for 12 years. She is the Executive Director of Operations / Claims Engineering Director. She has 32 years’ experience in the Workers’ Compensation Industry and hold a Workers’ Compensation Claims Professional designation ( WCCP) . She has worked for several Insurance carriers and Third Party Administrators in the State of Arizona. Prior to WCCA, She worked for a TPA and was part of a team dedicated to the WC program for Wal-Mart. She was responsible for the states of Arizona, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington and New Mexico. She is an Arizona Native, born and raised Bisbee Arizona, a small mining town , in the southern part of the state. She has 2 adult children Brianna and Kayla. Her interests are hiking , travel and spending time with family and friends.

Scott Cowan

CFO

Scott was born and raised on a farm in Montana where his sisters continue to live. He attended the University of Colorado, Boulder where he earned his BA degree and then continued his education at the University of Phoenix where he received his MBA. He worked at GE before taking early retirement in 2006 to become a founding partner of WCCA/Compel USA. He is an avid tennis player, a diehard Phoenix Suns fan, and an ongoing learning advocate with regards to life itself. He loves to travel, creating community, being connected to others, and recently took up creating stained glass and architectural art glass. He’s been married to his wife Roxanne for 23 years, is the father to adult children, Ross and Regan, and a loving grandfather to four grandchildren.

History of Workers Compensation

Workers’ compensation was designed to solve a problem that created an unworkable arrangement. Prior to the adoption of the first workers’ compensation laws in 1911, injured workers were usually on their own in order to take care of workplace injuries and often sued their employer for
compensation. Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system where the medical and disability costs of an injury or illness that arises out of or in the course of employment is paid for by the employer. In exchange, the employer cannot be sued for a workplace injury. In almost all circumstances an insurance mechanism was made mandatory as a way to fund the risk.

In the 1930’s experience rating began to be adopted as a way to punish employers with adverse claim experience while rewarding employers with better than average claim experience through higher or lower insurance costs.  Although a seemingly beneficial system, it didn’t take long for experience rating to be exploited in the best interest of service providers within the system at the expense of the employer. The system set up to manage a claim actually made more money as the cost of the claim increased for the consumer (employer). The revenue models of the entities within the system were to increase cost producing activities which the carrier was more than happy to pay. In order to control costs those models have to be targeted.

In the 1980’s costs in the workers’ compensation system were skyrocketing. This was largely driven by increased fraud and plaintiff attorney involvement in claims. It was a time when it wasn’t unusual for a business’ failure to be due to unmanageable work comp premiums for employers.

Compel’s USA purpose is to take control of workers’ compensation away from those who exploit the system for their own gain and return it to the real stake holders in the system – the employee and especially the employer.