Kitty Barran

Kitty Barran serves as Communications Leader at Brown and Brown, the fifth largest brokerage in the world, based in Issaquah, Washington. In this role for the past three years, she manages the content of a SharePoint platform supporting 25,000 employees across dozens of connected sites, tens of thousands of pages, and hundreds of thousands of documents. She also directs the delivery of internal retail communications, including town halls and leadership announcements, coordinating videographers, designers, and other team members even though they are not direct reports. Barran began her career with a journalism degree from Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas. After graduation she took an in-house writing position and entered the insurance industry in 1995 as West Coast manager for the Insurance Information Institute, where she focused on consumer education regarding risks such as earthquakes and wildfires. Her path continued through communications and SharePoint positions at Farmers Insurance Group starting around 2012 and a two-year contractor role as SharePoint content manager at Microsoft before joining Brown and Brown to build their SharePoint environment. She remains active in professional organizations, holding long-standing membership in the International Association of Business Communicators, serving two years as president of the Association for Women in Communications, and acting as a founding member of the local women's empowerment group Illuminating Women beginning in 2017.