Piko Labs AI appoints ex-Northwestern Mutual executive as strategic advisor
Piko Labs AI, a venture-backed technology company building AI and unified-ledger tools for the captive insurance industry, has appointed Aditi Javeri Gokhale as strategic advisor effective May 2026. She joins alongside vice chairman and chief commercial officer Steve McElhiney, the past board chair of CICA and VCIA who joined Piko earlier this year.
In her role, Gokhale will focus on strategy and operational growth as Piko scales its platform for the Captive Insurance Industry. She joins a leadership team anchored by founder Christina Card Zbar and Vice Chairman Steve McElhiney, past board chair of CICA and VCIA.
Gokhale spent nearly a decade in senior leadership at Northwestern Mutual, most recently as chief strategy officer, president of retail investments, and head of institutional investments, where she oversaw teams managing over $630 billion in company and client assets. Under her leadership, the firm's wealth management business posted record growth, and she led Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, the company's $200 million venture investing arm focused on FinTech, WealthTech, and AI. Earlier in her career she held senior roles at American Express, Travelocity, and Nutrisystem, and began her career at Booz Allen Hamilton. She holds a B.S. and an MBA from MIT.
“We built Piko because captive owners and managers have been running real institutional complexity on tooling that wasn't built for them. Aditi has spent her career bringing institutional rigor to exactly that kind of complexity, at the scale our customers operate at. Aditi and Steve bring a combination of institutional scale and captive-industry depth that meaningfully extends the team we're building at Piko,” said Christina Card Zbar, founder & chief executive, Piko Labs AI.
"Captive insurance is one of the most sophisticated risk structures in financial services, and it deserves technology that matches that sophistication,” commented Gokhale. “I am focused on helping Piko deliver on that promise: for captive owners, managers, reinsurers, and the broader ecosystem.”
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