Built by industry veterans who together have lived in your world for over three decades.
Our Story
G1 began with a simple observation: too much of the employee benefits industry runs on manual work that shouldn’t exist.
Our founder, Paul Griffith, spent 17 years on the carrier side, embedded daily with broker agencies. Our Vice President of Operations, Brittney Smith, spent 12 years inside a top broker agency, navigating RFPs and enrollment cycles. From both vantage points, the pattern was the same: brokers and carriers spending most of their time on copy-paste renewal tasks instead of strategy, relationships, and the work that actually moves clients forward.
Solving it required more than industry insight. Our Chief Technology Officer, Robert Ventrone Jr., spent 20+ years building systems in highly regulated, high-volume industries — most recently leading engineering teams at a platform that processes trillions of HIPAA-regulated transactions annually. That engineering depth sits beneath every layer of G1.
G1 was built to simplify the process, increase accuracy, and eliminate manual work. It serves as the intelligent infrastructure that automates the manual handoffs between brokers and carriers — so both sides can focus on what matters.
Meet Paul Griffith
Founder & CEO
Paul Griffith has spent 17 years inside the employee benefits industry as an Executive Sales Consultant at a top ancillary carrier, where he closed 2025 as the #2 producer in the nation.
For nearly two decades, Paul has worked alongside broker agencies on the operational realities that drive their business: renewal cycles, RFPs, plan comparisons, sold-case implementations, and enrollment readiness.
That perspective shaped how G1 is built. Every workflow reflects how brokers and carriers actually operate — not how a software company assumes they should. The pain points are ones Paul has lived with personally.
“I spent 17 years on the carrier side, embedded inside broker agencies. I saw firsthand how much time gets consumed by work that adds no strategic value — copying data between spreadsheets, chasing carriers for corrections, manually building enrollment materials. And I saw the impact it had on the carrier side, too. G1 is the solution I always wished existed.”
Meet Brittney Smith
Vice President, Operations
Brittney Smith has spent 12+ years inside the broker side of the employee benefits industry, most recently as an office leader at one of the largest benefits brokerages in the U.S.
Her work has covered the operational core of broker agencies — renewal strategy, financial analysis, plan design, and carrier negotiations — alongside deep expertise in the regulations that define benefits compliance: HIPAA, ERISA, ACA, COBRA, and Section 125. She’s led cross-functional teams, managed high-value client relationships, and built the kind of consultative practice that earns long-term client trust.
She brings to G1 the day-to-day perspective of someone who has lived the broker side of the business — the cycles, the pressures, and the operational reality the platform is built to address.
“Operations is where strategy meets reality. My job is to make sure the way G1 works on the inside reflects what brokers and carriers actually need on the outside — so the platform earns trust on the first day and keeps it every day after.”
Meet Robert Ventrone Jr.
Chief Technology Officer
Rob is a software and engineering leader with 20+ years of experience building and scaling technology across highly regulated, high-volume industries. Most recently, he served as Director of Engineering at one of the largest medical data exchanges in the world, where he led the Clinical Division, whose systems processed billions of transactions annually within a network handling trillions — work that demanded rigorous attention to reliability, security, and compliance at massive scale.
Prior to that, Rob led the digital transformation at one of the largest door manufacturers, modernizing legacy systems and bringing data-driven products to a traditionally analog industry. The through-line across his career has been turning complex operational challenges into clean, scalable software.
A hands-on technologist as much as a leader, Rob stays close to the craft — from cloud architecture and automation to emerging AI tooling. He’s known for pairing strategic vision with deep technical fluency, and for building teams that ship.
“In this industry, trust is earned through how the system behaves under pressure — not how it markets itself. My job is to make sure G1 is built so that brokers, carriers, and their clients never have to think twice about whether their data is safe, accurate, and where it needs to be.”