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Jay Fishman was on a golf course in Colorado in August 2012 when he first started to feel that something wasn’t quite right with his back. Fishman had been playing golf his whole adult life, but here he was having trouble holding an athletic position. “I couldn’t do it,” says Fishman. “I hit a few ground balls, it was odd stuff for me.”
Fishman had been experiencing back pain for years and underwent neck surgery in 2004. He thought his bad back was probably flaring up. So Fishman committed himself to hitting the gym and working with a trainer. The professional golfer Vijay Singh had invited Fishman to play the Augusta National golf course with him a week before the 2013 Masters Tournament, an annual invitation all former Masters champions are able to make to one non-member. “I tried to get myself in shape to play Augusta and it was hopeless,” says Fishman. “I called him and said I was unable to do it.”
By the end of 2013, Fishman had undergone some medical tests that suggested he maybe was suffering from a neurological condition. During the next several months Fishman started seeing more doctors and was eventually diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the devastating and progressive neurological disease known as ALS for which there is currently no effective treatment.
At the age of 63, Fishman will today step down from the chief executive position at Travelers, the only property and casualty insurer in the Dow Industrial Average. He has led the company since 2001, turning around the St. Paul Cos., acquiring Travelers in 2004, and skating through the financial crisis unscathed while rivals like AIG imploded. On Fishman’s watch, Travelers’ stock has outperformed Berkshire Hathaway and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. He is retiring as CEO with the stock trading near its all-time highs. Fishman will become Travelers’ executive chairman. In Connecticut, where Travelers has a big presence, Governor Dan Malloy has declared Monday Jay S. Fishman Day.
But in recent months Fishman has been busy. He has helped orchestrate a textbook leadership transition at a big publicly-traded American company. He has also embarked on a philanthropic effort that he hopes will help people with ALS—although not him. “I decided to approach the time I had left as though I had been given a mission and to leave behind a legacy of some accomplishment beyond to run to the next clinical trial to make my own situation better, which I find to be foolish,” says Fishman, who likes to keep things light even when talking about the most weighty of personal issues. “If I say, ‘I am on a mission,’ it sounds like The Blues Brothers—I am on a mission from God—not quite like that.”
As 2014 went on Fishman realized something could be seriously wrong with his health. There was some discussion that he could be suffering from ALS, but the disease is tough to pin down and often diagnosed through symptoms that Fishman was not completely exhibiting. He had already started to keep John Dasburg, Travelers’ lead director, up-to-date about his health situation, and he reached out to Charles “Chuck” Prince. The two had together been co-chief operating officers of Citigroup for a brief period in 2001. While Fishman left Citi, Prince remained and presided over Citigroup’s 2008 collapse as CEO. Prince is now on the board of Johnson & Johnson, one of the nation’s biggest healthcare companies. Through Prince’s contacts at J&J, Fishman was guided to Jeffrey Rothstein, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins University, who after conducting some tests told Fishman he thought Fishman’s symptoms were consistent with ALS.
After some soul searching, Fishman decided he wanted to keep running Travelers. He had previously envisioned a post-CEO period involving skis and golf clubs and that wasn’t in his future one way or the other. “It was an easy choice for me because the alternative at that point was to sit around and watch TV,” he says. “The choices became more narrow. I could do this until I couldn’t.”
Fishman may have still loved coming to work, but it wasn’t only his decision. At a scheduled board meeting in London in November 2014, he told Travelers’ directors about his health condition and that he wanted to remain CEO. First, he tried to clear the air by telling the directors that if any of them ever thought he was no longer fit for the position, they should feel comfortable telling him and he would resign without any arguments. Fishman also stated that his goal was to come to that decision well before such a call would be necessary. He told a handful of Travelers’ senior managers the same thing. Both the board and senior management wanted Fishman to continue as CEO.
“I asked for each of them to promise me if they thought I wasn't able to do the job at the right level to tell me. Being on my side meant being honest and straight-forward,” says Fishman. “I wanted everyone to know that there was a 360 around me and anybody had the ability to say ‘not quite happy,’—sometimes with the disease you don’t realize you are not as sharp.”
In November of 2014, Fishman wrote a public letter to Travelers’ employees. “I am writing to let you know that what I thought for a long time was a back problem has been diagnosed as a neuromuscular condition,” he told them. “While fortunately it has so far been slow progressing, you may soon see me with a cane or other gear to help me get around.”
Fishman has led Travelers for another year since the public disclosure. During that period, his condition progressed, but from the neck up Fishman was doing fine. He could still walk but also started to use a scooter. His deteriorating diaphragm weakened his ability to breathe. He started thinking about when he should announce his intention to resign the CEO post, initially focusing on January 2016. “As time goes on, the risk of something problematic happening simply begins to rise. A plain old cold is more impactful because the breathing is the issue,” says Fishman. “I began to realize that if I waited I ran the risk of something happening and the company having to respond and not looking nearly as thoughtful or deliberate as it had been.”
This past summer, Fishman shared his thinking about accelerating his CEO resignation with a longtime advisor, Richard Beattie, the prominent Wall Street lawyer at Simpson Thacher, who agreed with Fishman that it made sense for him to go earlier. “I said, ‘Jay, it’s easy, let’s speed the process up and go out on a high when you are healthy and things are more good for you,'” says Beattie. Wanting to resign in person and not through phone calls that might seem sudden and alarming, Fishman eyed Travelers’ regularly scheduled board meeting in August. He made some directors aware of his plans prior to the New York meeting. He also spoke to some of his key executives about his decision to recommend Alan Schnitzer, who oversees Travelers’ biggest business unit, to replace him. In addition to his qualifications, Fishman felt it made sense to hand the baton to a manager who had not yet turned 50.
At Travelers’ August 4th board meeting, Fishman told the company’s directors that he planned to retire at the end of November. The directors deliberated throughout the day and announced after the stock market closed that they had chosen Schnitzer to replace Fishman as CEO at the start of December. “At every company there comes a time for new leadership,” Fishman said in a note to Travelers’ employees as the decision was announced. “Because of the progression of my neuromuscular condition, this time has come a little earlier than I had hoped.” Fishman also conducted a Wall Street conference call that evening—with a glass of wine in hand and Schnitzer by his side—to reassure investors that the succession plan had been deliberate and that corporate strategy would not abruptly change. The next day Travelers’ stock opened higher; it’s up by more than 8% for the year.
After accepting that he had ALS, the best advice Fishman says he got from a doctor was to lean into the disease . “There are things you can do that will help later on,” says Fishman. “A wheelchair, it’s easy to get it fitted when you can move, but it’s almost impossible when you can’t.” Fishman also decided that he was going to join the battle against ALS on several fronts. “For a little while I thought, not from a negative perspective, why me, if you are a person of faith,” he says. “I came a little tongue and cheek to one of two conclusions, either because I was being punished for something I did in a previous life that was horrible or alternatively because I could make a difference.”
Fishman first became intrigued by a project that neurologist Jeffrey Rothstein at Johns Hopkins was trying to get off the ground. The idea was to use big data technology to analyze genetic, protein and biological information from a large number of ALS patients to identify characteristics of different versions of the disease. Fishman was attracted to the project’s aim to better understand ALS and its collaborative approach among researchers. It would have been impossibly expensive not so long ago, but now the basic research project needed $25 million to get going. Fishman and his wife, Randy, decided to contribute the first $5 million. Fishman also committed himself to raising the rest of the cash and has so far gotten a total of $20 million for the project from the likes of Travelers, its former chairman Robert Lipp, the NFL, PGA Tour—and a big check from billionaire Leandro Rizzuto, who likes to match the philanthropic giving of others.
At the same time, Fishman’s son told him he had read a Boston Globe article about a guy at Boston Children’s Hospital who was using recording devices and computers to pioneer a voice banking program that could really help ALS patients, but he had no funding. As ALS progresses, it often robs people of their ability to speak. The idea instantly appealed to Fishman, who had seen a video of children at an ALS clinic reacting negatively to a parent using a computer-generated voice. “He gets them voice banking so it’s not Darth Vader’s voice, it’s their voice,” says Fishman. “We did something really good for future patients, here is something for current patients, so we rolled up our sleeves.”
Fishman went to Boston to meet with the man behind the program, John Costello, who had no staff or budget. Fishman and his wife committed $1.5 million so that Costello could train people and send them out with hand-held recorders into the ALS community. That would be good for three years. But Fishman decided he wanted to build a $10 million endowment that could keep things going. He decided to tap into the goodwill he had received from Travelers’ employees, who had sent him hundreds of sympathetic emails that often expressed a desire to do something to help. “Most of these people I have never met,” says Fishman. “You sit and you cry when you read them.” Fishman suggested to employees and business associates to back Costello’s program if they wanted to help (without Fishman knowing who made contributions). Contributions from Travelers’ employees and partners have added up to more than $500,000. By tapping some other sources, Fishman has now raised more than $3 million.
Fishman’s bonds with Travelers’ employees are deeply personal to him. In the days leading up to Thanksgiving this year, Fishman wrote a holiday letter to his employees as has been his custom for many years. In the past, the letter had been handwritten, but Fishman typed his letter this year because he was no longer able to write legibly. He assured Travelers’ employees the words were still his.
“I would encourage you to tell the people around you how much they mean to you and how important they are as you live your life every day. I suspect that one of the reasons that all of you have been so gracious with your expressions to me is that I have built up a bank of expression with each of you, and you are ready to respond in my time of need,” Fishman wrote. “So build up your own bank of goodwill with those around you. Just say ‘thank you,’ tell them you love them, tell them how much they mean to you and know that those expressions of affection and appreciation are too rare in today’s world.”
