William Mudge, President and Chief Executive Officer of CompWest Insurance Company, has been elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of the California Workers’ Compensation Institute for 2011 at the Institute’s annual meeting in San Francisco. Tom Rowe, President of the State Compensation Insurance Fund, will serve as the Institute’s Vice-Chair for 2011.

Along with Mudge and Rowe, outgoing chairman T. Hale Johnston of Employers Compensation Insurance Company, former chairmen Joseph M. Treacy of The Hartford Insurance Group and Roger L. Moseley of Alaska National Insurance Company, as well as Dennis C. Alumbaugh of Chartis Insurance and John Dickey of Liberty Mutual Group will serve as officers on the Institute’s Executive Committee.

Also elected to CWCI’s 2011 Board of Directors were Richard C. Zolty, ACE USA; Matthew L. Sather, CNA; Robert L. King, Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company; Rosemary Favier, Preferred Employers Insurance Company; Richard W. Seelinger, SeaBright Insurance Company; Joseph A. Ney, Springfield Insurance Company; Vernon Steiner, Zenith Insurance Company; and Jeffrey Jensen, Zurich North America.

The Institute, established in 1964, is a private, nonprofit association working to improve California workers’ compensation through research, information, education and representation. CWCI members include 24 insurer groups (composed of nearly 200 underwriting companies that write and service more than 80 percent of California statewide workers’ compensation premium, as well as 23 of the largest public and private self-insured employers in the state).