Steve Edwards, President and Co-Founder of BGIA, is a successful insurance entrepreneur and philanthropist. A native of New Jersey, Mr. Edwards directs most of his charitable efforts toward changing the lives of children. He has been a generous contributor of time and talents to Save the Children, Operation Smile and many other worthy organizations. In recent years, he and an inspired group of N.J. leaders joined together to help create the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Mr. Edwards volunteers as the Foundation Boards President and the Executive Producer of the annual induction ceremony, a nationally recognized event. In 1994, he was honored by Israel Bonds as one of 10 extraordinary young people from North America for his contributions to the State of Israel. Mr. Edwards has been a featured guest on MY 9 “Real Talk”, News 12 “Power and Politics”, Verizon’s “Let’s Talk” and Comcast “Newsmakers”, and one of the businesses he helped to launch in 2002 was featured on the cover of N.J. Biz Magazine. Mr. Edwards is a former member of the Advisory Board of Directors of several community banks, and was formerly the Governors liaison to the Board of Trustees of the N.J. Public Entities Retirement System, Finance Chairman of the Union Township Board of Education and Vice Chairman of the Union County Planning Board. He has more than 25 years of experience in the public entity insurance sector and has represented more than 100 public entities. He is married to Pauline Stegenius and is a proud father of two daughters, Shira and Naomi.