CEO Alan I. Kirshner epitomizes ‘Markel Style’

The visitor caught Wilson Pearson's eye soon after stepping into the 7-year-old's bright blue-green classroom at the Faison School for Autism.

"I'm Wilson," he announced.

"I'm Alan," replied Alan I. Kirshner, chairman and CEO of the $9.5 billion insurer, Markel Corp. based in Henrico County.

Kirshner's not big on formalities. An easy smile, a knack for listening and a way of gently leading others so they want to go where he wants them to go have helped build one of the nation's biggest specialty insurers -- and a school that's been the last chance for scores of Virginia children with autism.

"Do you like school?" Kirshner asked with more than casual interest, since he's the one who found the building the Faison School moved into last year, after 10 years of renting.

The inside of the school building, next to the landmark "flying saucer" office building Markel used to occupy just west of Willow Lawn, was redesigned for the specific needs of kids with autism, with sunny open classrooms where they can work one-on-one with their teachers, small side rooms for when they need a quiet spell, big colored dots on the floor so even a walk down a corridor can be a lesson in recognizing colors and responding to another person's voice.

Autism is a mysterious disorder that can seem to put a wall between the person who has it and the rest of the world. It often causes disturbing repetitive behavior, such as rocking or patting oneself. It can produce gut-wrenching tantrums and can leave a child almost completely unable to communicate.

Not that Wilson was having any trouble talking to Kirshner. He liked school, he told Kirshner. Why? Because of his friends. Can you name them, Kirshner asked. Wilson did, then asked Kirshner to do the same. He did, too.

They both had goodish-sized lists.

"Alan is a listener," said Steven A. Markel, vice chairman of the Markel Corp. and with Kirshner and first cousin Anthony Markel, a member of the triumvirate that has run the insurance company since the late 1970s. The three have led a company that grew from $10 million in revenue when it went public in 1986 to a giant that collects more than $2 billion a year now.

"He's the glue that holds everything together," Markel said.

Sharing authority isn't always something that executives do easily, and there aren't many Fortune 1000 companies where that's happened for more than three decades.

"Sometimes, I'd say I was the highest paid umpire in the United States, because they're first cousins, but -- sheesh," said Kirshner, 74.

"At the end of the day, they'll both agree to do the right thing for Markel, but getting them to that point sometimes is -- um," he paused, grinned.

"All three of us would say that we've had a great business life," Kirshner added. "I believe and I tell our people: 'Sit down and tell me, make a list of what you're good at and make a list of what you're bad at, and you gotta be honest with yourself to make this list . . .

"My thing always was I wanted to have partners who could do all the bad stuff. . . . We all get to do those things that we did best," he said.

"And that's a fun way. Just think," he said, beginning to laugh. "If you don't have to do the stuff you don't like to do, how much fun life is."

Markel's mission statement -- the company calls it "The Markel Style" -- talks about encouraging people to look for better ways to do things, to challenge management, to be spontaneous. "Above all," it concludes, "We enjoy what we are doing."

Kirshner didn't always. He joined what was then a second-generation family firm in 1960, a few years after meeting and marrying Flo Markel, one of founder Samuel Markel's granddaughters, while they were students at Vanderbilt University.

In an interview shortly after he was named president of the company in 1979, he said his first decade was frustrating, trying to learn the nuts and bolts of a complicated, multifaceted business. In the 1970s, he pushed his more traditional father-in-law and uncles-in-law to loosen things up -- that's when Kirshner stopped wearing ties and swapped a big, imposing executive desk for a simple table, like the one he still uses. His idea was to signal to employees not to be intimidated but to speak their minds.

"That's one thing I admire about the whole group we have: They're not afraid to hire people who are as smart or smarter than they are," Kirshner said. "That's really the secret of success. You'd be stupid if you didn't listen to these people."

So he does.

"What he's so good at is getting people to talk together," said Wendy Kreuter, vice president for operations at Faison. "He talks to lots of people, and he's always trying to get this person talking to that person to make things happen."

No surprise then when chatting in that Faison classroom, Kirshner soon had Wilson pointing out his desk and hauling out his latest painting: a train.

Kirshner ate it up. He loves art and, besides the Theresa Pollacks in his Innsbrook office, has distributed hundreds of paintings and sculptures of Virginia artists throughout the corridors and workspaces at Markel.

He's also the one who insists that there are fresh flowers on receptionists' desks.

"I look at the numbers, see $100 for flowers and want to say: 'C'mon Alan,'" said Steven Markel. "But he'd just say what it does for people here is worth a lot more, and he'd be right."

The brightly painted walls, gleaming wood floors, curving settees piled with toys and books in the Faison School's sunny corridors also reflect Kirshner's influence.

"Alan wanted a place that didn't feel like an institution, that was a school that kids would want to be at," said Sarah Werner Swope, the school's development director.

Kirshner and Flo Guzman -- they divorced in the 1980s -- founded the school in 1999. They, and daughter Lynne Faison, were looking for the best way to teach Lynne's daughter Brittany, who was diagnosed with autism in 1992. The three agreed on an approach, pioneered at Columbia University, called applied behavior analysis.

It's why the teachers, working one-on-one with the children, carefully record how their students do with their tasks, and why they regularly refine lesson plans based on the data they record. It's why the kids who can't talk yet get rewards, like a snack, when they accomplish a modest goal, and why teachers have to do the tough job of not reacting when the kids start with the repetitive behavior or tantrums the school is trying to stop.

It's why, as the children learn, they start to work for different rewards -- more abstract ones, such as points for good behavior and grades, and ones that sometimes don't pay off for weeks or months.

Markel investors, by the way, are much the same. A lot of Wall Street analysts and traders don't like the company because it won't split the shares to make them easier to trade, isn't paying a dividend, and can seem less preoccupied than Wall Streeters are about quarter-to-quarter gains.

"Our investors understand we are here for the long haul," Kirshner said.

"I look back and, hell, it's been a good run. We just like to do it, like Sinatra said: We did it our way."

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or .