Heffernan Insurance Brokers has completed its 2026 summer internship program, placing college students across the firm's departments for eight weeks to work on projects tied to real business challenges - including AI adoption, process improvement and workflow optimization. The program concluded with a final showcase in which interns presented their work and recommendations directly to Heffernan leadership.
Two of this year's participants, Charli Brady and Jacob Banducci, were named recipients of The Council Foundation Scholarship, a national award administered by The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers recognizing interns for academic achievement, leadership and demonstrated commitment to the industry. The Council Foundation has awarded nearly $4.4 million to more than 800 interns across member firms since 2017, according to The Council's own figures. Heffernan interns have received the scholarship in prior years, including recipients from its 2018 cohort.
What distinguishes Heffernan's approach from a standard summer placement scheme is visible in who ran it and what it produced.
Jack Prichard, a former Heffernan intern who accepted a full-time position with the firm, led the sales track for this year's cohort. His role was to assess participants against the firm's own hiring criteria, not simply to supervise projects. The outcome was concrete: Heffernan identified specific interns from this year's group it plans to bring on through its Producer Track.
"We were able to identify interns we plan to hire for our Producer Track. The investment in this program was excellent," Prichard said.
Kate Grasman, Heffernan's chief innovation officer, said the interns brought curiosity, creativity and fresh perspectives to the organization, and that their final presentations demonstrated how much students can contribute when given real business problems to work on.
The program has expanded steadily since at least 2024, when Heffernan grew its intern class to 30 students across commercial insurance, wealth management, finance, IT, marketing and human resources. The structure has remained consistent: individual projects paired with group initiatives presented to leadership, alongside CIAB education courses and mentorship components.
According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics cited by the US Chamber of Commerce, 50% of the current insurance workforce is expected to retire over the next 15 years, leaving more than 400,000 positions unfilled at a time when less than 25% of the industry is currently under 35. The median age of the insurance workforce sits at 44, against a national workforce median of 42.
The functions hardest to backfill as experienced staff retire are typically those where institutional knowledge compounds over time rather than being easily transferable - underwriting, complex commercial lines placement, and specialized claims handling among them. A broker firm can replace a departing producer's book of business more easily than it can replace two decades of market relationships and risk assessment judgment. That is the gap structured internship-to-hire pipelines are specifically designed to begin closing.
Prichard's own trajectory from intern to full-time hire to running the track designed to identify the next round of candidates is a direct illustration of how that cycle is supposed to compound. The students Heffernan identifies from this year's cohort for its Producer Track will, if the pattern holds, eventually be the ones assessing future interns for hire - and taking institutional knowledge with them into those roles rather than out the door.
