About SPARK Partners

A community built by people who have actually done the work

SPARK Partners exists so that SIG leaders do not have to learn every lesson alone. Stu Thompson's operating experience provides the foundation, and the experience of participating SIG leaders expands it.

Why we started

The origin

When you face a difficult decision, how many people can you call who truly understand what it means to operate a self-insured group?

It might be a board or governance issue. You may be evaluating a service provider, responding to a regulatory concern, developing a successor, or making an important decision involving claims, underwriting, safety, investments, or member relationships.

The challenge is not that expertise does not exist. It is that the right experience can be difficult to find at the moment you need it. Another SIG leader may have already encountered — and solved — the same problem, but there has never been an easy way to find that person and begin the conversation.

Over more than two decades leading The Builders Group, Stu Thompson encountered the full range of challenges that come with operating a SIG. Some of those lessons came from good decisions. Others came from difficult situations that could not have been anticipated. Very few of them could have been learned from a textbook.

SPARK Partners is being created so that other SIG leaders do not have to learn every lesson alone.

The founders

Two complementary kinds of experience

One founder spent a career operating a self-insured group. The other spent a career developing the leaders and boards who run organizations like it.

24 years

Leading The Builders Group, 2002 to 2026

30 years

Focused on workers' compensation

50 years

In the insurance industry

Co-Founder

Stu Thompson

Fifty years in insurance, thirty focused on workers' compensation, and twenty-four leading one of the country's most successful self-insured groups.

Stu retired as the CEO of The Builders Group effective January of 2026. He became the Administrator of The Builders Group, a Minnesota SIG, in 2002. He led The Builders Group through more than 700% growth in annual premium and built an eight-figure investment portfolio.

Stu has been in the insurance industry for 50 years and has concentrated on workers' compensation for the last 30 years. Over more than two decades leading TBG he encountered the full range of challenges that come with operating a SIG: board relationships, regulatory concerns, underwriting and claims decisions, investments, safety, service providers, leadership development, and succession.

He graduated from Hamline University in 1975 with a BA degree in Economics and received an MBA from the College of St. Thomas in 1983.

stu@sig-national.com 651.245.1211

Since 1991

Leadership & board development

Ph.D.

Human capital development

2017

Founded Operations Laboratory

Co-Founder

Dr. John Sherk

Three decades of executive leadership development, succession planning, and board development — now built into tools SIG leaders can actually use.

Dr. John Sherk founded Operations Laboratory in 2017. In various roles he has led executive leadership development, succession planning, and board development since 1991.

Now, in the age of AI, John is building custom applications that bring his decades of in-person leadership development, succession planning, and board development to a wider audience.

He earned master's degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Loyola University Chicago and completed his Ph.D. with a dissertation on organizational commitment among HVAC technicians in conditions of low unemployment.

john@sig-national.com 601.596.7112

How we work

Four principles that shape everything we build

Practical before theoretical

Experience is only useful when it can be translated into a decision, a tool, or a repeatable practice. Everything we build has to survive contact with a real operating problem.

Peer-led, not vendor-led

Real administrators and successors bring real operating questions. Specialists are invited in to serve those questions — not the other way around.

No single right way to run a SIG

Each fund has its own members, market, history, and regulatory environment. The purpose is better access to accumulated experience, not standardization.

Built for continuity

A community that only strengthens today's leader has done half the job. Ours is designed to prepare the next one at the same time.

Meet us

Hear the story directly from the founders

The informational meeting is a one-hour online conversation. We explain what we are building, introduce the experience behind it, and hear what would make this community genuinely useful to you.

View Informational Meeting Dates Contact the founders