Ann Seawell Kennedy is the managing member and sole owner of ASK Consulting, L.L.C., (ASK), a financial services industry consulting company. Ms. Kennedy is an entrepreneur and business executive with senior management experience in both non-profit and for-profit enterprises.
She is an attorney by training, and, over the years, has acquired knowledge and experience in varied disciplines, including the teaching and legal professions, the life insurance industry, non-profit organization board governance, and in entrepreneurial, ownership roles in the travel industry, real estate development and historical renovation, and property management. Following her graduation from Stanford University with a BA degree in communications and art history, Ms. Kennedy obtained her MA degree in art history from the University of California in Davis, and then attended Harvard University School of Business, where she studied small business administration.
After starting her family, Ms. Kennedy began her business career in the non-profit sector as advertising coordinator with public television station KVIE channel 6 in Sacramento, CA., where she ultimately became Director of Development. In the late 1970’s, she obtained certification as a travel consultant from Wellesley College and co-founded 455 Travel, a travel agency in Sacramento, CA, specializing in business and state government agency travel, which she sold to Carlson Travel in 1984.
Ms. Kennedy was well known in the leisure industry and served as the president of the Sacramento Area Association of Travel Agencies, and as President of the Sacramento Professional Association of Women. After the sale of the travel agency to Carlson Travel in 1984, Ms. Kennedy began law school. She obtained her JD degree from McGeorge School of Law in 1990.
During this period, she also studied at McGeorge International Schools of Law in London, Salzburg, Vienna, and Budapest. In 1993 Ms. Kennedy became Co-director, First Slovenian Venture Capital Fund, and resided in Ljubljana, Slovenia, for three years. Upon her return to the United States, she obtained her teacher’s certificate in English as a Second Language in 1997 from the University of California at Davis. During this same period, Ms. Kennedy taught business law at Sacramento State College.
Currently Ms. Kennedy is the chief executive officer of ASK, a financial services industry consulting company with investment advisory, third-party administration, and insurance agency operating units. ASK also funds multi-generation research projects that develop economic education, savings, and endowment planning programs, and evidence-based communication, marketing, and sales systems. Sponsored research projects include the Economics of Life Research Project and the Doctors Economic Research Project, which were initiated in 1971, the Agent of Progress Research Project, which was initiated in 1974, and the Permanent Endowment Research Project, which was initiated in 1981.
Ms. Kennedy licenses a life and health insurance agency through ASK which does business as Progress Alliance Insurance Services. The intellectual property owned by ASK, Consulting, LLC includes the Progress Project strategic plan and the New Economic Order Planning Program. The New Economic Order Planning Program is a distribution channel for legal reserve life insurance companies, commercial banks, and defined benefit pension plan design and administration firms.
ASK also owns licensing rights for the use of the Agent of Progress Communication, Marketing, and Sales System, and various related economic education, marketing, and sales support resources. ASK contracts with experienced financial services industry consultants who provide the New Economic Order Planning Program distribution platform to life insurance companies, independent marketing organizations, insurance agencies, and insurance agents.
ASK also retained consultants who designed a proprietary fintech program that integrates a personalized capital accumulation plan with a proposal system for guaranteed outcome defined benefit pension plans. Specially trained New Economic Order Planning Program financial/endowment consultants implement New Economic Order Planning Program savings management and guaranteed life income planning programs for Savers, catastrophic loss protection and guaranteed life income planning for Millennials and GenXer’s, and earnings protection, earnings management and savings management planning for highly productive individuals including doctor and non-doctor business owners, and asset protection, wealth transfer, and endowment creation planning programs for affluent individuals and 501 (c) (3) non-profit organizations.