Valmark Financial Group Wins Box’s SMB AI Disruptor Award

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Valmark Financial Group Wins Box’s SMB AI Disruptor Award

2025-09-19 21:59 Last Updated At：22:10

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 19, 2025--

Valmark Financial Group has been named the SMB AI Disruptor Award winner at Box’s 15 th annual BoxWorks conference. Valmark was one of three finalists recognized and received the award during the BoxWorks closing keynote on September 11, 2025.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250917295317/en/

Box’s customer awards at BoxWorks have recognized innovation for 15 years, with past recipients ranging from emerging companies to members of the Fortune 500.

The SMB AI Disruptor Award, introduced in 2025, recognizes organizations using AI to move quickly, adapt with agility, and drive meaningful impact. Honorees are noted for leveraging AI-powered tools to streamline processes, free up employee time, and assist with more intelligent decision-making.

Box’s account team nominated Valmark for its early adoption of Box AI features, proactive feedback on product capabilities, and work with AI Studio. The company’s application of AI has supported workflows for both life insurance and investment operations.

“This award reflects how we are applying AI to improve efficiency and deliver a better experience for the firms we serve,” said Larry J. Rybka, Chairman & CEO of Valmark Financial Group.

This work has been closely tied to Valmark’s collaboration with Box, particularly in testing and refining new AI tools.

“Our collaboration with Box has allowed us to test, learn, and apply AI in practical ways that are already creating measurable results and improving efficiencies,” said Geoff Moore, Chief Information Officer of Valmark Financial Group.

Box serves over 100,000 organizations.

About Valmark Financial Group, LLC

Valmark Financial Group is a holding company of several subsidiaries, including Executive Insurance Agency, Inc., a national producer group; Valmark Securities, Inc., a broker-dealer and member of both FINRA and SIPC; Valmark Advisers, Inc., a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission registered investment adviser; and the Valmark Policy Management Company, LLC, which provides ongoing policy management and monitoring services for life insurance policyholders. With a proud history of working with independently-owned financial services firms committed to high ethical standards in over 30 states throughout the United States, Valmark offers a wide range of insurance and investment solutions for high-net-worth clients. Headquartered in Akron, Ohio, with operations in St. Paul, Minnesota, Valmark, through its affiliated entities, has helped its member firms place approximately $80 billion of life insurance death benefits and manage insurance policies with a cumulative cash value of over $8 billion. Valmark’s affiliated RIA, Valmark Advisers, has an estimated $11.5 billion in assets under management and advisement. To learn more about Valmark Financial Group, visit www.valmarkfg.com.

Securities offered through Valmark Securities, Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment Advisory services offered through Valmark Advisers, Inc., an SEC-registered investment adviser.

At a war-ravaged sports center in Ukraine, the hope for Olympic glory persists

CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) — Young athletes in northern Ukraine spend their days cross-country skiing through a scorched forest, focused on their form — until a siren inevitably shatters the silence.

They respond swiftly but without panic, ditching their skis and following coaches to an underground bomb shelter.

It’s an ordinary training session at the complex that produced Ukraine’s first Olympic medalist.

Sleeping children no longer dream of Olympic glory in the facility's bombed-out dormitories, and unexploded ordnance has rendered nearby land off limits. But about 350 kids and teens — some of the nation's best young cross-country skiers and biathletes — still practice in fenced-off areas amid the sporadic buzz of drones passing overhead then explosions as they're shot down.

“We have adapted so well — even the children — that sometimes we don’t even react,” Mykola Vorchak, a 67-year-old coach, told The Associated Press in an interview on Oct. 31. “Although it goes against safety rules, the children have been hardened by the war. Adapting to this has changed them psychologically.”

War has taken a heavy toll on Ukrainian sport. Athletes were displaced or called up to fight. Soccer matches are often interrupted by air raid sirens so attendance is capped by bomb shelter capacity. Elite skaters, skiers and biathletes usually train abroad, with attacks and frequent blackouts shuttering local facilities.

But the government-run Sports Ski Base of the Olympic Reserve is open for cross-country skiing and biathlon, the event which combines skiing with shooting. The sprawling complex is on the outskirts of Chernihiv, a city two hours north of Kyiv along the path of destruction Russia's army left in its 2022 attempt to capture the capital. Chernihiv remains a regular target for air attacks aimed at the power grid and civilian infrastructure.

Several temporary structures at the sports center serve as changing rooms, toilets and coaches’ offices. Athletes train on snowy trails during the winter and, throughout the rest of the year, use roller skis on an asphalt track pocked by blast marks.

Biathletes aim laser rifles at electronic targets and, between shooting drills, sling skis over their shoulders and jog back to the start of the course, cheeks flushed from the cold.

Valentyna Tserbe-Nesina spent her adolescence at the Chernihiv center performing these same drills, and won bronze at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer. It was Ukraine’s first Olympic medal as an independent country.

“The conditions weren’t great, but we had nothing better. And for us, it was like a family — our own little home,” she said inside her apartment, its shelves and walls lined with medals, trophies and souvenirs from competitions around the world.

Tserbe-Nesina, 56, was shocked when she visited the complex in 2022. Shelling had torn through buildings, fire had consumed others. Shattered glass littered the floors of rooms where she and friends once excitedly checked taped-up results sheets.

“I went inside, up to my old room on the second floor. It was gone — no windows, nothing,” she said. “I recorded a video and found the trophies we had left at the base. They were completely burned.”

Tserbe-Nesina has been volunteering to organize funerals for fallen Ukrainian soldiers in her hometown while her husband, a retired military officer, returned to the front. They see each other about once a year, whenever his unit allows him brief leave.

One adult who in 2022 completed a tour in a territorial defense unit of Ukraine’s army sometimes trains today alongside the center's youngsters. Khrystyna Dmytrenko, 26, will represent her country at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that start Feb. 6.

“Sports can show that Ukraine is strong,” Dmytrenko said in an interview next to the shooting range. “We represent Ukraine on the international stage, letting other countries, athletes and nations see our unity, strength and determination.”

The International Olympic Committee imposed bans and restrictions on Russian athletes after the invasion of Ukraine, effectively extending earlier sanctions tied to state‑sponsored doping. But a small group of them will participate in the upcoming Winter Games.

After vetting to ensure no military affiliation, they must compete without displaying any national symbols — and only in non-team events. That means Russian and Ukrainian athletes could face one another in some skating and skiing events. Moscow’s appeal at the federation level to allow its biathletes to compete is pending.

That's why many Ukrainians view training for these events as an act of defiance. Former Olympic biathlete Nina Lemesh, 52, noted that some young Ukrainians who first picked up rifles and skis at the Chernihiv ski base during wartime have become international champions in their age groups.

“Fortunately, Ukrainians remain here. They always will,” she said, standing beside the destroyed dormitories. “This is the next generation of Olympians.”

AP writer Derek Gatopoulos in Kyiv contributed to this report.