NEWS & INSIGHT

Vardis Supports Guardian Life: Rob Fisk joins Guardian to help lead digital transformation

Written by Vardis | Feb 3, 2026 1:28:59 PM

Vardis Supports Guardian Life with the Appointment of Rob Fisk as Transformation & Program Management Leader within Guardian Life’s Financial Protection & Retirement Solutions (FPRS) organization

Guardian Life, one of the nation’s largest mutual insurance companies serving 29 million customers, has appointed Rob to lead large-scale transformation initiatives within its FPRS organization. In this critical role, Rob will serve as the business owner for Guardian’s individual insurance administration platforms for life, annuity, and disability products. He will drive execution of product roadmaps, process redesign, change management, and cross-functional program oversight to support Guardian’s Journey to ’30 strategy.

Rob brings over 16 years of experience in insurance transformation, digital strategy, AI transformation, and business leadership. Most recently, he served as Vice President, Head of Adjacent Products Transformation at Unum Group, where he drove accountability for strategically important initiatives across specialty product lines including Long-Term Care, Individual Disability, and Pet insurance. He devised a multi-year roadmap yielding approximately $60 million in gross premium value and implemented a new claims platform that achieved a 23% increase in productivity. Previously, as Vice President, Head of Digital Transformation at Unum, Rob led Artificial Intelligence roadmap initiatives, spearheaded GenAI practices, and created an enterprise-wide three-year roadmap focused on unlocking approximately $100 million in incremental revenue. Earlier in his career, he held leadership positions at Lincoln Financial, where he led teams of up to 300 employees and drove continuous improvement best practices that consistently achieved expense savings of 20% of budget.

Rob holds a Master of Business Administration from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is certified in Lean Six Sigma and Agile Product Management.

About Guardian Life

Founded in 1860, Guardian Life Insurance Company of America is one of the largest mutual insurance companies in the United States. The company serves 29 million customers through a comprehensive range of insurance and financial products, including dental and vision, disability and absence management, life and AD&D, and supplemental health benefits. Guardian's Group Benefits business manages over 112,000 cases with 12.3 million members.

About Vardis

Vardis is a trusted partner for executive and board recruiting. Our partners personally conduct all candidate outreach, ensuring our clients are well-represented and get the top candidates to the table. To determine what drives exceptional returns, we’ve analyzed executive teams—pre-close and post-exit—across the 500 most successful PE investments, compiling over 1 million data points on leaders’ expertise, credentials and industry experience. This proprietary, data-driven approach helps us identify and secure executives with the traits that consistently deliver superior returns.