Charles McDade with his late grandfather, Douglas Finley, founder of Naknan Inc.
Three answers. Heritage. Competition. Promise. This is the story of Charles McDade, the grandson who carries forward the work, and the firm built to keep a name intact.
Before Charles McDade founded McDade Insurance, the work of protection ran in the family. His grandfather, Douglas Finley, called S.D. Finley by those who knew him best, was a Korean War veteran and an engineer who spent his life solving problems most people would never see.
Douglas Finley. Korean War veteran. Founder of Naknan Inc. The name behind the name.
In 1975, his engineering work supported the satellite control systems for NASA's Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint American-Soviet space mission. Two years later, in 1977, the same discipline carried into NASA's Viking Mars mission. Lives, instruments, international trust. He protected systems at the highest stakes.
In 1997, here in Houston, he founded Naknan Inc. The company began with satellite control software and then pivoted into a new front of protection altogether. Naknan pioneered whitelisting endpoint security with the Security Assistant product, eventually adopted by NASA, U.S. power plants, and the Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity programs. Same discipline. New threat surface.
He protected systems people would never see, that kept families safe in ways they would never know. I learned the work from the way he carried himself. Charles McDade
On February 7, 2024, Douglas Finley passed away. The name and the work he built did not. They are carried forward, in a different industry, by a grandson who took them on as a promise.
Charles arrived at Nicholls State University on a full athletic scholarship, Division I football. He played four years and earned a four-year letter. Football teaches a kind of discipline that other things rarely do. The play before is over. The play in front of you is the only one that matters. The team does not work without the man next to you doing his job.
Nicholls State University. Four-year letter winner. The lessons that started on the field.
In May 2011, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Management with a concentration in Marketing and Professional Sales. That same year, he competed in the National Collegiate Sales Competition in Kennesaw, Georgia. The competitive instinct did not get put down with the helmet.
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Football teaches you that the play before is over. The play in front of you is the only one that matters. Charles McDade
After college, Charles joined Liberty Mutual as a captive agent and started running the same play, every day, the way the discipline taught him to. The results came fast.
The early years. Same competitive instinct, in a new arena.
Within 38 days of starting, he earned the Liberty Mutual Lamp Lighter Award, the fastest in company history. In his first nine months, he was named Countrywide Rookie of the Year as the top producer in the country. He earned the Liberty Leader Distinction as one of the top 180 sales representatives nationwide. The 2014 Zone Awards added Auto Bronze, Home Bronze, and Life Silver to the wall.
For six years, Charles ran inside the captive model and ran it well. But the day was coming when the system would change, and the question would no longer be whether he could win inside it. The question would be what to do when the rules of the field shifted under his feet.
An independent property and casualty brokerage in Spring, Texas. Tech-forward. 50+ top Texas carriers we know well, backed by Premier Group Insurance's national bench of 220+ carrier relationships. A four-pillar contract framework that runs every audit. Clarity. Probability. Severity. Value. Advisor first, not re-shopper. About 40 percent of the time we tell clients to stay with their current carrier, and sometimes even with their current agent, because that is the right answer for the family. No broker fees for personal lines clients.
Agent for the Future · Liberty Mutual and Safeco · December 2025
The full story of the Liberty Mutual breakup, the founding of McDade Insurance, and the lessons that came with the 2025 Emerging Leader Award.
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Rough Notes Magazine · Young Pro-Files · November 2024
Texas agency owner appreciative of those who helped shape his journey. Christopher W. Cook on Charles McDade for the 1878-founded Rough Notes.
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Be the Last Agent Standing · Volume 7 · 2023
Co-cover and chapter author. The McDade essay on mentorship, talent development, and what the next generation of independent agency builders need from the ones already here.
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Insurance Soup Live · Shift 4 Arena · 2024
IIAH Board · 2025 · First African American board member in 101 years
Travelers S.T.A.R. Recognition · 2025 · Heritage carrier partnership
2025 Emerging Leader Award · Liberty Mutual and Safeco
The McDade Insurance Pathway Program is a structured talent pipeline connecting students from high school through four-year college to careers in the insurance industry. Built through partnerships with the Risk and Insurance Education Alliance, the Independent Insurance Agents of Houston, and Houston-area school districts including Alief ISD.
The most recent milestone was Houston Insurance Day in February 2026, where students walked the floor of a working insurance event and met the brokers, underwriters, and carrier executives who would otherwise be names on a job posting.
The pattern Charles learned from his grandfather is the same pattern that runs Pathway. The work is too important to leave to chance. Greatness has to be passed on, deliberately, by the people who carry it.
The Pathway Program is the work of carrying greatness forward, deliberately, to the people who will carry it next.
Off the Clock
Founder, McDade Insurance Brokerage Group
Houston, Texas
A NASA-area native who grew up in Houston, Charles raises his family in Humble, Texas. He is married to Dr. Allison McDade, a double board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist. They have two children, Aaliyah, age 11, and Charlie, age 5.
Off the clock, Charles is a hunter, a fantasy football strategist, and a Dungeons & Dragons enthusiast. The same instinct that ran the football line at Nicholls State runs the family table on a Saturday afternoon. The play in front of you is the only one that matters.
Great service is not expensive. It is priceless.
I cherish every opportunity where value springs forth from trust and effort.
That sentence is the equation behind everything. Trust extended by the people who choose us. Effort extended by the people on my team. Value delivered when both meet a coverage written to honor the promise.
Fifteen years in the industry. Six years as a Liberty Mutual captive agent. Two years on both sides of the coin in adjacent industries. Six years and counting at the helm of McDade Insurance. Two board seats. Three independent publications. Six podcasts. One ITC Vegas keynote on the calendar.
Husband to Dr. Allison McDade, double board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist. Father to a son and a daughter who keep me honest. Grandson of Douglas Finley, the man who taught me that protection is a discipline.
There are two circles of trust I work to be worthy of.
The first is the family in this photograph. My wife. My son. My daughter. The three people who carry the McDade name into the world the way my grandfather carried the Finley name before us. They are everything I work for. They are the reason I refuse to be the person who breaks a promise.
The second is the families who have trusted us to protect theirs. The roof over their heads. The vehicles their teenagers drive. The businesses they have built from a kitchen table. The future they are insuring against the worst day they hope never comes. Every one of those families is carrying a name into a policy with us. Every one of those names deserves the same care I give to my own.
Effort that does not stop. Trust that is not betrayed. Promises that survive the worst day, not just the best ones.
McDade is my last name. I will make it worthy of my wife and children who carry it. And worthy of every family who has trusted us to carry theirs.
Charles McDade, LUTCF
Founder, McDade Insurance Brokerage Group, LLC
Houston, Texas
No broker fees for personal lines clients. The audit is free.
