Teen Driving
Program Advisor Board
George Ruebenson
President, Allstate Protection
Advisory Board Member, The Allstate Foundation Teen Driving Program
As the current president of Allstate Protection, George Ruebenson is responsible for Allstate’s property-casualty insurance operations. Ruebenson is focused on leading the organization to continuously improve results in customer satisfaction and profitable market share growth.
Ruebenson joined Allstate in 1970 and within his first 20 years, held various key leadership positions in the company's home office and field locations. In 1990, Ruebenson became vice president of finance and planning for the Business Insurance Division and worked in International Operations. In 1997, Ruebenson became vice president of procurement governance and then in 2000, was also named vice president for the Property-Casualty Claims Service Organization, the largest employee group in the company. Ruebenson became a member of Allstate's senior management team as senior vice president in 2003.
Ruebenson currently serves on the Advisory Board of The Allstate Foundation Teen Driving Program, as well as on the boards of Bradley University and St. Laurence High School.
Ruebenson received his bachelor’s degree from Bradley University in business administration in 1970. He went on to pursue post-graduate work in both insurance and finance at various prominent universities.
Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Temple University
Advisory Board Member, The Allstate Foundation Teen Driving Program
Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D., is the Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University, where he joined the faculty in 1988. Dr. Steinberg taught previously at Cornell University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and is currently Director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Dr. Steinberg is President of the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association and Past-President of the Society for Research on Adolescence. He also currently serves on the Advisory Board of The Allstate Foundation Teen Driving Program.
Dr. Steinberg is a nationally recognized expert on psychological development and family relations during adolescence. His research has focused on a range of topics in the study of contemporary adolescence, including parent-adolescent relationships, adolescent employment, high school reform, and juvenile justice. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 scholarly articles on growth and development during the teenage years, as well as the books Adolescence, a leading college textbook on the subject, soon to be published in its eighth edition; When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment; You and Your Adolescent: A Parent’s Guide for Ages 10 to 20; Crossing Paths: How Your Child’s Adolescence Triggers Your Own Crisis; Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do; and The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, which has been translated into ten languages. He is co-editor of Studying Minority Adolescents: Conceptual, Methodological, and Theoretical Issues (with Vonnie McLoyd) and the Handbook of Adolescent Psychology (with Richard Lerner).
A featured guest on numerous television programs, including The CBS Morning News, Today, Good Morning America, 20/20, Dateline, 48 Hours, and The NewsHour with Jim Leher, Dr. Steinberg is a frequent consultant on adolescent development for print and electronic media, including The New York Times and National Public Radio. He has also has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Psychology Today, and Ladies Home Journal.
Dr. Steinberg was educated at Vassar College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with honors and distinction in psychology in 1974; and at Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in human development and family studies in 1977.
Allan Williams, Ph.D.
Retired Chief Scientist, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Advisory Board Member, The Allstate Foundation Teen Driving Program
An international authority on alcohol impaired driving, and young driver and licensing issues, Allan Williams has lectured widely on teen driver issues throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Williams has spent much of his life researching social problems, and for the last 32 years has been performing and managing highway safety research for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety before retiring as chief scientist at the end of 2004. Williams’ extensive research was conducted in a wide variety of highway safety areas, with an emphasis on young drivers, alcohol and other drugs, and occupant restraints.
Williams graduated from Wesleyan Univserity with a degree in psychology and received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University.
Williams is the author of more than 300 articles found in professional journals and has been ranked by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly-cited authors in the field. In addition, he has published more than 100 articles on young drivers. Williams’ research on young drivers helped form the basis for graduated licensing laws.
Williams currently serves on the Advisory Board of The Allstate Foundation Teen Driving Program. Previously, Williams chaired the Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Alcohol, Other Drugs and Transportation for six years and served on the executive committee of the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety. He also served on numerous committees of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Transportation Research Board and the Institute of Medicine, and has been on the editorial boards of most major highway safety journals.
Williams has received numerous honors, including the Widmark Award from the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety in recognition of outstanding accomplishments in the field, as well as the Public Service award from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in recognition of his contributions.
Peter Zollo
Co-founder of TRU (Teenage Research Unlimited)
Advisory Board Member, The Allstate Foundation Teen Driving Program
Peter co-founded TRU in 1982 as the first market-research firm to specialize exclusively in teenagers. Since that time, TRU has grown to be the world’s preeminent youth-research firm.
Peter is highly involved with several youth social-marketing issues. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Allstate Foundation’s Teen Driving program and has been involved in developing the Keep the Drive brand. He’s also the designated “teen audience specialist” and a member of MCAT, an expert advisory board that consults on the national youth anti-drug campaign from the White House Office of National Drug-Control Policy (ONDCP).
Peter consults for and was part of the core launch team for “truth,” the national anti-tobacco advertising campaign from the American Legacy Foundation and has worked on several of the leading state anti-tobacco campaigns. He also consulted with the Centers for Disease Control on this issue and served as a member of the Columbia University Expert Panel on Youth and Tobacco. Additionally, Peter has directed much of TRU’s work benefiting the Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, as well as working to educate teens and parents about under-aged drinking, relationship abuse, and internet safety.
As part of both his private-sector and social-marketing work, Peter is a sought-after presenter, speaking about teens all over the country—from corporate boardrooms to governors’ mansions and from industry conferences to the White House.
Much of Peter’s social-marketing acumen is based on lessons learned from commercial marketers. For more than two decades, he has consulted on and researched advertising and new-product launches for a variety of leading youth brands, including: Axe, Coca-Cola, Chips Ahoy, Doritos, Dr Pepper, Got Milk?, Foot Locker, Gatorade, Juicy Fruit, Levi’s, McDonald’s, Nintendo, Oxy, Oreos, Pepsi, PowerAde, Reebok, 7 UP, Sprite, Sony, and many more.
Peter authored the award-winning book Wise Up to Teens: Insights into Marketing and Advertising to Teenagers, originally published in 1995 by New Strategist Publications; an updated edition was published in 1999. A sequel, Getting Wiser to Teens: More Insights into Marketing to Teenagers, was published in 2004.