Marley IO 2026: Luck of the AI-rish
Marley IO, Hi Marley’s annual hackathon, brings together people from across the company to build together, think differently, and step outside their day-to-day work to solve problems in new ways. It helps show what’s possible when cross-functional teams come together with creativity, urgency, and a willingness to experiment.
This year’s event took place on St. Patrick’s Day, making the theme, Luck of the AI-rish, especially fitting.
Over the course of a day and a half, 70 participants across 16 teams came together to create projects using agentic AI to drive new value for our carrier customers and improve how work gets done internally. For the first time, Marley IO featured two tracks: Product Innovation, focused on customer-facing solutions, and Internal Process Optimization, focused on improving internal operations, productivity, and team efficiency. In both tracks, AI had to be central to the solution.
Marley IO has been an employee favorite since Hi Marley’s early days. And while not every project becomes a product feature, hackathons have helped inspire popular capabilities like sentiment, notifications, translation, and more.
“Marley IO showed how quickly teams can turn AI from an idea into something practical,” said Jonthan Tushman, CAIO and CTO of Hi Marley. “What stood out most was the creativity of the solutions and the speed at which people built them.”
Marley IO is made possible each year by the planning and leadership of Hi Marley’s Hugh Allen, Principal Industry Strategist, and Allison Paraskevas, Manager, Product Marketing. “This year’s hackathon was our best to date!” said Hugh. “We typically have a predominance of tech employees in Marley IO, but using AI has unlocked technical capabilities in all of us, tech and non-tech alike.”
Allison added, “It was so inspiring to watch the team presentations. The submissions were solid, unique, and touched on core pain points experienced by our customers, their customers, and our internal teams.”
Projects were judged across six criteria: innovation, creativity, technical execution, impact and value, presentation, and team diversification, with recognition for cross-functional collaboration. Teams were evaluated by Hi Marley judges, and we were also lucky to welcome two guest judges, Shane Simonelli, VP, Head of Claims Delivery at PURE Insurance, and John Dzialo, Senior Solutions Architect at AWS.
The Overall Winner, People’s Choice Winner, and Product Innovation Track Winner was Proxy Policy Holders for their project, Virtual Customer, an AI-powered conversation tool designed for development, coaching, and demos. Congratulations to Jazz Singh, Dave Wingert, Andrew Sadoway, Simon Xia, Dan Nguyen, and Jayson Alzate.
The Internal Process Optimization Track Winner was Marley’s Minions for their project, Better Looker, an AI-powered analytics tool that turns raw data into interactive dashboards and makes it easier for anyone to ask questions and get instant insights. Congratulations to Caley Bennett, Aurea Nunes, Arin Kim, Conley Ernst, Hannah Parker, and Hania Jeha.
Winners took home a cash prize and earned their place on the Marley IO trophy.
Marley IO is one of the clearest expressions of who we are at Hi Marley: curious, collaborative, and always looking for better ways to solve problems for our customers and for each other. Every year, it reminds us just how much talent exists across our team, and what can happen when people are given the space to build, test, and imagine together.
