Description: As the Board member partner assigned to work with the Actuary of the Future Section as of March 2005, I am reporting to you about several topics that may interest the section membership for this newsletter. Many of you have already received a lot of information and/or have read articles about the strategic plan, the image campaign, the reorganization of the SOA by sections versus practice areas and other large efforts underway at the SOA. There are many other things going on that are exciting, so I will focus on sharing other issues with you that may be less well known.

Description: This article stresses the importance of continually assessing your business skills and outlines the most important skills for development.

Description: This article is a review of the book by Joshua Foer. It covers the history of memory techniques, the way a human brain organizes memory, and various problems and successes in memory recall. The author starts by interviewing memory savants, and learns from them that the ability to perform seemingly impossible memory tricks is simply a matter of studying and practicing proven techniques used for millennia. This review suggests that actuaries can benefit greatly from some of these techniques despite the availability of electronic hand-held devices to recall facts because the person who does not need to rely upon such devices can have a huge perceptual advantage in executive presentations.

Description: As actuaries, we learn about risk. We identify, quantify and assess risks. Ironically, however, because of our training we don’t see the greatest risk to our profession. The risk is: Our relevance and value to our customers is already and will continue to be diminished if we don’t make some fundamental changes now.

Description: The chairperson provides an update of the Future Section's areas of focus: Career Pioneer Program, Critical Skills Education and Risk Management Opportunities.

Description: Outlines the contents of the current issue of the AOF Newsletter which has a few features on actuaries in non traditional roles.

Description: Author shares perspectives on the advantages and importance of working abroad in career development.

Description: This article covers focus of the section council, progress on ongoing initiatives such as the Career Pioneer Program, and new initiatives including image building of the profession as well as support for actuaries in individual practice and/or small businesses.

Description: Cassie He and Kabeer Jhaveri invite Michael Frank, a health, accident and life actuary with 24 years of experience, to talk about his career experience, his insightful views on the room to growth for actuaries and also the changes happening to the profession.

Description: The article is a aggregations of perspectives on whether an FSA should also pursue their MBA.