Edition

Chairperson’s Column: Section Plans for This Year

Chairperson's Column: Section Plans for This Year

By Kevin M. Dolsky

Thanks for your enthusiastic response to our request for input regarding what you want to see from the Entrepreneurial Actuaries Section! Of course we incorporated your ideas into our plans.

The mission statement of our section is:

  • The purpose of the Entrepreneurial Actuaries Section of the Society of Actuaries is to serve the business needs of actuaries and related professionals with an entrepreneurial spirit, helping them to thrive in their business, consulting firm or company by providing education, business resources and networking opportunities.

Following is a list of what the section intends to do this year and the names of the section member(s) leading our efforts in each area.

Education

  • Webcasts: Sandor Goldstein is leading our efforts to sponsor at least six webcasts this year. We have a great line–up of topics to assist you in being a more successful entrepreneur—whatever your current job—including marketing, self promotion, time management and legal issues.

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  • Spring SOA meetings: Michael Frank is the EAS coordinator for the Toronto and Los Angeles meetings where we will sponsor sessions on deal making, selling, relationship mastery and how to hit the ground running.

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  • SOA Annual Meeting. Dave Axene is the EAS chair for the Annual Meeting. We are still choosing the topics we will offer. Did you know that the EAS–sponsored sessions at the 2007 Annual Meeting were some of this highest rated session of the entire meeting? You may want to check these sessions out in 2008 for their stimulating and useful content!

Business Resources

Vendor Preferral Program: It is our goal this year to increase the total number of vendors to at least 14. These vendors offer services and incentives to EAS members. Check them out here.   Chuck Ritzke is leading our efforts in the Vendor Preferral Program. He would welcome to hear from you about a vendor that may be of use to our members—even if it is your own firm!

Networking Opportunities

The development of member business referrals is one of our goals. We are looking at ways to use the EAS to provide a forum for business referrals. Newsletter and Web–based referrals are two of the avenues we are working on. Mike Miele and Sandor Goldstein are leading this effort.

Communications

Our newsletter is the primary way we communicate with the EAS membership. All of our interactions involve communications. Ruth Ann Woodley—in addition to being newsletter editor—is our communications coordinator. Here are some of the communications we will be offering the year:

  • Six editions of our newsletter, The Independent Consultant.
  • Instant poll questions within newsletters to get ongoing feedback.
  • Featured member profiles—a way to introduce yourself and give a very brief promo about your business and areas of practice. We hope this effort encourages networking among section members.

We are always looking for good articles, valuable information or business resources to share with our members, so please contact Ruth Ann if you have any suggestions, would like to contribute an article or are interested in being profiled in the newsletter.

Opportunities

Being entrepreneurial also includes a willingness to be open to opportunities—even if they are not part of our best–laid plans. If the right fish swims by our underwater cave, we can't let it go by just because we were not planning to eat right now! The same can be said of our section. We want to be deliberate enough to get done what we decide is important, yet open, opportunistic and able to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities that come along. We will be watching for theses in the areas of education, networking or business opportunities for our members.

We hope you will draw closer to the section this year and take advantage of the offerings... and we will strive to make them worthy of your time. Please feel free to contact me kmdolsky@ahcs–llc.com or any of the EAS council members mentioned in this article. We are open to your contributions and anxious to see how the EAS can be of assistance to you.

Kevin Dolsky, FSA, MAAA, is a principal with Actuarial & Health Care Solutions, LLC in Wisconsin and the chair of the Entrepreneurial Actuaries Section. He can be reached at kmdolsky@ahcs–llc.com or 262.241.5633.