by Kevin Pledge
In the last newsletter, I outlined the council initiatives that I viewed as being most important. Since then, our council members have taken on roles to support these initiatives, so I want to expand on these activities and provide you with the leaders of these initiatives.
We have also had one change to our council–Chris Amon has stepped off the council due to work conflicts and Jennifer Brady has been appointed for a one-year term until the next election. Jennifer will act as a liaison with the Marketing & Distribution Section, and will likely become involved with meetings.
Vice Chair–Joeff Williams.
Secretary and Treasurer–Steve Boger.
Newsletter–Nick Ortner and Carlos Sanchez-Fuentes. With the transition of the role of newsletter editor now complete, we ask for your support with articles and feedback.
Vendor List–Nick Ortner. The current vendor list is available on the SOA website and is an underutilized resource at the moment. As Nick mentions in an article in this edition of the newsletter, we're looking at ways to improve and expand this service, so please contact him with your feedback.
Knowledge Base–Herschel Reich. Michael Frank established the knowledge base (aka the EAS Resource Center) a few years ago. The knowledge base can be found here. The categories and accompanying articles need refreshing and the technology may be improved to include features such as "article search." Herschel will be leading the project to update and refresh the knowledge base.
Meetings & Meeting Sessions–Joeff Williams. We're always looking for good suggestions for meeting sessions and Joeff is the best overall contact for this, or if you have specific suggestions you can contact the representative for the specific meeting.
Life & Annuity Symposium (Los Angeles in May 2012)–Larry Stern, former council member and friend of the council, is coordinating this meeting. We're sponsoring three sessions at this meeting:
- Case Studies of Actuaries Starting a Business
- Actuaries and IT: Can't We All Just Get Along?
- Skills Needed to Survive a Recession
In addition, we are sponsoring a networking breakfast at the Life & Annuity Symposium. This meeting will be well worth attending; I hope to see many of you there.
Health Meeting–Joeff Williams. We've planned a couple of sessions for the Health Meeting, including one being cosponsored with the Long-Term Care Insurance Section. Read more about this in the next issue.
Other Specific Meetings–We're also in the early stages of planning other meetings. Joseph Weiss will coordinate the Annual Meeting for us and I'll be coordinating the Valuation Meeting for the EAS.
Networking–Pauline Reimer. We held a speed networking event in conjunction with the NY Actuarial Club in November.
Finally, Jim Ramenda, former section chair and friend of the section, continues to represent us on the Delphi Forecast for Actuarial Demand. We also remain involved with the Code of Conduct issues originally raised by Nichole Fende, as these issues affect actuaries in nontraditional roles.
Our section is here to serve its members, so please let me know if there is anything that you feel we should be doing that we are not currently doing. I can be contacted at kpledge@insightdecision.com. Also, please contact me if you would like to volunteer to support our council in any way.
Kevin Pledge, FSA, FIA, is CEO and co-founder of Insight Decision Solutions, Inc. in Markham, Ontario, Canada. He may be reached at kpledge@insightdecision.com.