President Elect and Vice Chair Candidate Questionnaire

Sherry Chan, FSA, EA, MAAA, FCA

AI / Technology

Describe your experience understanding, applying, and/or overseeing technology, particularly AI, data, and analytics to support strategy, operations, and decision-making, including how you consider technology’s limitations, risks, and impacts on business models, workforce needs, governance, and long-term growth. 

AI and analytics have been central to my leadership journey, and I’ve experienced them from multiple vantage points.

At EY, I advise insurance carriers on integrating AI into their organizations – helping clients navigate both the opportunity and the governance responsibility that comes with it. I speak regularly on AI ethics, bias, and model risk, including at SOA’s annual AI Insights Symposium, and have produced educational content for SOA’s PD Edge+ platform to help actuaries and business leaders understand both the power and the limits of AI-driven decisions.

Before EY, I served as Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of Atidot, a CNBC Top 30 insurtech, using AI-powered predictive analytics for life insurers. Working alongside data scientists, engineers, and executives across multiple countries, I learned something that’s stuck with me: technology creates value only when stakeholders trust it.

Explainability, accountability, and sound governance aren’t obstacles to innovation – they’re what makes innovation sustainable.

Throughout these roles, I’ve viewed AI through both a strategic and a risk lens. The efficiency gains are real – but so are the risks: data quality, model bias, workforce disruption, and regulatory exposure all require careful attention. Successful implementation isn’t just a technical challenge – it’s a change management and governance challenge.

I believe actuaries are uniquely suited to lead here. We combine quantitative rigor with professional judgment and a long tradition of public trust. The question isn’t whether AI will transform actuarial work. It’s whether we help our members shape that transformation – or simply adapt to it. I’d like to lead the SOA to do the former.

Board Experience and Readiness

Describe your prior nonprofit or corporate board experience and how you approach the board’s governance role (strategic oversight and mission stewardship), including how you distinguish governance from management and how you uphold fiduciary duties (care, loyalty, and obedience) in acting in the best interests of the organization. 

My board experience spans professional associations, nonprofit organizations, and governmental advisory bodies.

I currently serve on the SOA Board of Directors. Previously, I served on the Board of the American Academy of Actuaries (Academy) as Vice President for Pension – an executive officer role that included committee oversight, public policy engagement, and governance responsibilities across a complex membership organization. I also serve on the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board’s Actuarial Advisory Committee.

I co-founded Abacus Actuaries and have served on its board since its inception. Building a nonprofit from the ground up – drafting bylaws, establishing financial controls, recruiting board members, launching programs – gave me a perspective on governance and stewardship that formal training alone doesn’t provide. When you’ve had to make every foundational decision, you develop genuine appreciation for why governance structures matter.

I also hold the NACD Directorship Certification, which strengthened my understanding of fiduciary duties, board effectiveness, executive oversight, and enterprise risk governance.

My approach to board service is grounded in one core distinction: boards govern, management manages. My role is to ask the right questions, ensure strategic coherence, provide independent oversight, and make decisions in the long-term interests of the organization – not to run its day-to-day operations. Effective governance requires intellectual honesty, willingness to engage on difficult topics, and the judgment to know when to challenge and when to trust. I bring that discipline to every board table I sit at, guided by the fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience.

Corporate Leadership

Describe your senior leadership experience in corporate and/or not-for-profit environments, including examples of leading people, guiding decision-making, managing complexity, and providing strategic direction while upholding strong governance standards. 

Across very different environments—public service, technology, consulting, and nonprofit work—high-stakes leadership has been a constant in my career, and it's shaped how I think about people, decisions, and what it means to lead.

I was unanimously selected by New York City’s (NYC's) elected officials and labor leaders to serve as the City's fifth Chief Actuary in its more than 100-year history. That unanimity required earning trust across stakeholder groups with very different interests. In practice, my job involved translating actuarial complexity into information that public officials, union trustees, and investment professionals could act on—while maintaining the independence that makes the actuary's role meaningful.

My executive career began at State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (STRS Ohio) and the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) – Ohio's two largest public pension systems, with combined assets previously approaching $200 billion. During and after the Great Financial Crisis, both faced serious funding pressure. Working with boards, unions, and lawmakers through pension reform is hard; changes affect people's retirements. Those experiences taught me how to lead through genuine complexity – staying grounded in facts, building consensus around hard decisions, and keeping the long view when short-term pressures push otherwise.

In the private sector, I served as Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of an AI-focused insurtech and now am a Managing Director in EY's actuarial advisory practice. In both settings, I've shaped strategy, developed talent, and helped organizations make decisions in fast-moving environments.

The common thread: effective leadership starts with listening, builds through trust, and succeeds by keeping people focused on shared purpose even when the path forward isn't obvious.

Financial Oversight

Describe your experience providing financial oversight in a corporate setting, including your ability to understand and scrutinize key financial documents and reports, identify financial risks, develop mitigation strategies, and ensure regulatory compliance.

Financial oversight has been core to my leadership throughout my career – not as a secondary responsibility, but as the substance of some of my most consequential work.

At STRS Ohio and OPERS, I helped oversee pension funding during and following the Great Financial Crisis. I reviewed actuarial valuations, funding projections, and asset-liability analyses to assess multi-decade risks. Ohio law requires pension systems to maintain funding within a 30-year amortization framework. When projections threatened that threshold, reforms became legally necessary. I worked alongside boards, stakeholders, and lawmakers to evaluate options and design changes that restored statutory compliance while remaining fair to beneficiaries.

As NYC’s Chief Actuary, I certified approximately $10 billion in annual required pension contributions – over 10% of the City’s then budget. By law, the City is required to contribute the amount the actuary certifies, making accuracy, independent judgment, and regulatory compliance non-negotiable. I oversaw valuations, selected assumptions, completed asset-liability studies, and communicated financial risk to decision-makers responsible for the fiscal health of the world’s largest municipality plan.

In the private sector, as CSO of Atidot, I led investor relations, prepared financial projections, and monitored cash-burn metrics through multiple funding rounds. At EY, I advise organizations on strategic and financial decisions in increasingly complex regulatory environments.

As a current SOA Board member, I regularly review financial statements, budgets, and multi-year forecasts. Effective financial oversight isn’t just about reading the numbers – it’s about having the discipline to challenge assumptions and the judgment to act on what you find.

Global

Describe your international experience (e.g., multinational corporations or significant projects abroad) and how your understanding of global markets, cross-cultural communication, and international business practices would contribute to SOA’s strategic positioning and international relationships.

My international experience has come from working with actuaries, policymakers, and business leaders across multiple countries and contexts.

At OPERS, I worked with a delegation from South Korea exploring processes to diversify their pension investments beyond domestic assets—one of my earliest experiences seeing how retirement systems globally face many of the same challenges, even when institutional contexts differ.

As NYC’s Chief Actuary, I hosted a delegation from China studying public pension systems as they explored establishing retirement programs for government employees. Sharing perspectives on pension design and funding reinforced that actuarial challenges genuinely transcend national borders.

My most extensive international experience came as CSO of Atidot, an Israel-based insurtech serving life insurers globally. Our AI-powered models supported clients across multiple countries, requiring us to navigate different regulatory environments, market dynamics, and cultural expectations simultaneously. Internally, I helped facilitate cross-cultural collaboration within our multinational team across Tel Aviv, the US, and Europe – bridging communication styles and professional norms to increase collegiality.

These experiences taught me that effective global leadership begins with curiosity and genuine respect for different perspectives. Knowing how to operate in environments where professional norms, regulatory frameworks, and communication styles differ from your own is a skill developed intentionally, not assumed.

As the SOA’s membership continues to grow internationally, the ability to build relationships across cultural differences and to understand both our shared challenges and regional distinctions will only matter more.

Not-for-Profit

Describe how, through your involvement with not-for-profit organizations, including the SOA, you balance mission-driven objectives with strategic success and operational sustainability especially in volunteer recruitment/coordination and incorporating diverse points of view. 

Nonprofit service has been one of the most formative parts of my career.

In 2021, I co-founded Abacus Actuaries with a group of actuarial contacts who shared a belief that more could be done to support actuaries at every stage of their careers. Because Abacus is entirely volunteer-driven, building it required everything from obtaining 501(c)(3) status to recruiting board members, establishing governance, and launching mentorship and networking programs—all while keeping volunteers engaged without the incentive of compensation. That experience gave me a practical education in what actually sustains volunteer organizations: meaningful work, a sense of belonging, and leadership that respects people’s time.

On the Academy Board as Vice President for Pension, I worked with volunteers across the profession, chaired committees, helped recruit volunteer leaders, and contributed to public policy efforts that shaped pension-related legislation and regulation. In a large professional organization with numerous committees and competing priorities, you learn quickly that mission and operational sustainability aren’t in tension—they depend on each other.

As a current SOA Board member, I see daily the scale of volunteer contributions that make this organization work. Thousands of members write and grade exams, lead sections, serve on committees, and develop educational programming. Sustaining that requires creating an environment where people feel genuinely valued, heard, and connected to a purpose larger than any single task.

The best volunteer organizations I’ve been part of don’t just coordinate people—they make people feel they belong to something that matters. That’s the standard I try to bring to every leadership role.

Professional Education and Development

Describe your experience developing professional education programs for actuaries or other professionals—for example, in a university, employer, professional association, or SOA setting. Include examples where you designed, led, or managed learning programs, curricula, mentoring frameworks, or structured development pathways and how your approach was informed by how professionals learn. 

Education changed the course of my life, which is probably why developing others has always felt personal, not just professional.

At The Ohio State University (OSU), I contributed to the actuarial program through the Math Department Chair’s Advisory Board—shaping curriculum, designing summer math programs for high school students, and advocating for professional ethics alongside technical content. I established OSU’s first actuarial endowment, the Sherry S. Chan Actuarial Endowment, to expand opportunity and reduce financial barriers for future students. Through the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Advisory Committee, I provided industry perspective on preparing students for careers that will look very different from those of prior generations.

Through Abacus Actuaries, our team designed structured mentorship programs grounded in how adults actually learn: through relationships, real-world application, and sustained engagement – not just one-time events.

Through SOA’s Fellowship Admissions Course (FAC), I’ve facilitated discussions with candidates preparing to enter the profession, helping them connect technical training to the professional judgment, leadership, and ethical responsibility they’ll need throughout their careers.

I’ve also contributed continuing education through AI-focused content on the SOA’s PD Edge+ platform and presentations at industry forums.

The SOA’s focus on the actuarial talent pipeline is something I feel genuinely invested in—not just as a professional priority, but because I’ve lived it. I know what it meant to have doors opened for me, and I take seriously the responsibility to help open them for others.

Risk Management

Describe your risk management experience, including how you have identified and evaluated organizational risks (including reputational risks) and assessed or implemented appropriate risk mitigation measures.

Risk management has been the practical substance of much of my career, not a function I’ve overseen from a distance.

As NYC’s Chief Actuary, every assumption I certified—mortality rates, investment returns, salary growth, retirement patterns, etc. —carried implications measured in billions of dollars and decades of retiree security. I managed financial risk through rigorous experience studies and assumption reviews; reputational risk by maintaining actuarial independence in a highly visible public environment; and operational risk through quality controls supporting complex valuations and financial reporting. Getting those wrong wouldn't have been just a professional problem, but a public trust problem too.

At STRS Ohio and OPERS, I navigated asset-liability mismatch, demographic shifts, and the funding challenges of the Great Financial Crisis. Those experiences reinforced the value of scenario planning, transparent stakeholder communication, and acting early rather than waiting for certainty that rarely arrives.

As CSO of Atidot, the risk profile shifted – product risk, multi-jurisdiction regulatory exposure, and the reputational risks of deploying AI-driven decisions at scale. We built governance frameworks promoting fairness, transparency, and accountability before those became industry requirements.

At EY, I advise organizations on enterprise risk with a particular focus on AI, bias, and regulatory compliance.

My board service has reinforced that effective governance requires an enterprise view of risk – one that includes reputation, member trust, stakeholder value, and long-term relevance, not just financial exposure. The most consequential risks require judgment that goes well beyond any model. That’s where I try to add the most value.

Strategic Planning

Describe your involvement in strategic planning (including in a corporate environment), and how you have helped formulate vision, establish priorities, and allocate resources to support long-term success and effective organizational positioning. 

Strategic planning has run through my entire career, across sectors with very different timeframes, stakeholder dynamics, and risk tolerances.

As a current SOA Board member, I participated in developing the SOA’s 2025–2027 Strategic Plan of optimizing the candidate pipeline, growing globally, and leveraging AI. That work required making real tradeoffs, allocating resources, and establishing accountability measures. My Board service has reinforced that effective strategy lives in the tension between long-term vision and near-term discipline.

At STRS Ohio and OPERS, strategic planning meant navigating multi-decade funding projections, building consensus among trustees, unions, and lawmakers, and making decisions that would shape retirement security for hundreds of thousands of people. During the Great Financial Crisis, the stakes of getting strategy wrong were immediate and visible.

As NYC’s Chief Actuary, I worked closely with the Office of Management and Budget to align long-term pension funding with broader fiscal objectives – balancing competing priorities where resources are finite and political pressures constant.

As CSO of Atidot, I shaped growth strategy, evaluated market opportunities, aligned product development with customer needs, and adapted plans as technology markets shifted quickly.

At EY, I advise clients on strategic planning related to AI adoption, workforce transformation, and regulatory readiness—helping organizations position for sustained relevance beyond the immediate disruption.

Strategies succeed not because they’re perfectly formed at the outset, but because the people executing them stay committed, stay honest, and stay willing to adapt. That’s what I’ve seen work, across every setting.