Description: A real life situation is posed involving a management, leadership, or other business decision, and readers are invited to submit the irresponses to "What Would You Do?" This issue’s case study involved a staff performance issue faced by an actuary new to management.

Description: In the spring of 2019, Dr. Cai started to serve as the Actuarial Science Program coordinator at Salisbury University, a medium-sized public teaching school in Maryland. At that time, the program was small, with only two faculty members who focused on both statistics and actuarial science, with approximately 10 students. During the next five years, the program did make some achievements in curriculum development, student exam preparation, job placement, and recognition, but Dr. Cai continued to have a dream to make the program unique. Dr. Cai believed that the skill sets students learned, even from a small program, could enable them to compete with anyone on a global basis. In spring 2024, Dr. Cai advised a group of exceptional actuarial students to participate in the 2024 Society of Actuaries (SOA) Student Research Case Study Challenge (SRCSC), and the team won third place – —behind two teams from the University of New South Wales, Australia. This article is the story of the journey.

Description: With more than 24 years of experience in the reinsurance market, Bruno Freire is the CEO and one of the co-founders of Austral Re, along with Vinci Partners, a private equity firm. Austral Re is a Brazilian- based multiline reinsurer which that writes business across Latin America. It has grown organically throughout the last 13 years, and had its credit rating upgraded to A- in 2023 by AM Best (it also has AAAbr from S&P). Before joining Austral, Bruno had been a reinsurance broker at Aon Re for more than 10 years, having witnessed the opening of the reinsurance market in Brazil. As we will be seen in his interview the following, he believes in a data driven analytic approach, client focused but with an underwriting mindset, as well as a strong support from actuaries and technology as key instruments to run a reinsurance company successfully.

Description: On May 31, the Joint Risk Management (JRM) and Leadership & Development (L&D) sections held their regular book club session to discuss The Influential Actuary by David C. Miller. We had 50+ SOA members attend the meeting who passionately shared their experiences and engaged with the author. This article shares insights about the book and discussion.

Description: Article describes accomplishments as Chair during the year. Four accomplishments are mentioned: i) Actuarial Research Conference ii) Early Career Award, iii) Establishment of Outstanding Educator Award, iv) Push to create surveys from the section containing a reservoir of ideas that can be used for webinars, podcasts, etc.

Description: It highlights key initiatives and leadership changes within the SOA Education and Research (E&R) Section in year 2025.

Description: An article summarizing the SOA Asia-Pacific Annual Symposium held June 12 - 13, 2024.

Description: The chairperson reviewed the accomplishments from the prior year and provided a preview of upcoming events.