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

Description: Servant Leadership is a leadership philosophy that focuses on organizational success through serving and enriching the lives of the employees. As employees become engaged the organization becomes more vibrant, sustainable and successful. Four primary principles are discussed: Create an Environment for Employee Growth; Provide Employees What the Need to Thrive; Remove Obstacles to Employee Achievement; Help Employees Reach Organizational and Personal Goals. Trust, creativity, shared vision, listening, job skills and personal attention lift employees up, creating high quality, engaged employees that help drive organizational success and create a pool from which the next generation of leaders for the company will emerge.

Description: The author briefly describes a hypothetical example of several unconscious biases in the workplace, drawing upon the behavioral economics work of Kahneman and Tversky. He presents data to refute the snap judgments that are all too common in human interaction.

Description: This article provides key themes of effective project management and case studies to illustrate their successful application. Key learning outcomes are: • To understand project management goals and key themes for success • For students, be empowered to manage. For managers, empower students to develop project management skills in tandem with their technical skillset

Description: A real life situation is posed involving a management, leadership, or other business decision, and readers are invited to submit their responses to "What Would You Do?" This issue’s case study involved an actuarial manager facing the potential resignation of a key employee.

Description: Leadership inspiration essay asserting that the things that are the most valuable to us are also the things that we have to work the hardest for.

Description: This article highlights the importance of communicating concisely and effectively through email and other written forums, and when/when not to use written vs. other forms of communication.

Description: This article is about how times are changing and we must adapt and keep up as individuals, professionals, and companies

Description: March 2020 issue of The Stepping Stone by Leadership & Development Section. practical information for actuaries, trends that impact section, section activities

Description: The article presents specific operational guidelines when managers and staff are having difficult conversations. The article reviews half a dozen "popular" guidelines but shows that they are not specific. The article then in two layers presents specific operational guidelines. First the article based on a commonality of principles of email etiquette and Jewish Speech Laws reviews five guidelines for ordinary conversations: focus on events vs. people, focus on fixes vs. blames, being holistic (acknowledge any good done), be operational (indicate outcome and how to accomplish it), and use of tentative tone. The article concludes by adding three specific guidelines for difficult conversations: shared-self-evaluation, skillful use of breaks when emotions flair, and use of open-ended lead-on questions coupled with continuous empathy and offers of collaborative support.