Description: Six pointers about career advancement for actuaries, based on real life experiences from my 47 year career.

Description: What are the keys to creating the sort of actuarial career that leads to senior leadership roles? Is it to put more and more work into your technical skills, or to develop the 'soft skills' that make you standout among other actuaries? Learn one of the keys to self-marketing in a natural way, so you can make sure that opportunities find you.

Description: A typical course has some "hard" parts. These "hard" parts are the places where weaker students begin to fail, lose interest, and give up. The paper introduces a metric by which to evaluate each course topic. High metric values indicate "hard parts" of courses. The paper recommends spending more course time on hard parts and less course time on easy parts. The paper also recommends using disclosure: Tell students - this part of the course is "hard" and they may feel uncomfortable which is why more time is being spent on it." This approach to hard parts works! Failure rates are significantly reduced, while retention, satisfaction, and student scores improve.

Description: This article lists the leadership qualities which made U.S. Grant, an under appreciated historical figure, so successful.

Description: Can quiet actuaries inspire others and get things done just as well as their louder, more social colleagues? This isn’t just a question that plagues quiet actuaries, of course. For the over half of us that identify as quiet people and wish to lead, it’s easy to second guess and doubt ourselves. This doubt sometimes holds us back from reaching for that promotion, or starting that new organization. Some quiet actuaries may try to adapt extravert behaviors, however those efforts can be draining and short-lived. This article shows how quiet actuaries can authentically lead and leverage their strengths.

Description: Providing ways to master the art of soft skills and embracing agility to propel actuarial success in today's market.

Description: This article is about the little things that impact your personal brand, and how that personal brand helps you influence others.

Description: Continuing our series related to the exposition of distribution terms that may be unclear or misunderstood, our focus in this article is on critical service and support components for sales and distribution, accompanied by a summary of the regulatory oversight of insurance sellers and distributors and a few common terms related to that oversight

Description: This article is based on a presentation made by the author at the Annual Meeting of the Actuarial Society of New York in September 2004. The example of the position inventory and complementary skills acquired is from the author's own professional experience. From The Actuary Magazine, April/May 2005