My Life as the SOA President

To serve as Society of Actuaries president is the highest honor bestowed on a member. On Wednesday, October 30, 2024, my three-year SOA presidential commitment came to an end. This is the story.

After serving on the SOA Board of Directors from 2013 to 2016, I submitted my name to the Nominating Committee as a presidential candidate in 2017. I was not named as an endorsed candidate and fell well short of the 601 petition votes I needed to be added to the ballot. I was concerned that the absence of a high actuarial position (e.g., chief actuary of an insurance company) on my résumé was working against me.

Coming into 2021, I planned to retire from my job at the Minnesota Department of Commerce and return to the Caribbean to teach mathematics. However, 2021 was a special year—the first election following the death of George Floyd, and in the aftermath of that event, the SOA had publicly emphasized diversity, equity and inclusion as a strategic focus. About March 2021, it occurred to me that my candidacy might be particularly welcome in 2021. In April and May, I made or received calls from a few Board members, and they all encouraged me to run.

I was torn between running for a second term as an Elected Board Member and running for president. I  decided to run for president and completed the obligatory questionnaire the day before it was due. To my pleasant surprise, the Nominating Committee named me to the ballot. However, I now had to compete against two very strong candidates, Tim Rozar (who would win the following year) and Dave Sandberg.

Leaning In

As I had intended, I retired from the Minnesota Department of Commerce on July 30, 2021.  I could now give my campaign my full attention. I made a video in which I tried to combine humor with gravitas and added the voices of some of my supporters. I revived footage from my earlier campaigns and added them to my SOA candidate webpage. I called voters around the world, including in Egypt, the UK, Australia, Denmark, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Canada, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, Bahamas, St. Vincent, the Philippines, South Africa, the Netherlands, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, China, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Belgium—I will stop there.

In the end, I won by 211 votes. The SOA’s announcement of my election hailed me as the SOA’s first Black president. Since I consider it possible that at least one of the 73 presidents before me had someone of African descent somewhere in their family tree, I have jokingly referred to myself as “the SOA’s first openly Black president.”

My next question was: What kind of president should I be? Many past presidents had much more professional accomplishments and/or seniority in their companies than I had. I decided that I only needed to live by my values, and the rest would take care of itself. I was right.

As soon as my election was confirmed, one-on-one calls with SOA CEO Greg Heidrich began. Greg has served as SOA’s Executive Director, renamed CEO, for 17 years. He runs an organization of highly competent staff, which numbers about 160. The CEO is the point of connection between the staff and the Board of Directors. The Board’s role is to set the strategic direction for the organization, and the staff’s role is to implement that direction,  but we don’t “manage” the staff in any way.

How It Works

The CEO has one-on-one meetings with the president-elect and the president. These meetings ensure that we are properly informed on all the important, and sometimes confidential, issues affecting the SOA, and they enable the volunteer presidential leadership to develop and express our own views and influence the issues. A great partnership between the CEO and the president is key to a successful year, and my experience with Greg was just that.

As president-elect, I also became a member of the Leadership Team, later renamed the Executive Committee (EC). This group consisted of the three presidential officers plus two Board members (recently increased to three), who serve as voting members. The CEO serves as a non-voting member. The EC meets at least monthly, and it is authorized in our by-laws to carry out the business of the organization between Board meetings. Many matters are ministerial and routine—approving a charter or appointing the members of a committee; but some are substantial, such as difficult decisions related to evolving the FSA pathway.  Over my three years, most issues were addressed and concluded satisfactorily. One important issue, related initially to the University-Earned Credit program (UEC), remained to be addressed after the end of my presidential service.

During my year as president-elect, I encountered what would turn out to be one of my biggest challenges. Just before the 2021 election, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) announced the creation of a pathway to FCIA that would not require becoming an FSA or FCAS, as had been customary since the CIA’s creation in 1965. For my part, while I saw potential negatives for the SOA, I also saw the situation as a big step towards the CIA establishing its independence, a status for which I had great respect based on personal experience. So, in the presence of a few CIA leaders at the 2022 SOA ImpACT Conference Canadian breakfast, I stated that while the CIA’s decision might cause SOA some disruption, we would certainly survive it, and the SOA would do well to respect our ally’s desire for independence. The result was that it set a great tone for my relationship with my Canadian counterparts.

One of the highlights of every president’s term is their first act as president—the inaugural speech. I gave mine on October 25, 2022, at the SOA ImpACT Conference in Orlando, Florida.  My wife and my two sisters were in attendance. My speech coach had asked me what three characteristics I wanted my speech to reflect. I replied authenticity, thoughtfulness and humor. I believe I provided my audience of 1,600 just that. I discussed my life story, starting with my enslaved African ancestors and ending with my decision to become an actuary.  Then I credited the members for my election. Finally, I commented on the societal purpose that underlies actuarial work, with special reference to climate risk. The speech, of which I am quite proud, can be found here.

International Commitments

The president is the SOA’s number one ambassador. Over my three years, I represented us in Ghana, Morocco, India, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, Mexico, Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica and Hong Kong. On all of these trips, the historical aspect of my election was recognized. On many of these trips, I was accompanied by members of the SOA staff, usually Andy Peterson (international lead), Greg (CEO) or both. We met leaders and senior staff members from other actuarial organizations and discussed matters of mutual interest. Ironically, apart from Board meetings, I did rather little domestic travel, my visit to the Hartford-Springfield Actuarial Club in May 2023 was the most notable.

My first overseas trip was to Ghana in June 2022. This was special because of my ethnic ties to Ghana—42% of my DNA is Ghana/Côte d’Ivoire. So, my Ghanaian actuarial family, both in Ghana and here in the U.S., treats me as one of their own.

The SOA delegation to Ghana consisted of SOA staff members Sofi Garcia and Andy Peterson, Board colleague Nazir Valani and myself. We met with insurance regulators, university professors and employers, and finally attended the 6th African Actuarial Conference. At the conference, I participated in a panel discussion on a market for annuities, the formation of which the Ghanaian government is trying to encourage. The panel of actuaries from several countries offered our insights into what Ghana would need to do to realize its objectives. I was asked to make a presentation to the winner of the competition for research papers, and, quite unrelated to Africa, I was asked to transfer the medal of office from the outgoing president of the Caribbean Actuarial Association, Kyle Rudden, to the incoming president, Simone Brathwaite, who were both attending the conference.

In addition to in-person appearances, I made a few live-virtual appearances, most notably for the 2023 Actuarial, Finance, Risk and Insurance Congress (AFRIC) in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, and for actuarial science students in Mexico and Jamaica. I also made a few pre-recorded appearances, such as at the 2022 SOA China Symposium and a Black History Month 2022 conversation with my International Association of Black Actuaries (IABA) colleague and fellow Past President Stafford Thompson Jr., FSA, MAAA.

The president’s second primary role is to chair our Board meetings. There are typically three in-person Board meetings per year, plus virtual meetings as needed. My first Board meeting as chair was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March 2023. At my request for a cultural experience, the staff found a Native American storyteller and flutist as our after-dinner entertainment, and he kept us in rapt enjoyment for an hour. (It happened to be on my 69^th birthday, March 12.) At our June 2023 meeting in Seattle, WA, we were entertained by the poet-laureate of Redmond, Washington, an Asian American, who read us her poetry. At my last Board meeting as chair in Indianapolis, Indiana, an African American jazz duo entertained us at the Directors’ Dinner. I am very happy that I added a flavor of diversity to our Board meetings.

Perhaps the most important event during my presidential year was announcing the evolution of the FSA pathway. The process leading up to it, which started about two years earlier, had taken a few twists and turns before landing in what I thought was a good place. The most important aspect of the new system, in my view, is that candidates will no longer be constrained to a single track. As an anecdotal example of why this is valuable, I have a colleague (FSA) in an African country who is required to cover life insurance, health insurance, general insurance and pensions for his employer, an insurance company. So, while highly specialized training may have some value in the U.S., it can be quite unsuitable in developing countries. I will add that, in 2011, I had written to the SOA advocating for this change, a fact that some staff members remembered.

At the 2022 IABA Annual Meeting, their highest award, the IABA Lifetime Achievement Award, was conferred on me and also on Roosevelt Mosley, who, like me, created history by being elected the first Black president-elect of the Casualty Actuarial Society in 2021.

As soon as my year as president ended, much of my workload disappeared. Notwithstanding this, my trips to Nigeria and Hong Kong occurred during year three. And, even after year three ended, I represented the SOA in Canada.

The fact of my presidency has been a great source of pride for the SOA, for my colleagues in the IABA, for colleagues in the Caribbean and for actuarial organizations in Africa. On my trip to Hong Kong, following a meeting with leaders of an insurance company, the actuary, a Hongkonger, came up to me and said, “I voted for you.” I will always credit my success to the fact that I was elected by the members.

I thank you for your kind attention.

Closing note: In 2021, my dream was to retire and return to the Caribbean to teach Mathematics. My election deferred that for three years, but I am now teaching at the University of Technology, Jamaica.

Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries or the respective authors’ employers.

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