Chairperson’s Corner
By Ariel Weis
Risk Management, June 2023
We’re almost halfway through the year and the JRMS Council has been hard at work putting together the content that we deliver to you to support your professional development. The Research Council has been working through our list of research priorities and homing in on the most important topics that we should fund for research into the future.
At the same time, the council itself has stayed organized and on top of things to be delivered. I am very pleased with the contributions of all our members this year. The teamwork, candid participation, and overall engagement is superb, and I hope we finish this year as strong as we started.
Over the last few months, we structured the JRMS Council further into a content subgroup and an engagement subgroup. Our content subgroup has been working to harmonize the webcast, podcast, newsletter, and meeting session offerings, going as far as supporting the organizing committees for the meetings happening in the second half of the year in choosing sessions that are relevant to our membership.
The engagement subgroup has a large task at hand: How to make it so that all of us can communicate better and engage with each other on the content that we have access to. I expect that these efforts will take more than just 2023 to complete, but they are a strong group with a lot of good ideas and practical approaches to tackling them, and I’m nothing short of in awe of the way they’ve been operating.
The call for nominations to run for section council went out earlier this year, too. At the time I’m writing this I know of a few strong candidates already, and I’m hoping that by the time this newsletter is published we gathered enough strong volunteers that the 2024 council year is stronger than ever.
We’re also getting close to the SOA Life Meeting in August and ImpACT in October. I expect to attend at least one of these and hope that if you see or run into me, you’ll be willing to come, say hi, chat, and let me know what you think of the section and what we should be doing better.
Given that it’s the summer, I’ll keep this newsletter update short and sweet. I hope all of you reading this are having a wonderful summer, whatever it is that you’re doing at work or outside.
As usual, if at any time you have any questions, ideas, suggestions, or concerns, I invite you to let us know by contacting any council member, myself, or the SOA staff. We want to hear from you.
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the newsletter editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
Ariel Weis, FSA, FCIA, MAAA, is the chair of the Joint Risk Management Section Council and works for Pacific Life. He can be reached at ariel.weis+soa@gmail.com.