I’m grateful to have this opportunity to share a bit about the ASEA leadership in 2024 and our goals for the year.
The leadership consists of Angie Vadnais and David Kupstas as President and Executive Vice President, respectively. These folks should be household names within actuarial circles. They also keep me around as “President-Elect,” which just means I’ve been here for more than one year and less than two.
Last year (2023) we started a new tradition by reviving the Membership Committee and decided that the Executive Vice President (let’s just say “EVP” so I don’t have to type it again) gets to be the chairperson each year. Since I had more than zero and less than one year in leadership in 2023, I claimed both the EVP title and chairpersonship of said committee.
You can more or less intuit the purpose of the Membership Committee from its name: we fix the toilets. Just kidding—we are tasked with increasing membership. This turned out to be an extremely rewarding experience, primarily due to the quality of the committee members. It’s easy to lead a group of people when they are smart and motivated, and you just take notes and schedule meetings.
The point of mentioning the Membership Committee is that, so far in 2024, we are using most of our bandwidth pushing their 2023 initiatives to completion, with the flagship being the ASEA Academy. For those of you who were not at the ASEA business meeting at ASPPA Annual last year, “ASEA Academy” describes a collection of resources to help people become enrolled actuaries (EAs).
The first step we took was to create a Student Membership for the ASEA. This allows non-EAs to become members of the organization, which expands our reach and appeal.
The next part of the ASEA Academy, which is currently developed and awaiting launch, is the ASEA Student Forum. This is a google group forum that restricts conversation to topics relevant to aspiring EAs—exams, the enrollment process, etc. Students will be able to collaborate with ASEA members, instructors, and each other. David Farber has graciously agreed to be a regular participant on the forum. We anticipate launching the Student Forum at the beginning of March.
The Membership Committee is in the capable hands of David Kupstas for the 2024 year, who has been in leadership for more than zero years and less than one (You are starting to understand the pattern!). The development and management of the ASEA Student Forum has been separated into its own subcommittee, which reports to the Membership Committee. This is important, because David’s committee has come up with new and improved initiatives for driving membership in 2024.
One of these ideas came from Matt Rustige, who is a champion of college recruiting. He proposed the concept of an EA scholarship program modeled after the current QKA scholarship program. Under such a program, we would recruit sponsors to fund a scholarship for an EA student, and they proceeds could be used toward exam-related expenses: registration fees, study courses, etc. David’s committee will continue developing this program during 2024, and we will keep membership apprised of the progress.
As some of you are aware, we lost Elizabeth Duda suddenly in December of last year. That sounds weird. She’s still alive, just not working for the American Retirement Association anymore. This was a significant blow to the administration of ASEA, because at least for the time I had been in leadership, Elizabeth handled everything. Luckily, Allison Wielobob, ASEA’s Executive Director, stepped up and literally took over the day-to-day management of ASEA. Her contribution to the organization during this transitional period cannot be overstated. Allison is the reason we were able to continue functioning during January 2024.
Fast forward to February—and we are welcoming Tia Berry as the new manager of ASEA! Those of you on the Leadership Committee were able to meet her on the call earlier this week. We are certain the ship will run smoothly with Tia at the helm.
That just about does it for updates from ASEA leadership. I hope you enjoyed this article while eating lunch at your home office workstation, or while multitasking during a CE webcast. Now get back to work! Those March 15 contributions won’t calculate themselves.
Charles Brown, FCA, MSEA, EA, QPA, QKA, is the Consulting Associate Director at ftwilliam.com and President-Elect, ASEA.
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