We will be hosting our annual Alumni Panel on Wednesday, March 31st from 6-7pm! We will have panelists from Genworth Financial, PwC, State Farm, and Allstate at this event, and they’re here to answer any questions you may have for them!
Our panelists have varying professional backgrounds, therefore this would be a great opportunity to ask for any advice or information that you may want to know about.
If you have a question that you’d like to ask anonymously, please fill out the following Google form: https://forms.gle/5KTJ3dyE4jhYQeWA7. The more questions that we have, the better this event will go! You can find the panelists' bios below for your reference if you want to ask specific questions.
The event will be hosted over Zoom at:
https://illinois.zoom.us/j/84989894270...
Meeting ID: 849 8989 4270
Password: asc
If you have any further questions, please email me at companypresentations@asc-illinois.com. We look forward to seeing you guys there!
Panelist Bios:
David Podwojski - is an alumni of the University of Illinois who majored in Actuarial Science. He has worked at State Farm for the last 10 years in a variety of roles. He started as an actuarial analyst, primarily focus on pricing Commercial Multi-Peril insurance across many jurisdictions. Shortly afterwards, he was given the opportunity to be the lead actuarial analyst at the State Farm Research and Development Center where he led the actuarial internship program which involved supervision of interns, project management, and intern recruitment. His most recent role at State Farm includes Pricing Manager responsibilities where he leads a team of actuarial analysts in pricing several business and personal lines across the mid-west. In his spare time, he enjoys visiting with family and friends, playing sports, testing his video game skills, and trying new restaurants.
Donovan Hou - currently serves as a Director and Actuary in the Traditional Life Modeling Team at Genworth Financial. He has 4 years of experience in the life and annuity insurance industry. During his time at Genworth, he has been primarily working on LDTI implementation from a modeling perspective. Donovan is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA). He is currently working on his MBA degree at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Prior to joining Genworth, Donovan held a consulting role at Ernst & Young. His expertise includes AXIS model conversion, actuarial transformation, and LDTI modeling considerations in AXIS.
Lee Drinkwater - is a UIUC grad who works for Allstate as an actuary on the ABI (Allstate Business Insurance) Shared Economy team. During his time at UIUC, he spent several semesters at the State Farm Research and Development Center. Currently, his main project work at Allstate revolves around pricing contracts for shared economy policies such as Uber and Lyft, as well as working to automate as much work as possible via R scripts and R-Shiny Applications. He has also been a part of several task forces for Allstate, including soft-skill task forces such as ‘Change Agility’ as well as hard-skill task forces such as the ‘Automators Initiative’ and being a SME (Subject Matter Expert) for Territory Modeling projects. Lee received his ACAS in 2019 and is currently pursuing the iCAS CSPA (Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics) credential. He has no plans to pursue his FCAS, and is instead leaning into a data scientist / actuarial hybrid role on his current team. Lee has also had a prominent role in promoting more awareness of mental health within the Allstate culture, and is very open about his own experiences and struggles throughout his college career and beyond. In his free time, Lee pursues EDM related hobbies including attending festivals, music production, and DJing.
Jamie Ruben - graduated from the University of Illinois with a BA in Economics. After he graduated, he worked at Aon performing retirement plan benefit calculations while passing his first two exams. He then landed an actuarial job at Coventry Health Care, now a part of Aetna, where he performed various pricing, reserving and forecasting activities for the Illinois and Missouri commercial products. After developing his actuarial skills at an insurance company, he joined Mercer as an actuarial benefits consultant where he advised large employers on their benefit plans from a financial perspective. He then moved to PwC where he is now a Manager in the Health Actuarial practice. In his current role, he focuses on advising health insurance companies, provider groups, and employers on health insurance products. He has performed a wide range of projects during his time at PwC including health insurance plan audits, medical vendor selection for employers, actuarial due diligence in health insurance transactions, and review of Medicare Advantage and Part D bids for the government. He currently holds his ASA and will be finishing up the requirements for his FSA in the next year.