As an executive team, the Risk Management and Insurance Society (RMIS) puts a lot of thought into who we ask to come in and speak to our club members. This semester, we have tried to showcase recent Wisconsin alumni who represent different careers within the insurance industry. As someone who has worked in insurance, I know how great it can be. Yet, it is hard to say the general public would consider the insurance field glamourous and fun. For this reason, we welcomed alumni in reinsurance, brokerage, and underwriting in effort to dispel any preconceived notions students might have.
First, we welcomed Becky Cacioppo who is now a facultative reinsurance underwriter at Munich Re. Her presentation was very interactive as she went through various types of natural catastrophes and their respective underwriting considerations. Additionally, for each catastrophe she showed two images of buildings and had us guess which would better withstand the catastrophe.
Next, Melanie Cannon spoke about her role as an associate broker at Willis Towers Watson and used her expertise to inform students of the impact brokerage has on the risk value chain. Brokerage is such an important part of the risk and insurance industry, and it’s one that isn’t deeply discussed in our curriculum. RMIS found it beneficial to expose students to brokerage as a potential career path.
Most recently, Hans Wiersholm of AIG visited campus. Han’s career path resonated with me personally. He shared how he came into Madison thinking he knew exactly which field he wanted to go into (hint: it wasn’t insurance). Still, Hans, like countless other students at Madison, took RMI 300 and quickly gained interest in RMI. He became involved, and as you can tell by his position in underwriting, the rest is history.
As a reminiscing and sentimental senior, I can truly say taking the leap to join RMIS the second-best decision I made during college (don’t worry, the best decision I made was transferring to Wisconsin). The opportunity to welcome alumni to campus further compliments the knowledge we gain through courses. I am thankful for the speakers who have come to campus so far this semester and I look forward to welcoming more alumni in the future.