Each year the UW-Madison Risk Management & Insurance Department selects four students to compete in the Spencer-RIMS Risk Management Challenge. I had the privilege to work with Austin Young, Emilee Murphy, and Brittni Tonnessen for this year’s challenge. I am proud to say we secured a second-place finish in the competition.
The competition started in September and concluded with presentations in April. Between these dates, our team put in countless hours of work. For example, a couple of days after Christmas our team worked on our risk scoring methodology for four consecutive hours. We created a decent output and took a short break. When we came back everyone agreed that we could do better, and we worked for two more hours. While I was wishing for some sleep at the time, this moment now stands out as a testament to the dedication of this team. We went on to submit a 10-page paper that allowed us to advance to the next round of competition.
Our success can largely be attributed to our education across a wide variety of topics. Between the four of us we have majors in Risk Management & Insurance, Finance, Mathematics, Actuarial Science, Economics, Information Systems, Management & Human Resources, and Public Policy.
Like everything in this past year, the challenge looked slightly different. First, we were assigned a municipality instead of a corporation as our topic. We recognized that the objective of a municipality was different from a corporation and worked to define our own metric of livability. Additionally, the final presentations were delivered via Zoom instead of at the RIMS Annual Conference. Still, our team was able to overcome technological barriers and present a cohesive and informative presentation, which ultimately resulted in our second-place finish.
I want to thank my amazing teammates as well as our advisor, Carl Barlett. This experience and everything I learned will resonate with me for years to come. I cannot recommend this competition enough and I look forward to cheering on UW-Madison’s team next year. On, Wisconsin!
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