Scaling the 14,410-foot Mount Rainier should not be difficult for Anita Sathe CLAS ’03, given the determination the 30-year-old has already demonstrated.
The youngest person ever to complete all of the actuarial examinations, Sathe likes a challenge.
By the age of 26, she had taken – and passed – the actuarial examinations to be certified as a fellow in both the Actuarial Society and Casualty Actuarial Society. Instead of taking nine or eight exams respectively, she had to pass 13. But it was not so hard, she laughs, since she could concentrate on studying, as she hadn’t yet met her husband.
Facing challenges and preparing for what might happen is Sathe’s specialty. As an actuary, she evaluates future events; designs creative ways to reduce the likelihood of undesirable events; and works to decrease the impact of undesirable events that do occur.
At Deloitte, where she is a manager with their actuarial risk and analytics practice, Sathe copes with new challenges often.
She loves her work. “I like that every month or so I have a new project to work on,” she says. “I am also interested in the strategic planning side of the business.”
Sathe is far from the “nerd” stereotype sometimes associated with actuaries, who often have to produce very technical analyses. She is amused when told that one Hartford insurance company actually advertised “Nerds Wanted” when seeking actuaries.
“We have really gotten away from that image,” she says. “Today, we are trained to communicate complex technical information to people who are not technical at all.”
Sathe says she decided to become an actuary not only because of her interest in risk but also because a family friend, an actuary in St Louis, Mo., encouraged her. She came to UConn in 2002, having studied at the University of Mumbai, India, and passed three of the actuary exams. Taking the rest of the exams in India would have been a problem, however, Sathe says, since all of the materials had to be ordered from the U.S. and they were expensive.
The actuarial program at UConn that Sathe chose to attend is one of only a dozen named a Center for Actuarial Excellence by the Society of Actuaries.
On her first day on campus, she met with the head of the UConn Actuarial Center, Jeyaraj Vadiveloo, and the two agreed she would work on a project that might interest the insurance regulator of India. Sathe was skeptical, but Vadiveloo encouraged her by the end of the semester to e-mail the regulator with an outline of her project and request a meeting.
In December, Sathe flew back to India for semester break – and for a meeting with the regulator. Another meeting in India with Vadiveloo happened soon afterwards and eventually, the insurance regulator visited UConn. (The project died, however, when the regulator’s term of office ended.)
“The fact that this happened at all is not really about me,” she says. “It is about Jay. He just refused to believe that it would not happen. It is how he is with all of his students – he makes them believe that there is no limit to what they can accomplish, and he won’t take no for an answer.”
UConn, she says, was more than an education – it was an experience. Every day, she uses some of the things she learned in class, such as statistics. But the program here offered her much more.
“It was really about the total experience of working in the industry and studying,” she says. “Since I had passed the first three exams, I had time to work on projects right away, and that was very helpful.”
Almost as soon as she arrived at UConn, Sathe began working on projects with Deloitte, where Vadiveloo, a part-time professor, also worked at the time. Since then, she has worked for Deloitte in Seattle, San Francisco, and Hartford, where she is currently assigned. She telecommutes to the Hartford office from her home in San Francisco, and visits Connecticut at least every six weeks.
The firm provides actuarial advice to companies – such as The Hartford and United Technologies Corp. – that are self-insured, to insurance companies being audited, and to others. The projects continue to hold her interest, she says, and the challenges of an East/West commute have not been a problem.
As for the Mount Rainier challenge, Sathe notes that her husband, now a graduate student at the University of California Berkley, has completed the climb once already. She is hoping she will have time to do it next year. Last year, the couple completed a 206-mile, two-day bike ride from Seattle, Wash. to Portland, Ore., to raise money for an educational program in India.
Says Sathe, “It was the most pain and the most fun I’ve ever had.”
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