Taylor Gehrke
My name is Taylor Gehrke, and I graduated from UW-Milwaukee in 2015 with a degree in actuarial science. I am a health insurance consulting actuary at Oliver Wyman in the Milwaukee, WI, office. My professional experience includes pricing Affordable Care Act compliant major medical health products, reserving, and performing analyses to assess the impact of changes in health policy, and much more. I earned my CERA and FSA credentials in 2018 and 2019, respectively. I enjoy rock climbing during my free time.
Mannix Carroll
My name is Mannix Carroll and I graduated from UWM in 2020 with a major in Actuarial Science and a minor in Economics. As a sophomore, I started an internship at Ascension on the pricing and product team where I supported building claims data summaries and developing pricing factors. I finished my degree with two exams passed and accepted a full time offer on the network analytics team at Ascension. Now I support the network analytics team with researching and analyzing our provider networks. Our work includes developing dashboards and models that display areas we can improve our network by finding gaps in medical services, shortening distance from providers to members, and finding price differentials from market competitors. In my free time I enjoy spending time with friends and family and being active. I like to be active by working out, rollerblading, golfing, and volleyball. I also really enjoy watching movies, tv shows, and cooking when the harsh Wisconsin winter comes around.
Adjieteh Adjei Mohammed
Hello, my name is Adjieteh Adjei Mohammed. I have passed all the actuarial preliminary exam except LTAM. I am currently researching on robust and efficient method of estimating parameters of loss models because insurance companies and other financial institutions utilizes statistical loss models to predict future losses for pricing, set adequate reserves, among others. These loss models are indexed by unknown parameters that need to be estimated. These parameter estimates must be reliable and highly efficient so that these financial institutions do not face financial challenges, hence the need for a robust and efficient estimator of these unknown model parameters. In my free time I like to play soccer, video games, especially FIFA and I also love to travel.
Jada Morgan
My name is Jada Morgan, a graduating senior with Commencement Honors and the outgoing President of the Actuarial Club at UWM, majoring in Actuarial Science with a minor in Economics. I was born on the beautiful island of Jamaica, but I now reside in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After leaving high school, I migrated to the US as a permanent resident and quickly transitioned and adapted to the American college system where I became active within the students’ associations and societies. The Actuarial Club and UWM at large made my transition stress free. In April 2021, I was inducted into UWM’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa – the Eta Chapter, a honors society aiming to promote and advocate excellence among liberal arts and sciences students. Additionally, I was apart of different activities at UWM such as the Ignite Leadership Workshop.
I have successfully passed the Financial Mathematics (FM) exam, the Probability (P) exam and will be sitting IFM in summer 2022. With this, I managed to secure an internship with National General Insurance in my junior year extending right up to graduation. After graduation, I will be joining Blue Cross Blue Shield of IL as a full time Actuarial Analyst as well as the Actuarial Science Advisory Board here at UWM. I want to extend my profound gratitude to all the professors that got me this far and aided in my academic excellence especially Director Panayiotis Skordi for his continuous support
Nicholas Bablitch
Hello, my name is Nick Bablitch. I am a UWM graduate from the class of 2017 with a double major in actuarial science & economics and am an Associate of the Society of Actuaries. During my time at UWM, I was involved with the Cheer & Stunt team, the Actuarial Club as well as the business fraternity Delta-Sigma-Pi.
Since graduating in 2017 I held a variety of actuarial roles in unique areas of the profession. I started my career off as an actuarial intern at Pinnacle Actuarial Resources working on captive insurance solutions in Bloomington, Illinois. Shortly after I accepted my first full time offer at AIG as an actuarial analyst in Stevens Point, Wisconsin assisting with pricing, rate filings and large program renewals for the Travel division.
In 2020, I found myself in a unique situation which provided me the opportunity to relocate to New York City to fill in at AIG’s Accident & Health (A&H) division as a result of the pandemic where I co-managed the pricing & portfolio management function for A&H specialty markets. After 2 years, I switched over to Arch Insurance to build the Underwriting Analytics department, with an emphasis on predictive analytics, underwriting strategy and profitability management for the A&H, Disability and Travel insurance divisions.
Francis Aggrey
Hello, my name is Francis Aggrey. I am originally from Ghana but moved to the United States in Fall 2018 for my master’s degree at UWM – I majored in Actuarial Science. Moving from a country where the least temperature I ever experienced was about 65 °F to a place where the temperature could drop below 0 °F was a big cultural shock to me. Nonetheless, I fell in love with the city of Milwaukee and the people that I met.
After I graduated from UWM in May 2020, I got a full-time job at Ohio National Financial Services where I worked as an Actuarial Analyst with the Disability Income Pricing team from June 2020 to November 2021. I moved to New York Life Insurance Company in November 2021 where I currently work as an Actuarial Associate with the Book of Business Reporting team within the Group Benefit Solution Pricing department – I mainly help with building SQL/Tableau reporting dashboards to help underwriters and sales executives keep track of their sales premium & profitability and also manage their book of business efficiently.
I am currently an Associate of the Society of Actuaries and I’m still taking exams for my Fellowship.
Krystal Smuda
I graduated from UWM in 2015 with a degree in Actuarial Science. Initially, I was undecided about my major until I read more about Actuarial Science and spoke to Professor Yang Ho. Since it was only a four-year degree, math- related, great salary, and exceptional job market, it was an easy decision. I started sitting for exams in my Sophomore year. After some fails and passes, I graduated with 3.5 exams passed (the .5 comes from a 2-part exam that has since been replaced in the exam process.) In the winter of my Junior year through graduation, I interned at Assurant Health. Working at Assurant Health was a great experience – learning about the insurance industries, programming, and working with other actuaries.
After graduation, I started a full- time position at Allstate in pricing auto and home insurance products. I have continued to take exams and received the Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society designation in 2018. I am still employed with Allstate now as a data scientist.
Drake Menzla
My name is Drake Menzia and I am an Actuarial Manager at National General. I have spent a majority of my career so far in health pricing working primarily with supplemental products. I graduated from UW-Milwaukee in 2013 and am a very proud alumnus. UW-Milwaukee is where I met my amazing wife, some of my best friends and it gave me a great education to build off of in my career as an actuary.
I think the most beneficial part of my Actuarial Science education at UW-Milwaukee was the speaker series and the number of connections UWM has made with local companies. For me, the most beneficial experience that has helped me as an Actuary is a concession business I ran in high school and through college. I sold at a number of local events like Milwaukee Air and Water Show, New Berlin 4th of July and St. Martin’s Fair to name just a few.
In my free time I enjoy working on projects around my house and spending time with my wife and two kids: Huckleberry and Dexter. We like fishing, playing cornhole, going to the park and watching the Packers, Brewers or Bucks.