No single path leads to a career in actuarial science. Actuaries come from all educational backgrounds, nations, ethnic groups, and both sexes. They also enter the profession at different stages of life. Many have chosen the profession after beginning their working lives in other occupations.

From race track to tenure track
Dr. Arnold Shapiro's early life reads like a Mark Twain short story. After leaving home at 13, he spent a rough and tumble youth in the rugged world of North Canadian mining camps before deciding on a career as an electrician. But it was an interest in horse racing that eventually led him to actuarial science and his current position as professor of Business Administration at Pennsylvania State University.

Starting in Winnipeg, Shapiro served a four-year apprenticeship then worked as an electrician for another three or four years. He's been a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for 30 years.

"I was working way up in the Northwest Territory, on the DEW Line (Distant Early Warning Line)," Shapiro said. It is a cold war system designed and built by the U.S. Air Force that was intended to be an alarm in case of a Russian invasion of North America over the North Pole.

"While I was in the camp, some of us decided that we were going to travel around and play the horses. But we didn't know anything about the underlying theory. So, I went down to the University of Winnipeg to find out about statistics.

"After the first year, I transferred to the University of Manitoba, where I discussed my interest in horses with the head of the department, who happened to be an actuary. His name was Ernie Vogt. He told me to stop messing around with horses, that I ought to be an actuary. It's been downhill ever since," Shapiro joked.

Actuarial science must have been good to the professor; he's never looked back. Though he still has his electrician's tools, he claims he doesn't do any household repairs. Nor, has he been to the races in years.

An all-around professional
Then there's the case of the lawyer who got bored. John Aprill is vice president and chief actuary of Union Labor Life, Washington, DC, but his route to actuarial success was circuitous. "When I graduated college (Pennsylvania State University), I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I considered different jobs and professional education programs. But my mother always wanted me to become a lawyer," he said.

Aprill said he "fell into being an actuary" because he wanted to attend law school part-time at night. He found a degree program at Seton Hall in northern New Jersey and was also able to land a job with Prudential, about five miles away.

"In the mid-1970s, I was doing law school at night and actuarial exams by day. Basically, that's because I didn't know what I was getting myself into," he said. Aprill had passed the first actuarial exam before starting at Prudential, then passed exams 2 and 3 while working there.

He graduated law school in 1978 and went to work for insurer AIG where he combined his legal and actuarial skills as a corporate attorney. At AIG, he developed a kidnap and ransom insurance policy. "That was a very interesting part of my work there. But mostly, I did hard-core legal work. I represented the company at a lot of rate hearings."

One day, Aprill said, he realized he'd grown bored with it all. "I was tired of reviewing the same old documents over and over again. And, I missed the numbers," he said of his past work as an actuary.

"When AIG's chief actuary, Tom Bowling, left to go to Union Labor Life in 1982, I approached him about getting back into actuarial science. I jumped ship with him."

It took Aprill about four years after re-entering actuarial work to attain Fellowship. "But if you start from when I finished college, 1974," he said, "it took me about 13 years."

Comparing his two careers, Aprill said both require strong analytical skills and both are positions in which people are looking to you to offer help, counsel, and expertise. They also each require membership in a professional body and a need for lifelong self-study.

"You have to have the kind of mind that lets you keep on tap a whole lot of background information you can call up at a moment's notice. You're calling shots, explaining what you are doing and why. That's why both oral and written skills must be strong. It's similar to practicing law. If you are not understood, you lose everybody. And then you lose the case."

It's all about the problem solving
After eight years as a high school math teacher in little Kenora, Ontario, Marilynne McNeil was looking not so much for a job change, as for relocation. But she found both.

With no teaching jobs to be had in the larger metropolitan areas, McNeil widened the scope of her search. "While I was teaching, I had been taking some correspondence courses. I got interested in the actuarial end when I took a theory of interest course," said McNeil, who has been with London Life Insurance, London, Ontario for 19 years. "Until then, I knew nothing really about actuarial science. It wasn't a highly publicized profession.

"With my background, an undergraduate degree in pure math from the University of Western Ontario, it was either computer science or actuarial math. When I decided to pursue actuarial science, I did a post graduate year in actuarial science. I took five of the courses in one year," said McNeil who achieved her Associateship in 1985.

Asked what teaching and actuarial science have in common, McNeil immediately cites the "discipline of the math part of it. I've used my teaching abilities in dealing with others. Explaining what I do for people who don't do problem solving and helping them to understand it is important.

"Also, the exam process might be easier for a teacher. Just knowing how to study is a big part of it," she said. In the past, she said she has had actuarial students at London Life reporting to her though she isn't involved with the co-op students currently.

Being out in the world of full time work and getting a taste of life outside the narrow interests of full time schoolwork was also a benefit, according to McNeil. "You have a certain maturity level when you come to studying for a career if you do it when you're older and more experienced," she said.

Would she recommend that others already out of school and working in other careers consider actuarial science? "It's interesting work if you're of an applied math bent, a wonderful combination of business and math. The key is determination."