Advertise - Write For Us

Previously in Part 3: After being fired at 55, John reinvented himself as an OPEB consultant, became a regulatory actuary in Minnesota, and served four years as president of the International Association of Black Actuaries. Catch up here if you missed it.

In 2012, having earned some "fame" as the president of the IABA, I was encouraged by past SOA president Mike McLaughlin and others to run for the SOA Board of Directors. Mike and I attended the same high school in Jamaica - he is 5 years my senior. In 2013, I submitted my name to be a Board candidate. I was endorsed by the Nominating Committee. But I must tell you what happened the year before that.

In 2012, I ran for the Council of the International Section. Now this is the only Section in which I have taken a keen interest. However, I did not campaign for the role, and I did not earn enough votes to make it.

In 2013, for my Board run, I took a much more active approach. I created a huge distribution list and called or emailed them all. I created a catchy campaign video, an approach that was novel for Board candidates, part humorous and part serious. I was one of the 6 candidates (out of 12) elected that year.

I joke that I ran for Section Council in 2012 and lost, and then I ran for the Board in 2013 and I won; so it must be harder to get on Section Council than the Board.

In 2013, I was the only black person on the SOA Board, and only the second black Board member in its history (Michael Winn was the first). I was perfectly comfortable with my colleagues, as they were with me, and had my fair say on the issues, albeit with a Jamaican accent.

My service on the SOA Board from 2013–2016 established me as an actuarial leader worth following. I brought fresh perspectives to the issues whenever I could, and I earned my colleagues' respect. The notion of Diversity was somewhat new to the Board, but they embraced it and now champion it.

Following what I considered a successful three years on the Board, I tried for SOA president in 2017, but the Nominating Committee did not endorse me and my petition effort failed.

In 2018, I tried to run for a second term as an Elected Board Member. Again, the Nominating Committee was unimpressed and again my petition attempt failed. At this point, I felt that a return to the Board was no longer possible. However...

2021 was different. 2020 had been marked by the death of George Floyd - only a few miles from my home in Minnesota. It seemed to me that if there was any year in which my candidacy would be welcome, it would be 2021. As I had anticipated, the appetite for Diversity in the SOA was much stronger than it otherwise might have been, and I believe I benefitted from that.

[By the way, if you are interested, I invite you to ask Google or your favourite AI to show you all the places in the world that had George Floyd protests.]

Newsletter continues after job posts…

This time, the Nominating Committee named me as an endorsed candidate, along with two other strong candidates: David Sandberg, a past president of the Academy, and Tim Rozar, a senior executive at RGA, one of the world's largest life reinsurers.

I retired from the Minnesota Department of Commerce on July 30, 2021, and put all my energy into my 2021 presidential election campaign. I called voting members all over the world, building on the members' list I had created for my 2013 Board campaign, and harvesting contact information from the SOA Directory (it is not anywhere as easy today). My campaign video featured 5 testimonials from colleagues who supported my candidacy. I learned later that the Caribbean actuarial community had been very engaged in supporting me.

The results were: I had 211 more first-place votes than Tim Rozar, and we had the same number of second-place votes. I won by those 211 votes. (Tim won the following year.)

Serving as SOA President is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and privilege. I had two roles: chair the Board meetings and serve as the SOA's Number One Ambassador. My first Board Meeting as chair was on my birthday, March 12, 2023, in Albuquerque, NM; at dinner, they sang "Happy Birthday" for me. For each of my three in-person meetings as chair, I added an element of Diversity. In Albuquerque, we had a Native American storyteller/flautist, and he had the audience in rapt attention for an hour. In Seattle, we had an Asian American poet, who shared poems about her immigrant experiences. In Indianapolis, we had an African American jazz duet to entertain us.

From time to time, relationships may flare up between organizations, either at home or abroad. Nothing of the kind happened during my year. I had an opportunity to suggest to all five US actuarial organizations that we make a joint effort to improve the "minority pipeline," but the suggestion went nowhere; each was content to pursue its own efforts within its own resources.

Being the SOA's first openly black president was ground-breaking; but the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) elected their first black president (Roosevelt Mosley) in the same year, and they have elected their second black president (Yvonne Palm) this year. We won't have black presidents until black actuaries raise their hands and try for it. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) had their first black president (Marjorie Ngwenya, June 2017–June 2018). The Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) had their first black president (Carmelita Graham, June 2025–June 2026) - like me, she has a Jamaican background.

Over the 3-year period of my presidential "term", I visited Ghana, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Canada (Waterloo, Toronto and Halifax), Jamaica, Australia, India, Morocco and Trinidad. The novelty of a black SOA president was not lost on them and was extra special in the African and Caribbean countries I visited.

At the end of our meeting with a group of pension regulators in Hong Kong, the actuary came over to me, shook my hand and said "I voted for you". That was special.

Last year, I resigned from the CCA and dropped my FCA designation (but the diploma is still on my office wall). I will not resign my FSA for which I worked so hard; I do get a significantly reduced SOA membership fee due to my retiree status.

The profession has treated me well, and I hope I have done at least a little to advance Diversity in our great profession. These days, I don't spend too much time on actuarial concerns, but recently I have been trying to help educate AARP leadership on the financial structure of Social Security. After serving as a volunteer grader almost every year from 1995, I grade Fellowship exams on a paid basis.

I am so far the only person in my family, including extended family, to have become an actuary. I appreciate my eclectic pathway and look back on it with pride. I became SOA president by the will of the voters and that means a lot to me.

I volunteer at a Food Pantry, helping to solve the problem of food insecurity. I love to drive, so I tend to volunteer for tasks which require a driver.

I love to travel, and I have set myself a goal: to visit civil rights sites in all 50 states. I am at 10 so far, in 2 road trips and a Road Scholar tour of Alaska. 40 to go.

Thank you for reading my story.

John Robinson FSA (1994), MAAA (1991)

That concludes "My Life As An Actuary." My sincere thanks to John Robinson for trusting MyActuary Weekly with his story - told with a candor you rarely see in this profession. If this series meant something to you, hit reply and tell us - and if you have a question you'd like to ask John, send it in. If there's enough interest, we may put together a reader Q&A with him as a bonus edition.

In case you missed any installment: Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3

John Robinson served as President of the Society of Actuaries in 2023, the SOA's first Black president, but his path there was anything but conventional: from teaching high school math in Jamaica, to failing more Fellowship exams than he passed, to reinventing himself in an entirely new practice area after being fired at 55.