URMIA Matters

Hear from an Upcoming Insurance Industry Star

February 19, 2021 URMIA Season 2 Episode 0
URMIA Matters
Hear from an Upcoming Insurance Industry Star
Show Notes Transcript

Gamma Iota Sigma is leading sustainable growth and diversification of the insurance industry by bringing talented students together in its campus chapters. Butler University Senior Claire Richardson who is the host of Risk & Reward Podcast and President of the Beta Lambda Chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma is the guest of URMIA staff host Michelle Smith for this bonus episode during #insurancecareermonth.

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Show Notes

Gamma Iota Sigma

Risk and Reward Podcast, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: How Will You Contribute? episode

Bloomberg Article, “Risk Manager is Suddenly a Hot Job"

URMIA’s Latest Strategic Goals


Guest

Claire Richardson, Butler University Senior and President of Butler's Gamma Iota Sigma Chapter  

Guest Host

Michelle J. Smith, Senior Director of Events, URMIA

Michelle: Welcome everyone to this episode of URMIA Matters, I’m Michelle Smith, URMIA’s senior director of events, and normally behind-the-scenes person for the association’s podcast but today I’ll be guest hosting! I’m thrilled to have this conversation as part of #insurancecareermonth and introduce you to today’s guest Claire Richardson. Claire is the  President of Gamma Iota Sigma and a student at Butler University. Welcome Claire.


Claire: Thank you for having me. 


Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. So, tell us a little about yourself. 


Claire: Yeah, so like Michelle mentioned I’m Claire Richardson and I’m a current senior at Butler University where I’m studying risk management and insurance, and I am also the President of our chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma, which is the Beta Lambda chapter at Butler with my amazing officers of our chapter. I am able to facilitate weekly presentations by industry leaders for our nearly 50 strong membership. Additionally, I am lucky enough to be the host of the Risk & Reward podcast and was recently named the Student CEO of Butler’s MJ Student-Run Captive. I am a complete insurance nerd if you can’t tell already and plan on staying involved with GIS and Butler as an alumni.


Michelle: That’s amazing, thanks Claire. I should say that I became acquainted with Claire when I ran across the Risk & Reward podcast that aired earlier this month where Claire interviewed three professionals from Indianapolis in an episode titled Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: How Will You Contribute?. I thought that was great work, Claire, good job and I encourage our URMIA Matters listeners to check that out. We’ll put a link in the show notes for you. So, thanks for doing that, Claire, that was awesome for all of us. Tell us a little bit about how that came about, how that Risk & Reward podcast got started.


Claire: Absolutely, so like a bunch of different creators that we hear from now, it started during the pandemic. When we were looking through a bunch of content that we were interested in showcasing to our Butler GIS members and realized maybe we could present this to a further audience and really push it out to student who are questioning what major they are in, so if they want to look into risk management, this is a great source of information for them to learn more before they make the plunge into the major. Additionally, for any people in their first couple years of their career, people who are maybe trying to understand a little bit more about insurance that don’t have the full major background that me and my peers will coming into the industry. So being able to provide more information on the industry to anyone and everyone who wants to listen is basically why we created the podcast and over the last couple of months, working with Butler University, Gamma Iota Sigma, and the National Alliance has been a great partnership and I’m super excited to see where it goes. 



Michelle: Oh, that’s great. What a legacy you’re going to leave behind. That’s awesome. Let’s get down to specifically what GIS has meant foir you as you finish up your career, I’m sorry, your degree, not your career, launch your career and finish your degree at Butler?


Claire: Yeah, so to put it simply, Gamma is the reason I am a risk management and insurance major today. I attended a Gamma meeting in one of my first years, first semesters of college with one of my friends and totally went for the free food, I’m not going to lie, and then when I got to the meeting I listened in on the speaker and the speaker was so passionate about what he was doing in the industry and how he was incorporating young talent and really working towards promoting more Butler students into the industry and I kept attending the Gamma meetings and eventually became a member, then soon after gaining membership I began going to Gamma Iota Sigma conferences and putting myself in leadership roles in our chapter as well as nationally, and these experiences were extremely influential and my understanding of insurance, growth of my network, as well as my connection with other chapters that have all helped me excel over the years that I’ve been in school, and have no doubt that they will also help me in the years to come. Gamma has taught me so much in such a short time and I truly would not be the person I am if I had not joined way back to my sophomore year of college. 


Michelle: Wow, that speaks to my heart. I formerly worked with a student affairs association and highly encourage student involvement as soon as you get to campus regardless of what field of study you’re in, so that is definitely a testament to an involved student and where it can lead you. So you mentioned there are 50 members in the Beta chapter at Butler, is that pretty standard on campuses across the country?  


Claire: Yeah, so a lot of schools these days do not even have a risk management and insurance program, so there’s only 85 schools roughly around the United States that have a risk management and insurance program and some Gamma Iota Sigma chapters are not at schools who have a risk management chapter, so their chapters might be a little bit smaller, but the ideas and collaboration that come between the larger chapters at larger state schools or other chapters is really important to the success of the entire organization. So the 50 members who are at Butler and active are super influential and help the smaller chapters or even really the larger chapters to continue all of our learning and push forward and create a real future for ourselves. 



Michelle: Yeah, so I’m going to ask a little bit of reverse mentoring here, any advice to our URMIAmatters listeners or our URMIA members who have programs on their campus, but might not be involved with the GIS chapter, or if one even exists on their campus. 


Claire: So Gamma Iota Sigma does a really interesting thing where if you do want to join and your school does not already have an established chapter, you can do what they call an at-large membership, which means you are able to attend any of the conferences and you’ll have full membership like any other school with a full chapter would have, however you are basically your own chapter as a person, so you can either take that membership and decide to start your own chapter on your own campus with the immense support of the organization, they’re so great when they establish chapters, the support’s amazing, or you can continue to be the one person team and do what you want with that, but if you do have a chapter at your school I highly recommend at least going to a couple meetings, and I know a lot of them are on zoom nowadays, so it’s super easy and accessible to hopefully be able to get a little bit more information on Gamma and a lot of the other events that come on with that establishment of the chapter.


Michelle: Wow, that’s awesome. Yeah, so recently, you mentioned the pandemic launching some opportunities and taking advantage of those, so that’s great, a Bloomberg article published early in the pandemic, and i think it was either March or April of 2020 and it noted that a Risk Manager is suddenly a hot job. 


Claire: I’m shocked. 


Michelle: A shocker. So, yeah, the coronavirus really catapulted the risk management field into really prominence overnight and spurred both for-profit and non-profits, higher education included, to add that risk expertise in the higher levels in the C-suites, so to speak, and so I’m just curious if you have any sort of insight on that and if the classes at your school have grown because of that sort of notoriety that the profession has gotten. 


Claire: Yeah, so a lot of individuals at my school, I’ve noticed that a lot of the student athletes that would normally be spending a ton of time in practice and having to do all of these wonderful things for their sport but no longer can because of the pandemic and rules and regulations with that are taking the plunge and going into our Gamma meetings and talking with the risk management professors as well as a bunch of other students who are in the program, and it’s a really great opportunity for them to not only build their professional skills, but then be able to bring their teammates in too, help the people who are maybe questioning if they want to play that senior year or if it’s really worth keeping with the program, and don’t get me wrong, Butler’s amazing with athletics and supporting their athletes, so being able to have that athletic support as well as the support of the risk management program is a really great connection that I have seen happen a little bit more since the pandemic began.


Michelle: Oh, yeah, I bet. Athletics is part of the URMIA Core Competency subset and we definitely talk a lot about risk in athletics as well so I could definitely see the connection for those athletes. That’s awesome. So, how about you, is there a particular career path you’re looking to explore in the field? Anything we can help out with? 


Claire: Yeah, like I mentioned before, Butler does have the first and only student-run captive, the MJ Student-Run Captive, so I have been able to work with professors and work on that captive since summer or 2019 and that experience has really catapulted me further into learning a ton about captive insurance, which if you have looked into it, it is an absolute minefield. There’s so many different opportunities in there and you could just really choose what is going to be best for you, just like you would with the entire insurance industry, so I will be joining the highland Global Capital Solutions team come June 21 as a Junior Captive Consultant and I am super excited to serve in this position because this is my semester interning with them and the team is absolutely amazing and serves clients super well and I’m really excited to see how my career will start with them.

 

Michelle: Oh, congratulations! Great to have that under your belt already as you finish out this last semester, that’s great. Thanks for being with us today, Claire, that’s awesome. We’re glad to share your story with our listeners I look forward to working with our colleagues and students at Gamma Iota Sigma on behalf of URMIA. Listeners should be on the look out for other features on both GIS students and URMIA members as we celebrate #insurancecareermonth. 


Michelle: Thanks for being with us today on URMIA Matters…. For our listeners, we hope to see you connecting with all things URMIA….Until next time….