Election Center 2016

Welcome to the 2016 Board Election Center website. Please visit for the latest news, updates, candidate information, and forms regarding the 2016 Academy Board Elections.

Sept. 19, 2016

Board Election Concludes
 
Academy members voted for four candidates for open regular director positions on the Academy Board of Directors, as voting wrapped up this month. The new directors will be April Choi, Stuart Mathewson, Robert Rietz, and Lisa Slotznick. Choi, Rietz, and Slotznick will serve three-year terms that will expire in 2019, and Mathewson will serve a one-year term to fill the spot being vacated by Joeff Williams, who was nominated earlier this year to become the Academy’s vice president of professionalism. All of the new directors’ terms will begin in November after the Academy’s Annual Meeting on Nov. 3.

Aug. 26, 2016

Academy Regular Director Elections Are Now Open
 
Members can vote for four regular directors starting on Friday, Aug. 26. On Friday, please check for an email from Intelliscan (electionadmin@intelliscaninc.net), the Academy's election vendor, for your online ballot. For those without email addresses, you will receive your ballot by regular mail. If you need help with or have questions about your ballot, send an email to Keith Weir (kwier@intelliscaninc.com). For other questions please contact Claire Mickelson, Academy senior policy analyst (mickelson@actuary.org).

Aug. 19, 2016

Voting to Open on Aug. 26
 
Online voting for the four open regular director positions on the Academy Board of Directors will open Aug. 26 at 9:00 a.m. EDT and end Sept. 16 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. All Academy members as of Aug. 12, 2016, are eligible to vote, and members who have not opted out of email communications from the Academy will receive the ballot with voting instructions by email from our election vendor, Intelliscan, on Aug. 26. Members eligible to vote who have opted out of email communications will receive voting instructions and ballots by mail.

July 29, 2016

Four Candidates Nominated for Academy Board of Directors

The Academy’s Nominating Committee presented a slate of four candidates for open regular director positions on the Academy Board of Directors.

• Stuart B. Mathewson
• Robert J. Rietz
• Lisa A. Slotznick
• April S. Choi

The nominees are April Choi, Bob Rietz, Lisa Slotznick, and Stu Mathewson. Choi, Rietz, and Slotznick were nominated to serve three-year terms expiring in 2019, and Mathewson to serve a one-year term to fill the spot being vacated in November by Joeff Williams, who was nominated earlier this year to become vice president of professionalism.
 
Choi has served on many health care committees and work groups since 2004, including Medicare/Medicaid, the Risk Sharing Subcommittee, and the Health Practice International Committee. Mathewson, a member of the Casualty Practice Council from 2006–2013, chaired the Flood Insurance Subcommittee from 2006–2013 and has been a member of the Natural Catastrophe Subcommittee since 2006.
 
Rietz was vice president of professionalism from 2002–2004 and a special director prior to that, and was chairperson of the Actuarial Board for Counseling and Discipline from 2014–2015. Slotznick has been chairperson of the Committee on Property and Liability Financial Reporting since 2014, on which she first became a member in 1996, and is a member of the Financial Reporting Committee and the Opinion Seminar Subcommittee.

Online voting for the regular director positions will begin in August.

April 29, 2016

Academy Announces Officer Nominations

Stephen Alpert has been nominated to be the Academy’s next president-elect, as announced by the Nominating Committee. In addition to Alpert, four other nominations for officer positions were made, and will be voted by the Academy Board, as directed by the Academy’s bylaws, at its annual meeting Oct. 13-14.

Alpert, who specializes in retirement and pension issues, founded Lifetime Income Advisory this year, following his retirement from Mercer after 35 years in various actuarial, risk, and compliance roles. He has been an Academy volunteer since 2000 and is chairperson of the Public Interest Committee, which identifies areas in which the Academy should be speaking out in the public interest and helps each of the Academy’s Practice Councils appropriately address the public interest.

“I am greatly honored to be nominated for president-elect of the Academy,” Alpert said. “I look forward to continuing to work with Academy volunteers across all practice areas to maintain and enhance the public’s trust in our profession.”

Alpert received an Outstanding Volunteer Award from the Academy in 2011, recognized for successfully bridging differing viewpoints to enable the Academy to present timely and balanced comments to regulators and policymakers on public pension plan issues. Last June, the Public Interest Committee released Sustainability in American Financial Security Programs, a public policy white paper. Alpert was chairperson of the Pension Accounting Committee in 2011, when it released the public policy practice note Working With Pension Plan Auditors.

The Nominating Committee also nominated Tom Campbell to be Secretary-Treasurer. Currently a member of the Committee on Qualifications, having previously served as vice president of the Life Practice Council, Campbell said he was “excited to be back in a leadership role at the Academy, and I look forward to working with the board, the Executive Committee, and Academy staff on issues of importance to the actuarial profession.”

Rade Musulin has been nominated to be vice president of the Casualty Practice Council (CPC). A dual citizen of Australia and the United States, he is also a member of the Committee of the International Association of Consulting Actuaries, a section of the International Actuarial Association. Musulin is a member of the Academy’s Extreme Events Committee. Besides his actuarial professional skills, he has experience with public affairs, academia, modeling and reinsurance, and regulatory issues.

“There are a number of key property and casualty issues facing the profession—climate risk, catastrophic events, terrorism—and the Academy is well-positioned to offer our professional voice on these concerns,” Musulin said. “I look forward to working with the CPC’s many dedicated volunteers.”

Shari Westerfield has been nominated to be vice president of the Health Practice Council (HPC). “After working on the HPC and its committees for a number of years, I am looking forward to using my experience working with federal and state policymakers and regulators to raise the Academy’s health care profile on key issues facing the profession,” she said. Westerfield currently serves as vice chairperson of the HPC and was a regular director on the Academy’s board from 2010 to 2012.

Joeff Williams, a current Academy board member, has been nominated to be vice president of the Council on Professionalism (COP). “It is a privilege to be asked to serve as vice president of the COP,” Williams said. “I look forward to continuing the outstanding efforts that have been made over the years to emphasize the importance of professionalism within the actuarial profession and the work that the COP does to accomplish that mission.” (Williams also serves on the Nominating Committee but did not participate in the discussions about his nomination.)

All new board terms will begin immediately following the close of the Academy’s annual meeting, to be held on Nov. 3 this year. The president serves on the board for three years: one as president-elect, one as president, and one as past president. The secretary-treasurer serves a one-year term, with the possibility to serve two more one-year terms, for the possibility of three years. The vice presidents serve two-year terms.

The Nominating Committee has been meeting regularly since mid-February, and will now commence work on identifying a slate of nominees for regular directors for the Academy membership to vote on during the summer online election. As the committee works to identify candidates, it will supplement those efforts, based on information about active Academy volunteers, with a public call for suggestions from the membership at large.

This year’s Nominating Committee, a presidential committee, is chaired by Past President Tom Terry; its members are Al Beer, Bob Beuerlein, Audrey Halvorson, Mary D. Miller, Cathy Murphy-Barron, Jeffrey Schlinsog, Tom Wildsmith, and Joeff Williams. Now that the officer candidates have been identified, the Nominating Committee turns to rounding out the board with regular director candidates to fill upcoming vacancies.


Just as new Academy officers are elected by the Academy Board of Directors, regular directors are elected by the Academy membership in an online election during the summer from a slate of candidates presented by the Academy’s Nominating Committee. As noted above, the committee has been meeting for several months to identify new officers in accordance with the Nominating Committee Guidelines, which have been in effect since February 1999.

The Academy holds uncontested elections. Some will recall that the board experimented several years ago with contested elections for regular director seats over a two- or three-year period, as a means of testing a voting tradition that some other actuarial associations have. After several years of the experiment, the board made a decision two years ago to reaffirm the longstanding Academy process of holding uncontested elections.

The Academy’s Nominating Committee tries to ensure that the Academy’s board composition reflects our unique position as the U.S. national organization established to include actuaries from all practice areas—as well as an equitable distribution among actuarial specialties, business affiliations, and employers. To achieve such a balance, the Academy’s nominating process has long relied primarily on a Nominating Committee process that entrusts that committee with identifying Academy volunteers whose service to the Academy has made them an excellent candidate for service on our board, which is dedicated to furthering our public policy and professionalism mission. The committee carefully vets candidates for appropriateness in accordance with the guidelines. The Nominating Committee looks for candidates for regular directors who have served the Academy, often through having been chairpersons on Academy committees and task forces. In addition, the Nominating Committee welcomes input from the membership at large and through this announcement, the Nominating Committee is also asking you directly for submission of any recommendations you want to ask them to consider for regular director candidates.
The nominating process is designed to ensure that all candidates bring deep expertise and experience, and also significant knowledge of the Academy’s history, mission, and priorities.

Please share your recommendation by submitting the member’s name and information here in the Academy Board Election Center no later than June 1, 2016. Results of the nominating process will be announced in future publications, including This Week and Actuarial Update.

Academy members are invited to nominate themselves or others for consideration as a candidate to be a regular director on the Academy’s board of directors. Simply submit your nomination to the Academy’s Nominating Committee. The Nominating Committee may also be reaching out directly to members and asking them to seek election to the board as a regular director.