The Instructors

Angelo Bastianpillai, FCAS, MAAA

• Angelo graduated from Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) with a Bachelor of Commerce (Actuarial Science). Angelo is an instructor for TIA's Exams 6 and 9 seminars. He has been with TIA since 2008, having taught portions of the Reserving Seminar in Los Angeles prior to that. Angelo became a Fellow of the Casualty Actuary Society in 2006. He is currently working at AIG where his main responsibility is to price commercial insurance. Prior to that, he had worked in consulting, where his responsibilities included calculating and explaining reserve need to clients, creating Statements of Actuarial Opinion, and ERM work. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA with his wife, son, and two dogs.

Jeremy Bill, FSA, MAAA

• Jeremy Bill is the co-founder of Perfect 10 Actuarial Seminars, which helped over 200 students prepare for the old SOA Exam 8I (for which he passed on the first try with a score of 10) over the last three years that it was offered. He plans to bring his experience and enthusiasm to the new ILA-DP exam.
  
  During his 8 years at Midland National Life, Jeremy has worked on pricing, implementing, and promoting Life Insurance products. His current role is Associate Actuary - Product Development. Jeremy and his wife, Susan, live in Sioux Falls, SD with their young daughter, Alixandra. You may see him driving his wife's Pink Cadillac to watch the Nebraska Cornhuskers play football.

Jeff Blacker, FSA, MAAA

• Jeff works as a consulting actuary in the U.S., and he also works with microinsurance organizations in Latin America and India. Jeff plans to bring his experience to the Group & Health exams.
  
  Jeff graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis and became a Fellow of the SOA in 2004. He has 15 years of supplemental health insurance experience, including product development, financial reporting, and asset/liability management. Jeff was a managing actuary at Conseco prior to starting Global Insurance Consulting, Inc. He lives with his wife and daughter in Indianapolis.

Mary Pat Campbell, FSA, MAAA

• Mary Pat received BS degrees in mathematics and physics from North Carolina State University in 1996, and received her MS in applied mathematics from the Courant Institute at NYU in 1998. Over the years, she has worked on modeling problems in several fields: molecular physics, neuroscience, sea turtle population studies, signal processing, information retrieval, electronic logic games, and now actuarial problems. Her actuarial work has covered asset/liability modeling, principles-based approaches to capital and reserving, investment optimization, and spreadsheet design and controls. She has taught math at NCSU, NYU, the TIP program at Duke University, and Canada/USA Mathcamp; topics taught have ranged from false proofs to advanced statistics.
  
  Currently, Mary Pat is VP, Insurance Research at Conning in Hartford, CT; she has previously worked at TIAA-CREF and Scor Re. Her articles frequently appear in CompAct, the newsletter of the SOA Tech section, and in The Stepping Stone, the newsletter of the SOA Management and Personal Development section. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.

Mike Carmody, FSA, MAAA

• Mike is the famed founder of Just Actuarial Materials. His publications and seminars were the standard for studying the old SOA Courses 5 & 6. With the new SOA exam structure, he is set to bring the same effectiveness to the Advanced Portfolio Management and Financial Economic Theory exams.
  
  With sixteen years of actuarial experience, Mike is a self-employed actuarial consultant. He works primarily with insurance companies and other parties in product development (life and annuity), asset/liability management, and valuation. Prior to being self-employed he worked at Thornthwaite & Co (an actuarial consulting firm) and two insurance companies: Providian and AmerUs. Mike and his wife of fifteen years have six children and live in Nashville, TN.

Ken Fikes, FCAS, MAAA

• Ken graduated from Indiana University in 1995 with a BS in Mathematics and became a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society in 2000. Ken has served as President and Education Officer for the Midwestern Actuarial Forum, worked on the CAS Exam Committee for six years, and served on the Task Force on Basic Education Internet Modules. He has taught over 40 seminars covering ratemaking, reserving, accounting, regulation, and reinsurance over the past 12 years. Ken has 18 years of actuarial experience. He currently is the Executive Director for The Infinite Actuary and teaches the seminar for CAS Exam 5. Ken and his wife live in Indianapolis with their three children.

Rick Groszkiewicz, FSA, EA, MSPA

• Rick received his Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a major in Actuarial Science from Georgia State University in 1974. He received his FSA in 1978 and followed it up with his EA designation in 1979. He is a member of ASPA and COPA.
  
  Rick is a leader in the field of actuarial education. He teaches public seminars (and on-site for actuarial firms) to prepare students for exams given by the Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries. Rick has taught the Professor's Corner session at the national Enrolled Actuaries meeting, and has been a speaker at meetings of the American Society of Pension Actuaries.
  
  From 1983 to 1996, Rick worked in software development for a global actuarial consulting firm. His involvement included all phases of software development, including programming, writing documentation, and training. He is currently an independent consultant and lives in Marietta, GA with his wife.

Alejandro Ortega, FCAS, CFA, MAAA

• Alejandro is Regional Actuary for Chartis Insurance - Latin America, with operations in over 12 countries. His current role is primarily reserving, with support for pricing and risk management. In his prior roles, he did commercial lines pricing for Chartis, in Los Angeles and was a product manager for Farmers Insurance homeowners business in Nevada and New Mexico.
  
  He graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 2000 with a B.S. in Mathematics. He also studied finance and programming while an undergraduate. His ratings as a Teachers' Assistant for the undergraduate courses were always among the best. After receiving his FCAS in 2006, he received the CFA designation in 2007. Alejandro lives with his wife and two children in Miami.

David Revelle, PhD

• David became interested in probability in high school while attending the 1988 (and 1989) Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics. He graduated from Harvard University in 1996, majoring in mathematics, received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 2002, also in mathematics, and spent three years as a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, in the department of statistics. He was a TA for a number of classes, including probability, at both Harvard and Cornell, and was the instructor for both Probability and Stochastic Processes while at Berkeley. His student evaluations for Stochastic Processes were tied for the highest of any instructor in undergraduate classes in the Berkeley Department of Statistics in the Spring 2004 semester.
  
  David has only recently entered the actuarial profession, and completed the preliminary exams from November 2005 to November 2006. He currently teaches full-time for The Infinite Actuary.

Eddie Smith, IV, FSA, MAAA

• Eddie graduated from the University of Georgia in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in economics. He also holds a master's degree in economics from NC State University. He became of Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in 2007.
  
  Eddie is the Director of SOA Exams at The Infinite Actuary and has also been an instructor with The Infinite Actuary since 2007. Before joining The Infinite Actuary full-time in 2012, Eddie worked with Athene Annuity (formerly Liberty Life) for ten years. He has worked in a variety of actuarial areas including asset-liability modeling, Canadian GAAP, valuation, and experience studies. Eddie also chaired the SOA Technology Section in 2012.
  
  Beyond Eddie's actuarial pursuits, he enjoys reading, writing about technology, golf, running, travel, and watching college football. He lives with his wife and son in Greenville, SC.

Anita Solow, PhD, FSA, MAAA

• Anita graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in mathematics, earned a masters in applied math from Harvard, and then a masters and Ph.D. in math from Dartmouth. She was a professor of mathematics at Grinnell College in Iowa from 1980-1996. For six years, she wrote the Advanced Placement Examinations in Calculus.
  
  After seven long years in higher ed administration, in 2004 she switched to an actuarial career and began working in product development at Genworth Financial in Lynchburg, VA. She started taking her actuarial exams in May 2004 and took her last exam in May 2007, passing all exams on the first try.
  
  Anita and her husband of 34 years live in Lynchburg. They are the proud parents of two grown sons.

Josh Taub, FCAS

• Josh is currently an instructor for the CAS Exam 8 Advanced Ratemaking seminar, brought here by his passion for sharing learning with others. He brings significant experience in ratemaking to this role, having worked as a pricing actuary and product manager in both commercial and personal lines of insurance. As a product manager, he was sought out for his strength in explaining actuarial rate indications to non-technical stakeholders.
  
  Josh's teaching philosophy focuses on helping students of all backgrounds to understand and feel comfortable with all exam material, prepare for difficult exam questions, and memorize material through summarized study guides and flashcards. He has been a student himself of online courses through various organizations, and has studied best practices for online education.
  
  Josh graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2004 with a Bachelor of Arts in Math/Economics and a Bachelor of Science in Statistics with an emphasis in Actuarial Science. He spent 8 years working for Farmers Insurance, where he managed over $840M in commercial (P&C and Work Comp) lines business as a Senior Product Manager and over $240M in homeowners business as a Product Manager. In between those 2 roles, Josh created a new actuarial team in the claims organization, and was responsible for predictive modeling projects as well as estimating and booking reserves for all catastrophic events for all lines of business. Josh became a Fellow of the CAS in 2008, and currently serves on the CAS Open-Source Software Committee and sits on the UCSB Actuarial Program Advisory Board. He currently lives in Los Angeles, and spends his free time reading, trying new restaurants, and traveling around the world.

James Washer, FSA, MAAA

• James, CEO of The Infinite Actuary, graduated from the University of Alabama with a BS in Applied Mathematics. He received his FSA in 2006 after passing all of his exams on the first attempts. He has been teaching exam prep seminars for FM and MLC since 2006. He has instructed more than 1000 students during that time.
  
  James lives in Birmingham with his wife, Laura, and their two sons, Thomas and Carson.

Michael Yates, PhD

• Michael earned his BS in Quantitative Finance at the University of Alabama in 2001. He graduated summa cum laude in the University Honors Program and received the College of Commerce and Business Administration's Most Outstanding Undergraduate Award. In 2002, he earned a Masters in Banking and Finance from Alabama and was named the Beta Gamma Sigma Most Outstanding Masters Student in the C&BA. In 2007, Michael earned a PhD in Finance from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was awarded a University Pre-emptive Fellowship, the Bonham Fund Fellowship and a Continuing Bruton Fellowship. He currently holds the position of clinical professor of finance at Georgia State University, where he teaches upper-level investments and portfolio management.
  
  In a short time, Michael has amassed an impressive collection of accolades for his teaching effectiveness. In each of his first three years as a professor at Auburn University, he received the Colonial Company Teaching Excellence Award, given annually to the top teacher in the business school as voted by the instruction committee. He is also the four-time recipient of the FMA Teacher of the Year Award, awarded annually by the Auburn Student FMA organization to the top teacher in the finance department. As a PhD student, he taught one semester of Principles of Finance and was awarded the Fred Moore Assistant Instructor Award for Teaching Excellence. In his evaluations at Texas, he received the highest composite rating for teaching effectiveness achieved by any professor or instructor in the department in a span of five years.