The Instructors
David Atkinson, PhD, FCAS, MAAA
David received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992, specializing in nonlinear optimization and algorithms.
He taught the three-semester calculus sequence, as well as linear algebra, while a teaching assistant at U of I, and he received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant award during 1992. After graduate school, he worked as Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Western Kentucky University, teaching calculus, pre-calculus, and differential equations. In 1995, David decided to pursue an actuarial career, and he has worked full time as a property/casualty actuary ever since. He completed his fellowship in the Casualty Actuarial Society in 2000.
David has extensive experience in pricing, reserving, and financial accounting. He enjoys teaching and takes special pride in being approachable to students and in keeping his courses interesting and lively. David is currently a Vice-President and Actuary with XL America, Inc., in Hartford, CT. He lives near Hartford with his two children, Daniel and Elizabeth.
Angelo Bastianpillai, FCAS, MAAA
Angelo graduated from Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) with a Bachelor of Commerce (Actuarial Science). Angelo is one the primary instructors for TIA's Exams 7 and 9 seminars. He has also taught portions of the Exam 6 Seminar in Los Angeles for the last two years.
Angelo became a Fellow of the Casualty Actuary Society in 2006. He is currently working at Chartis Insurance. Prior to that, he worked in both pricing and reserving at a major Property & Casualty Insurer. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA.
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 11 years of supplemental health insurance experience, including product development, financial reporting, and asset/liability management. Jeff was a managing actuary at Conseco prior to joining AWMS as a consultant. He lives with his wife, Rachel, 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 AVP, Life financial reporting at Scor Re in NY; she has previously worked at TIAA-CREF. 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 and has worked on the CAS exam committee for the past six years. He has taught live seminars for Exams 5 & 6 since 2001.
Ken has 13 years of actuarial experience. He currently teaches full-time for The Infinite Actuary and is the director of its Property/Casualty division. 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.
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.
J. "Eddie" Smith, IV, FSA, MAAA
Eddie received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Georgia in 2001 and master's degree in economics from NC State University in 2002. He became a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in 2007.
Eddie is currently an actuarial associate with RBC Insurance. Since 2002, he has worked in a variety of actuarial areas including asset-liability modeling, valuation, and experience studies. He is also an active member of the SOA Technology Section and has a particular interest in the IT side of actuarial work and also promoting the use of social/collaborative technologies among actuaries. When he's not engrossed in developing actuarial education materials, he enjoys reading, writing about technology, golf, running, travel, and watching college football. He lives with his wife 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 31 years live in Lynchburg. They are the proud parents of two grown sons.
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 Assistant Professor of Finance at Auburn University, where he teaches investments.
In a short time, Michael has amassed an impressive collection of accolades for his teaching effectiveness. In each of his three years at Auburn, he has 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 three-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. Michael also works as an instructor for PowerScore's GMAT test prep and has achieved the highest possible evaluations for each course he has taught.
