Sustainability Early Career Board
Three things struck me in Nick Spencer’s posting
- The Sustainability Board’s tireless evangelising on sustainability issues and bringing them to our foreground and using social media imaginatively
- The high-quality thinking and research that underpin Sustainability Board’s work
- The innovation of introducing the Sustainability Early Career Board (SECB) to draw in younger actuaries across the world (closing date 7 November 2021).
The Sustainability Board has been exceptionally proactive in the last two years. This proactivity reflects not only the urgency of the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and other sustainability challenges. It also demonstrates the commitment, expertise and leadership of the people in the Board, now and of the past.
Never before in our lifetime has humanity been in such peril. Yet, this crisis is not a Black Swan. Regardless of the declaration in COP26 this month, the work to avert an environmental catastrophe has only just begun.
New consensus and commitment are necessary. New technologies and the rebuilding of Economics are required. We have to rethink decision-making in Investments and Risk Management. And we have to put back purpose into business and ethics into the professions. We are only at the foothills of the mountainous change needed in the next three decades. Actuaries can help play contributory and increasingly influential roles. This project is a multi-year and multi-generation effort.
Hence, the creation of the SECB is such a brilliant idea as it kills several birds with one stone. First, we need a pipeline of capable, caring and daring leaders. Second, we want to help bring alive IFoA’s “New World, New Thinking”. Third, we want to evangelise about sustainability. Last but by no means least, we want to help change the conversation and bring real change.
If you are a young actuary* and want to get involved, apply for a volunteer role as a member of the SECB.
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*less than 6 years post qualification experience or identifying as an early career member.
Read Nick Spencer’s story on sustainability and his career at
http://blog.actuaries.org.uk/blog/role-sustainability-played-my-career