I have a vivid memory of the moment an ordinary appointment at the hair salon changed my life.

So there I was, sitting in the chair getting my hair done, reading a high school statistics textbook. As a teacher by day and private tutor by night, I needed to freshen up my stats skills before giving the next lesson. Sure enough, Brien, my hairdresser, noticed what I was reading. “Most people waiting in my salon read People or In Style, or maybe Time magazine. But, you’re reading a statistics textbook. If you think that’s interesting, you should become an actuary.“

That was it.

With that one word, “actuary,” I was redirected to this path, the one that led me to Cheiron.

Believe it or not, as a 29-year-old, I‘d never heard the word actuary before. At that moment, I did what anyone would do. I nodded and smiled without a clue as to what an actuary was. But as soon as I got home that evening I looked it up online, took the short quiz from tobeanactuary.org, and knew what I wanted to do—to become an actuary.

Having been with Cheiron for more than a decade, this profession and this firm have exceeded my expectations. I‘m an associate actuary and consultant to large and mid-sized public and multi-employer pension plans. I spend my days captivated by my work, enthralled by the nitty-gritty details of data, programming, and modeling projections. I share my communication and teaching skills when I bring the big picture to my clients and help them understand the results to make decisions.

The reason I thrive as an actuary is partially from the constant intellectual stimulation that this profession offers. More importantly, it‘s because of Cheiron. The variety of clients I service and the projects I‘m involved in and the integrity and quality of work at Cheiron are among the reasons I plan on staying here for a very long time.

And for those of you who are wondering, yes, Brien still does my hair.