Karen Zangara has over 23 years of experience advising on actuarial, financial, compliance and administrative matters associated with retirement plans. Prior to joining Cheiron in January of 2009, she was a pension actuary and consultant with an international human capital and financial services consulting firm. Karen has managed all aspects of actuarial services for defined benefit pension plans.
Karen's professional experience has included evaluating a variety of pension plans and consulting with clients on these plans. She has experience determining the financial statement disclosures and annual accounting costs for pension and retiree medical plans and calculating and reviewing the annual funding results. Karen has also helped clients consider alternative pension / retirement programs, which includes analysis of the impact of plan design changes from various perspectives: employee, employer (both quantitative from a financial perspective and qualitative from an attraction/retention perspective), and administrative complexity. In addition, Karen has helped clients with a variety of issues such as data problems, administrative complexities, participant communications, and strategic workforce planning issues, which included projections of the current workforce and analysis of workforce availability in the future.
Karen is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, an Enrolled Actuary under ERISA, and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries. She is a graduate of James Madison University with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and a Master of Science in Mathematics from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.