Welcome to the CAS Staff Spotlight, a column featuring members of the CAS staff. For this spotlight, we are proud to introduce you to Josie Harler.
What do you do at the CAS? How does your role support the strategic plan/envisioned future?
As professional education manager, I help CAS members build skills for the future through continuing education offerings such as webinars and content at the Seminar on Reinsurance. As a staff chair for the Reinsurance Seminar and Webinars Working Groups, I work closely with our volunteers to ensure we are offering a variety of topics in our sessions and use feedback from attendees to aid in planning our future offerings.
What inspires you in your job? What do you most love about your job?
I love engaging with our volunteers! Volunteers at the CAS are passionate about what they do, and I greatly enjoy working with them to provide quality content for our members.
Describe your educational and professional background. What do you bring to the organization?
I have a master’s degree in education and a background working in various roles with students and educators in the K-12 landscape. Most recently I worked in a mental health program helping teens reach their academic goals. In my roles, I have worked with diverse individuals and am practiced at listening empathetically in order to adapt content and create objectives that meet a variety of needs. I have found that my time concurrently managing student learning with a wide range of abilities, as well as analyzing multiple types of data to inform instruction, have been immediately applicable to my work here at the CAS. I am a curious individual, and I am excited to continue to learn about actuaries and their profession as I work in adult education and focus on providing the best learning experience for our members. I was excited to take my experience and apply it to adult education.
What is your favorite hobby outside of work?
I am a video game nut (a true Mario Kart master), and I love spending time going on walks with friends and family. The way I grew up, sometimes the best way to get some alone time was to travel to the shore and spend a couple of hours wandering through the streets of a new city or along forest paths. I continue this habit today and love walking through small towns where I live or somewhere out in nature.
If you could visit any place in the world, where would you go and why?
New Zealand! The country has beautiful landscapes that I would be ecstatic to see in person.
What would your colleagues find surprising about you?
I lived on a sailboat with my family from the ages of 12-18. We spent about four years in the Caribbean traveling as far down as Trinidad and Tobago. When I was 16, we crossed the Atlantic, spent some time in Portugal and ventured into the Mediterranean.
How would your friends and family describe you?
A lover of puns who is excited by the little things in life. I often get excited by cool new tech features, the creativity of others, new candles, new foods, new experiences, interactive exhibits at museums, etc. One of my personal favorite puns: How do you organize a space party? You planet!
