By Eric P. Harding
Astute readers (are there any others for Contingencies?) will recall January/February’s Inside Track, “A Magazine for the Whole Profession,” in which my New Year’s resolution was to make your magazine feature more diverse voices for an increasingly diverse actuarial profession—with more voices that aim to represent the profession as a whole, both as it exists now and as we hope it will exist in the future.
We have also heard from readers alerting us to interpretations or representations in the illustrations we have used that we might not have seen without their leadership. That has led us to involve more people in reviewing those illustrations to gather wider perspectives on the art we include. We’ve moved in that direction with the graphical elements of this issue, reflecting a wider range of representation.
Our cover story, “The COVID Connection” (p. 14)—chock full of statistics and charts related to the pandemic—was penned by Annmarie Geddes Baribeau. Another COVID-19 feature, “The Great Unwinding” (p. 23), looks at various pandemic-related health insurance aspects including enrollment growth, disenrollment levels, and what could happen when the public health emergency—recently renewed for 90 days—ends. “Explaining Professionalism to Principals” (p. 32) reproduces an important paper from the Academy’s Council of Professional Responsibility.
You’ll also find “Thoughts on Social Security” (p. 41), examining some of the basics and thoughts on what’s next for the (almost) 87-year-old program, while addressing the needs of an increasingly diverse society. And don’t forget the crossword (p. 54), puzzles (p. 58), and the End Paper, “Has Spring Finally Arrived? (p. 60), to round us out.
With that, I invite you to tun the page and see what Academy President Maryellen Coggins has in store for you. I trust that you’ll find it enlightening.
