NextGen Risk Team Profile | Bow Valley College

Darius Delon (Advisor)

Darius Delon’s first foray into insurance “all started off with a girl,” he said.

“I met this girl, we dated, and her dad happened to be the branch manager for Zurich up in Edmonton. So, we’d go out to dinners, he’d treat us to a great dinner, and he’d say, ‘Oh, you want to get into insurance?’ And I’d say no.

“I was the manager of a restaurant at the time. He took us out again for dinner, and he says, ‘Yeah, you know, this restaurant can burn down.’  

“I was thinking, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ But then he had a hook.”

“You know, if the restaurant burns down and loses its revenue, you can insure the revenue the business loses on interruption side.”

“And that was the hook. It’s like, ‘What? You can insure something that’s not just mortar and brick? Okay, tell me more.”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Delon became a broker in Calgary, and then became a risk manager, starting at the University of Lethbridge.

Yaililn Cartaya de Armas

When Yailin finished her law studies, she wasn’t enamoured with her career direction. As it turns out her Mom’s best friend, was also a law graduate, was the manager of the underwriting department of an insurance company. Her Mom suggested she get to know the company a bit, and maybe she might like it. “And that’s how I started as liability underwriter,” Yailin tells CU. “One year later, I passed to the reinsurance division on the airspace underwriting.”

Yailin says she likes the research aspect of the work. “I like to know how things work,” she says. “I’m not scared to go into new things when it comes to research and learning. I love it.”

She says her mother also encouraged her to expand her horizons and consider a move from liability to aerospace. That got her into looking at renewas and contracts, which engaged her legal knowledge.

“You have to check everything. You need to check the terms, you need to check the conditions, the exclusions and everything. So I was like, ‘Okay, okay, I like this. It’s Good detail work.”

Phuc Hong Lau (Henry)

Henry tells CU he was inspired by an aunt who had worked in the insurance industry since 2010, and is now a risk manager.

“She has been in the insurance industry for a long time,” Henry tells CU. “So that’s why she’d be able to give me a lot of insight about it.”

Henry says he didn’t know much about insurance at the beginning. “It was just something like, ‘Something bad happened, and you have an insurance claim to get the money back for it,’”

But Henry says he has learned so much more about insurance during his studies. “After learning with Darius, and meeting a lot of people at networking events, and especially from attending the RIMS Canada Conference last year, I got lucky to be chosen for the [RIMS’] McGannon involvement program for students. So, I got to meet a lot of [risk] professionals there.”

Henry says he likes the personal interactions he has in the insurance industry, widely known to be a relationships-based business. “So, I’m leaning more into becoming a broker, and I also like underwriting, where I can get to know more about [risk] exposure.”

Sarah Wickstrand

Sarah’s journey into insurance and risk management started in fall of 2024, after she graduated high school. “I was coming into Bow Valley College with no idea what I really wanted to do,” she says.

But Sarah shared the same aunt as her colleague on the team, Phuc Hong Lau (see Henry’s profile above.

“After attending like the student orientation, and hearing about all the programs at Bow Valley for Business Administration students, I was like, ‘Okay, insurance sounds interesting compared to accounting. I like accounting, but it’s not my favorite.’”

Sarah says she initially had to step out of her comfort zone, but in the second semester, things solidified for her. When she learned business law, she found a lot of the concepts applied to liability insurance. “I was really interested then,” she says.

Like Henry, she went to the RIMS Canada Conference last September as part of the McGann Foundation’s student involvement program.

“And just meeting everyone, and hearing everyone’s stories and their career paths, I was like, ‘Okay, this is definitely it for me. I liked hearing everyone’s stories and realized how it’s never really boring in the industry. I couldn’t be more excited to be part of the industry as a student and soon-to-be graduate.

Benita Abidoye

Currently studying Human Resources at Bow Valley College, Benita was drawn into the 2026 NextGen case competition.

“I found it really, really intriguing, actually, because one thing about HR is, we are the heart of an organization and very much interested in reducing and mitigating risk for organizations as much as posible,” she tells CU. “And insurance is one of those things that deals with management and mitigation of risk.

“And so, having that additional knowledge and gaining that skill [on the insurance side] would be a good to have to be a very top talent in any organization.”

Benita’s knowledge of Insurance is new, and she says it’s teaching her critical business skills.

“It’s been an amazing experience so far, understanding what can be insured, and what will be insured. It just helps your critical analysis, you analytical skills, [and] that’s exciting for me.”

Team Members not available for an interview: Sydney Addotei Moffat, Lourdes Jimenez, Mehtaab Shaikh, Chioma Onyejebu