NextGen Risk: Team Profile | MacEwan University

Joel Ramcharan (Advisor)

My last job before becoming a professor at McEwen, I was an independent adjuster doing a lot of municipal liability-type claims. So, lots of casualty, which I’ve always enjoyed. It intrigues me and makes me very happy, even though they are some pretty stressful situations — usually catastrophic situations. But there’s just something I’ve always enjoyed trying to make order out of that chaos, and doing the investigation.

This is my second year as a full-time prof. And I have to tell you, it wasn’t the easiest [transition] for me because I enjoy the [insurance] industry so much. So when they made this offer to me,  they said, ‘You’ll get to teach the new generation.’ And I’m enjoying it, and it’s a different chapter for my career.

Pearce Toal

I’m in the second year of our insurance program. I started getting into the industry by talking to friends and peers who were already involved, and they said it was one of the most undervalued industries within business. And when I got started getting into my studies and learning more about it, I found that that was completely true. I’ve stuck with it, and I’ve liked the experience so far.

I want to start out in broking, because I see potential in that space, I want to see how well I can communicate and develop relationships, and see if that’s something that would fit my expertise.

Maxine Quimson

I’m in my fourth year of accounting. I got into insurance during my second year because I was looking for an election as one of my requirements. A friend was in the insurance program, I think it was property insurance, and I enjoyed being in the classes. So, I took two more insurance classes, and then latest one was liability. Of all courses I’ve taken so far, liability is the most interesting.

In accounting, we deal with insurance premiums and pension funds. I think that’s where accounting and insurance get the closest to overlapping. Out of all the students in the class, it was nice to have background [insurance] information [that] we were trying to compute or calculate. Because sometimes in accounting, we just get carried away with the numbers. We’re computing the numbers, but we don’t really know what the meaning is behind those numbers, so it was nice to have that insurance background information.

Jack Reiter

I’m the only first-year student out of all of us. I got into the industry because my mom has been an independent adjuster for years. I’ve been underwriting at Peace Hills, so I have a lot of background knowledge about [the P&C industry].

I’m looking at property adjusting right now. I think there’s more variance to [property]. Obviously, vehicle and transportation adjusting is always different, too, but to a different degree. Constructing housing is more interesting to me, I guess.

Unavailable for an interview: Jordan Collier