Although Katherine Holt Antonello ’86 and Larry Haefner ’78 weren’t on the Hilltop at the same time, their paths have crossed many times as their BSC math degrees have taken them to the top of their field.

In April, Antonello will assume the role of Chief Executive Officer at Reno-based Employers Holdings, after serving as its Executive Vice President and Chief Actuary since 2019. In December, Haefner retired as Executive Vice President and Chief Actuary at CNA Insurance in Chicago, though he will stay on with the company through 2021 in a consulting role. Both have served on the board of the Casualty Actuarial Society, a leading credentialing organization. Antonello is president-elect, and Haefner oversaw the spring examinations series for many years.

But it’s possible that neither would have ended up as national leaders in their field, or even become actuaries at all, without an influential BSC professor whom each mentioned when we caught up with them this month.

Antonello – whose parents Dr. Ira H. Holt ’59 and the late Lee Headley Holt ’62 also attended BSC – was a biology major on the road to medical school who had taken math courses for fun. After a family practice internship during her junior year helped her realize medicine wasn’t her passion, she wasn’t sure what might come next. Haefner liked math and was good at it, but also loved history, though he struggled to determine how to turn that into a career.

Enter Dr. Lola Kiser, who taught at BSC from 1955-1996 and chaired BSC’s math department from 1971-1978. “She helped me understand what I was capable of doing,” Haefner recalls. “She once said I was one of the best students she ever had at thinking on my feet. Of course,that was also a comment on how I should be better prepared prior to class, so I took both points to heart.”

Kiser was Antonello’s advisor. “She opened my eyes to actuarial science, which led to a new major in math,” she says. “She opened doors to internships that ultimately led to my career as an actuary. She had such an important influence on my career, and I am forever grateful to her.”

That internship led to a job after graduation. For the next 30-plus years, Antonello moved up steadily through roles at four large insurance companies before accepting the EVP role at Employers in 2019.

For Haefner, whose landed his first job by answering an ad, the opportunity to keep learning was part of the appeal. Aspiring actuaries must master a series of six preliminary exams, each typically involving about 300 hours of study. “I really like the idea of continuing to learn through the actuarial exams while working full time. Learning and doing, so to speak – and being paid for it,” he says. “Whether a curse or a blessing, I have never been satisfied with my level of knowledge and wanted to further strengthen my technical actuarial skills. So I went back to school at Purdue University while continuing to work full time, and completed a masters in applied math.”

Antonello describes actuaries as “the original data scientists,” citing their role in leveraging information to identify trends that impact almost every industry and enterprise. “An actuarial career draws on a unique combination of skills – math, statistics, business and computer science,” she says. “Actuaries are sought after across the globe for their insights to solve risk-related problems, and I have yet to meet an actuary who regrets entering the career.”

Haefner concurs. “First, I believe insurance is a noble industry,” he says. “Our responsibility is to provide protection against foreseeable risk (and some unforeseen). The actuary’s role is to ensure that insurance companies have the financial strength to honor their financial promises – even if the ultimate payout of those promises takes place months or years or even decades after an insured event occurs. And we also have the responsibility of assessing the exposure each risk brings and determining a fair price to charge for that risk.

“So if you like to solve real-world problems, make society safer and more protected (at least financially), and have a very dynamic ever-changing scope – definitely consider being an actuary.”

Antonello and her husband – attorney Mike Antonello, general counsel at Lynn University in Boca Raton – raised their three sons in South Florida, where she has served on the Orange Bowl Committee. “The friendships I made at BSC have lasted a lifetime,” she says, adding that she’s still in close touch with her Kappa Delta sisters.

Haefner and his wife, Faith Dansereau, recently relocated from Chicago to the Houston area, where their son Larson is a standout high school soccer player. He offered a final thought on what he learned at BSC that was critical to his personal and professional success.

“I learned how to critically assess situations and develop viable solutions to real-life problems; how to effectively communicate – both orally and in writing – to effectively communicate both the problems and the solutions; how to work collaboratively with others to successfully implement those solutions,” he says. “Perhaps most important of all, BSC instilled – or perhaps amplified – my intense curiosity about the world and how things work – and how to use that curiosity to continuously learn and (hopefully) grow.”

This story was included in a special math and computer science edition of From the Hilltop, Birmingham-Southern’s alumni email newsletter.

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