What inspires you to remain so engaged with Rice?
I feel like alumni play a bigger role in making the Rice experience than you necessarily realize while you’re still on campus. Alumni influence all parts of Rice, including parts where they are directly seen making an impact on students, like the Associates Program and places you might not be thinking about them, like where Rice allocates funds for the upcoming year. For that reason, I felt that there is no need to stop trying to do what I can to help support the students that come after me. Not to mention — it’s honestly just fun when there are opportunities like conducting interviews with RAVA (Rice Alumni Volunteers for Admission), and you get to meet enthusiastic prospective students and have a hand in their Rice experiences.
How have you grown/changed in your Rice journey since receiving the award?
One thing from my Rice journey that’s helped me so far is frankly applying my own advice that I tend to give prospective/current students to the real world. Considering the experiences I’ve heard about from others both in and out of the workplace, it seems that going in with a mindset of always being open to changes/new opportunities, even when you feel like you’re in a comfortable place, is something that will (hopefully) serve me well in the beginning of my career. Additionally, I have been keeping in touch with my peers and the Owl Team at Lovett, and I can’t express how excited I am to be able to say that I’ve been invited to be an Associate at Lovett! That’s certainly a new opportunity worth highlighting because I feel that now that I’ve now graduated I can re-focus my efforts on sharing my time and experiences to support Rice’s student body however I can.
Akin’s advice:
My advice to current, prospective, and incoming Rice students has always been something to the tune of not discounting the potential value of the opportunities you have at Rice. When you first get on campus, it can, of course, be challenging to figure out which clubs you want to be in, which projects you want to take on later in your Rice career, which jobs or research opportunities you want to explore, etc. You can get to the point where you think you know what is worth your time and what isn’t, so it’s natural to stop paying attention to the opportunities around you. Don’t overload yourself, but keep an open mind.
What’s next for you?
Right now I’m working on becoming a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries. Those who have been keeping tabs on me know that I have been trying to grind out as many of my credentialing exams as I can with all the free time supplied by the pandemic. And it looks like I’ll be receiving my Associateship (credential level before Fellow) later this year! To say the least, I’m excited that all the hard work is starting to pay off, and I hope to start to pay it forward by becoming more involved with the International Association of Black Actuaries in the future. P.S. If there are any Rice students (or alumni) looking to learn about actuarial science, please do not hesitate to reach out!