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My name is Elena Andreadis ’16 and I’m a junior majoring in Eco-Fi. During this past summer I was an actuarial intern at Sun Life Financial at their US headquarters in Wellesley, MA. I worked in the Asset Liability Management department at Sun Life and worked on an extensive 10-week project aggregating data for the company’s financial plan results. I redesigned the current processing files for asset and liability cash flow target projections to allow detailed views of the data. I also worked a lot with Excel and VBA. Overall, it was a very rewarding summer experience because I was able to contribute substantially to the company and got a taste for what an entry-level actuary does. Sun Life is a great company to work for. The firm values its employees, and while the work is demanding, the environment is low-pressure. I got the opportunity to network with a lot of the senior management, including the president, chief actuary and CFO.
My advice to securing an internship is to start applying early, and apply to anywhere and everywhere. Take every opportunity you can get to gain work experience, whether it’s in the city you want to live in for the summer or not. I made the mistake of only applying to companies in the Boston area, and this limited my options. Also, don’t get discouraged if an interview doesn’t go well. The more you have, the better you will get. Be confident in yourself, be proactive in the application process, and try to reach out to as many organizations as you can.
