American writer Kurt Vonnegut once said that teaching is the noblest profession in all of democracy. Dolores T. Gicaro, or Dolly to those who know her, is undoubtedly a testament to that. For decades, she was a bright actuary who has worked conscientiously for the industry and an even brighter teacher who has left a lasting imprint on many students and eventual actuaries.
Dolly graduated from the premier state university, University of the Philippines, with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, cum laude, in 1958. Under the United States of America’s Smith-Mundt Act, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1959. She then went on to earn her Master of Arts in Mathematics at the Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan in 1961. She was also a research fellow at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wisconsin while pursuing her Master of Science in Actuarial Science from 1961 to 1963.
She began work at Travelers Insurance at Hartford Connecticut as an ACT student from 1963 to 1964. She went back to the Philippines in 1964 and went on to work for Pioneer Life Insurance until 1973. The Insurance Commission sought her actuarial expertise and she became their actuarial consultant from 1973 to 1985. She became the President of the Actuarial Society of the Philippines soon after in 1985. In 1986, she joined Ayala Life and would later become Senior Vice President and Chief Actuary before she left in 1999.
From 1975 to 2005, Dolly was a Professorial Lecturer for the Math Department at the Graduate School in University of the Philippines. Through those years, she has passionately inculcated actuarial science for generations of students. Some of these pupils would eventually become the actuaries that may be considered as the backbone of the insurance industry.
Her former students would speak warmly of what a sight for sore eyes she was on a Saturday morning, delightful and neatly dressed. But what always stood with them was how spirited she would be in discussing an actuarial topic as neutral as gross premiums. Her passion for the actuarial profession shined through, making her students want to become actuaries, too. Actuarial science can be an unforgiving discipline but Dolly taught it as something her students will always remember and, in some cases, love. If that’s noble, what is?
SDModina
