Columbia SPS Alumna Establishes Endowed Fellowship Fund for the Actuarial Science Program

Nearly a decade after first stepping foot on the Columbia campus as a School of Professional Studies student, Master of Science in Actuarial Science alumna Claire Li (‘15SPS) returned to Lewisohn Hall to reflect on her experience and share her motivations around making a generous gift to the program.

“We want to repay the help we received.”

The first endowment of its kind to the program, the Claire Li and Conan Gu Fellowship Fund will provide financial support to outstanding graduate students in the program. 

Claire and her husband, Conan, after whom the Fellowship Fund is jointly named, cited their desire to pay forward the generosity from which they have both benefited during the course of their academic careers as a major contributing factor for establishing this new fellowship.

“We were both international students, and it was a great opportunity to start our professional journey in the States,” Claire said. “We want to repay the help we received.”

Born in Beijing, China, Claire immigrated to the U.S. when she was 16 years old and began her postsecondary academic journey at UCLA, graduating with a bachelor of science in mathematics and economics in 2013.

During a summer internship with Shenyin Wanguo Securities in Hong Kong, she met Conan, who was interning in the same building as her. After graduating, the two decided to make the big leap and move to New York City together: Conan to jumpstart his career in finance, and Claire to pursue her master’s degree in Actuarial Science at Columbia SPS.

“This program really transitioned me from a student to a professional,” Claire said.

Following graduation from Columbia SPS, Claire served as an actuarial analyst at AIG, then moved to Prudential Financial, where she rose to the title of director. This fall, she started an exciting new role in insurance regulations at the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Claire foresees a great deal of change and innovation on the horizon for the actuarial industry—from the rise of AI to the continued impact of programming languages like Python and other emerging technology—along with plenty of opportunity for those interested in entering the field.

She says she hopes the Claire Li and Conan Gu Fellowship Fund will help make the program accessible to a wider pool of students who can leverage the endowment to focus more on their education and less on their financial situation, and open the door to more international students like herself.

“I feel like I'm here now because I attended this program and was able to secure a job afterwards,” she said. “I'm hoping the program can continue supporting students to feel confident in the hiring process, land jobs, and eventually become professionals themselves.”

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of a longer article that originally appeared on the School of Professional Studies website.