Kathy Antonello
Chief actuary
National Council on Compensation Insurance Inc.
Boca Raton, Florida
Age: 52

The first time Kathy Antonello heard the work “actuary,” she was in a college counselor’s office going over her own set of statistics — specifically, her mathematics test scores.

Originally she selected pre-med as a major, but that changed after an internship in a doctor’s office. She declined specifics on why she didn’t venture into that field — she said she liked “numbers more than hospitals.”

“Being an actuary brought business and math and statistics together,” she said, adding that a Blue Cross Blue Shield internship sealed her fate. “It was serendipitous.” After graduating from Birmingham- Southern College in Birmingham,

Alabama, in 1986, she was hired as an actuarial analyst with Liberty National Life Insurance Co. in Birmingham. After 10 years, she moved on to the Boca Raton, Florida-based National Council on Compensation Insurance Inc. as lead actuary for the ratings and research agency, which provides workers comp ratemaking services for 38 states.

She then went on to become chief actuary of workers comp insurer Lumbermen’s Underwriting Alliance in Boca Raton for more than a decade, returning to NCCI in 2013 as chief actuary.

She’s the first female in NCCI’s 100-year history to lead its actuarial team. Her crew includes more than 100 actuaries, researchers, economists and support staff who generate state workers comp advisory rate and loss cost filings, legislative analyses, actuarial products, analytics and research.

She and her team are known for their State of the Line Report, an overview of the issues in workers comp that is presented at NCCI’s annual symposium.

Today, Ms. Antonello said she’s looking toward the future, including helping to foster the next generation of actuaries and finding new ways of utilizing workers comp analytics. “One goal is to grow our analytics team and (find) new ways to visualize the data and look into ways that we can use statistical modeling to improve our actuarial techniques,” she said.

Bradley Kitchens, Boca Raton-based chief human resources officer for NCCI, pegs Ms. Antonello’s success on her personality.

“Kathy is both personable and a very strong technician,” she said. “It’s rare to find both in an actuary.”

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