Fiona is a pension specialist with over 30 years of experience on both Coasts. After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Washington, she started her career working in Seattle on corporate pension plans, dealing with varied projects such as early retirement windows, plan filings, assistance with administration, plan terminations and other more routine actuarial work. In 1992, Fiona moved to the Washington, D.C. area and changed her focus to public sector and Taft-Hartley pension plans.
Since working in the area of trusteed pension plans, she has developed an ability to communicate complex actuarial matters in terms that are easily understood by a lay audience. After recent board meetings to explain valuation results, several board members have exclaimed that Fiona is the only actuary they have ever understood!
The keys to her ability to communicate to these audiences lie in both her general knowledge of factors unique to the public sector and Taft-Hartley markets and her ability to use technology to aid in bringing arcane ideas and numerical concepts to life through use of interactive models.
Some examples of recent projects include assisting several local retirement systems in implementing rate-stabilization mechanisms for funding their pension benefits, chairing joint meetings of government and union representatives to discuss pension benefits, and assisting a state client in devising a mechanism for pre-funding retiree medical benefits. Fiona joined Cheiron in November 2002. Fiona's client list includes local, county, state, federal and Taft-Hartley clients.