Skydiving with Damon Grant Williams
by Jen Fuhrman
Damon Grant Williams, FSA, FCIA, CFA, is vice president of fixed income for Phillips, Hager & North Investment Management Ltd. While attending the University of Waterloo, Williams prepared for a career managing risk. His extra-curricular activities may have played as much of a part in his success as his studies. As a member of the Canadian National Skydiving Team, Williams learned the importance of competitiveness and pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone.
How did you become interested in skydiving?
Skydiving was one of the things I’ve always been intrigued by. When I was at the University of Waterloo, I was coming out of the gym with a friend of mine, and there was a sign up saying there’s a meeting going on for the University of Waterloo Skydiving Club. We thought it sounded interesting, and it was going on right then, so we walked over.
I took a first jump classroom course at UW. Then we went out to the drop zone and did our first jump. This type of jump was called an “instructor-assisted deployment” where you jump from 3,000 feet and your instructor opens your parachute as you leave the plane; you don’t get any freefall out of it. I did the first jump that weekend and the second jump the next week. These jumps were fun, but not life-changing. However, while I was hanging out at the drop zone after jumping, a number of people suggested I should try freefall.
I spent a few more hours in the classroom learning about freefall technique, then we went up and did a jump from 10,000 feet. It was me and two instructors - the instructors hung on to me to keep me stable. It was that freefall experience that hooked me. I thought “Wow. This is just incredible!”
In all, the freefall course consisted of seven jumps, in a sort of progression, after which point you were able to jump on your own in freefall. Then you get your A license, which entitles you to jump alone, then after more jumps you can get your B license which allows you to jump with others, and so on. I did that and basically got hooked. I went to the drop zone every weekend and did more and more jumps.
I was fortunate that fairly early on in my jumping career that a very experienced skydiver took me under his wing. I suppose he saw some potential in my skydiving, so he and I did a lot of jumps together and as a result, I learned very quickly. He had already been on some competitive teams, and after we’d been jumping together for a while he suggested that we get a team together with the two of us and a couple of his former teammates. This is the team that eventually became the national team.
How are you judged in competition?
The event I competed in was four-person formation skydiving. There is a pool of about 70 different formations. Five to six of the 70 are randomly drawn, and the objective of a particular competitive skydive is that you have to build these formations after leaving the plane, in a particular order, and rotate through the sequence of formations, as many times as possible. You earn one point for each correctly built formation. There is a fifth jumper with a camera on his helmet that jumps with you. He sits about eight feet above you, in freefall, filming/broadcasting down to the judges who then score based on what they see in the video. You have 35 seconds after exiting the plan during which to get as many points as possible. By the time you have reached the altitude at which you need to separate and open your parachutes, the judges have long stopped watching. The only way to earn points is during the formations and freefall (not during landing or under canopy).
About how many times do you think you’ve jumped?
About 2,500 over 12 years - I’ve retired now and haven’t made any jumps in a few years. During training for competitions you’d jump eight to 10 times a day for two weeks.
What makes a location ideal for jumping?
Lack of rain and lack of clouds makes for good jumping, so Arizona is great with its desert climate. You get lots of sunny days and little rain. Rain and clouds prevent you from jumping, because if you’re up at 12,000 feet and you’re above the clouds you can’t see what you’re getting out over. You have to be able to look down from the plane and see the ground and make sure that you’re getting out in the spot that will allow you to make it to the drop zone once you open your parachute.
How would you say your skydiving experience has helped your actuarial career or vice versa?
I think jumping has helped my career in a couple aspects:
1. The competitive aspect of it was very good. Most of my skydiving career was focused on competing. So all the training, lead-up, national and world competitions taught me a lot about mental toughness - how if you do something wrong, don’t dwell on it; immediately focus on how to fix it or what to do next. I find that now in situations where I’m under pressure to think on my feet, that mental training from skydiving has been helpful.
2. There were also some philosophical lessons learned while skydiving that have served me well outside the sport. For example, I learned through skydiving that if you always stay within the skill set that you’re comfortable with, that skill set will shrink over time. In order to ensure that doesn’t happen, you need to push yourself to do things that you’re less comfortable with – not to the point of taking ridiculous risks, but push so that you constantly expand your skill set. If you’re pushing your boundaries, the set of skills with which you are comfortable also expands. Doing this, when you come back to things you previously thought were challenging, they often seem quite easy.
Why did you decide to become an actuary?
It was more a fluke than anything. My father was an engineer, and I had done well in math and science all through high school, so I thought I’d become an engineer. As a high school student, I had no idea what kind of career opportunities were out there. In Ontario, you’re allowed to apply for three college programs. I had applied to two engineering schools and was confident I’d be accepted to at least one of these, so there was no point in applying to a third engineering school. One of my friends suggested that I should to apply to an actuarial school because “actuarial science involves math and actuaries make lots of money.” That’s basically all I knew. Fortunately, I got accepted to all three of the programs I had applied to, but when it came time to actually decide what program to go to, I’d become disenchanted with engineering – I thought all the labs engineers had to do sounded like a lot of work (little did I know about actuarial exams). So I thought let’s check out this actuarial thing. I learned quite a bit the first week of university. As it turns out, I liked it. I like the challenges. I like the mathematical aspect of it. I like the risk aspect of it and the variety/breadth of the field even more than I anticipated going into it. Having always been interested in investments, I quickly learned that there was a very relevant application of actuarial skills in the investment field. Within the first year or so of my studies that caught my attention and became my career path, and I have very much enjoyed it.
How long have you been at Phillips, Hager & North?
It’s been just over a year. Prior to that I worked for Aon Consulting running their investment consulting practice. Just prior to my leaving Aon, I was the chair of their global investment consulting practice council. What I was doing then is consulting to institutional clients on investment policy issues: how to set their asset mix; how to make sure their assets and liabilities for are well aligned; how to select and monitor investment managers. And of course, trying to run and grow the investment consulting business within Aon.
At PH&N, we actually build the investment portfolios and manage money from day to day. My role still deals a lot with institutional clients, plus I have the opportunity to take on some leadership roles in certain aspects of the business, particularly in my area of focus at the moment, liability-driven investment.
What do you like most about your current position?
It’s hard to say what I like most. I very much enjoy being in the midst of a group of highly motivated, very smart people. I find the environment very stimulating. I like dealing with clients and having the ability to help them solve their problems/investment issues. I feel like I’ve done some good doing that. I also like the blend of solving clients’ problems and being able to take a step back, thinking longer term about where we want the business to go. I get the chance to think about bigger picture planning, while remaining grounded with day-to-day client needs and responsibilities. I find that blend quite enjoyable.
What advice would you give to a candidate or a student entering the profession?
I was fortunate. I went through the co-op program at the UW, in which I found the early exposure to a wide variety of work environments extremely helpful. I had two work terms on the P&C side, two in life insurance and two in pension/investment consulting. This exposure to a wide array of potential career paths within the actuarial profession helped me a great deal. Having that exposure early on was very valuable to me in allowing me to make an informed decision on a long-term career path that most suited me. So to the extent a student is able to get exposure to a variety of potential career paths, through a co-op, summer jobs, work terms, whatever, I would highly recommend doing so.
I also remember very distinctly an experience I had when I was in an early work term that influenced how I tackled the actuarial exams. I had just started writing the exams – I was about 19, and I was working as a co-op student at an insurance company. I met this “older” 35-year old guy - nice guy, married with kids. He was still working on finishing his last one or two actuarial exams. He told me that if there was one piece of career advice he could give me, it would be to focus on the exams, and get them done as soon as possible because writing them doesn’t get any easier as you get older. Being that age now, and having a wife and children, I can’t imagine putting in the amount of time I previously spent studying for exams today in this environment. That piece of advice is something I latched onto, I took it to heart, and it served me well. Once you get through the exams, a number of things open up to you in terms of career paths. Many employers look at that as a hurdle you have to pass before some doors will open to you. So I found focusing heavily on my exams early in my career was very valuable, and I would pass the same piece of advice on to other actuarial students.