When I Grow Up I Want To Be… An Actuary!
When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to become an actuary. Which I know is unusual. I had a math teacher who invited a friend who was an actuary to come speak to our class, and this was at a time when there couldn’t have been 3,000 actuaries in the US. It was a fluke.
And from that day it was the path I chose because, though I’ve always loved math and science, I’ve always wanted to do something that’s significant to people’s personal lives. So, as strange as it sounds, something like life insurance or health insurance seemed like a more interesting application for math than an engineering or technology field.
Introversion and Impact
I am by nature an introvert, so I enjoy one-on-one engagements much more than going to parties (though don’t get me wrong – I do like parties!). I’m always looking for a chance to get to know someone more closely and personally. I find that I’m someone who thinks less about how to impact a population of a million people and more about how to impact an individual and what that individual experiences.
From Corporate America to Start-Up Life
Throughout my career I worked at big companies and built a resume, which was very satisfying. But at the end of the day, the work I did had a lot to do with maintaining the machinery of a corporation. In 2018 I stepped outside of corporate life to do something where I could take all of the experience I had and increase the likelihood that I’d be involved in something that could change someone’s individual life.
For me that meant getting involved in start-ups and getting introduced to founders. One of those founders was Kyoko Crawford, who was doing something really interesting in early skin cancer detection. Kyoko is a remarkable person, and I saw a chance to use my finance and insurance knowledge and the connections I have with health insurance companies to help SkinIO.
Why SkinIO?
SkinIO is potentially life changing for an individual who finds out they have skin cancer – which many of us will – perhaps years earlier than they would have otherwise. [By diagnosing skin cancer early] you’re taking something that could be horrible in someone’s life and, through artificial intelligence, the deployment of technology, and the wise use of our rare 10,000 dermatologists in the US for 300 million people, turn a potentially horrible life experience into a routine doctor’s appointment.
What’s unique about SkinIO, and other companies that have leaned into earlier detection of disease, is that you’re talking about changing the course of a life. Skin cancer is such an easily diagnosed and managed condition compared to most severe things that happen to us, like heart disease, cancer of another organ, dementia, things that live on the inside of our bodies. So it is shocking, when you think about it, that anyone would ever die of skin cancer in a developed country because it should be easier to see it and treat it. In our lifetimes it’s foreseeable that the incidence of significant skin cancer could be cut in half.
When Keith Isn’t Advising SkinIO…
My youngest daughter is a junior in high school and she really enjoys climbing. There’s a high ropes course at a park near us and we do that course about once a week together. They have these crossings between trees and she does it backwards, or running, or without using her hands. It’s just great to be up there in the canopy of the trees with my sixteen-year-old daughter and have time where we can be together.
