A small sample of those who have worked with Anna and their recommendations:
Anna Rappaport is the most conscientious and thorough guest speaker that our organization has ever utilized. We asked Anna to make a presentation on key retirement plan issues at our Board’s annual educational meeting in September 2006. Ms. Rappaport has access to a wealth of quality demographic, retirement plan design and retirement trends data, researches in depth her audience’s knowledge level and specific retirement plan issues, and organizes her presentation material in a format that is entirely logical and easily understood by meeting participants. Anna is able to cover in her presentations a tremendous amount of material in a limited time frame, without glossing over key points or making the presentation appear rushed. Her individual opinions on the strengths and weaknesses in current U.S. retirement plan design are studied and insightful. She also goes the extra mile by offering her speaking engagement clients access to bibliographies of her own and her professional associations’ research and white papers on related topics. Based on our experience with her, I could not recommend Ms. Rappaport more highly for a speaking engagement on the subject of retirement plan design and retirement trends.
-Kathy S. Comito, Chief Investment Officer
Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System
Anna is an extraordinary individual, with a special talent for working with a broad cross-section of people and groups, ranging from corporate leaders to grassroots organizations, to policy centers to women’s organizations. Her work has directly helped advance women’s rights. She has always taken special care to address economic disadvantages of women facing their roles as family caregivers and made sure that any changes in the retirement system should be measured by how they affect different groups of people, including minorities. While retirement issues may seem esoteric, Anna has made come alive through her speaking out.
-Cindy Hounsell, President
Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement
Thanks for your presentation at our conference on the future of life-cycle saving and investing on Oct. 26, 2006. You struck exactly the right balance between theory and practice. The academics and the professionals all appreciated your insights. As an organizer of the conference, I very much appreciated the conference review you wrote for the actuarial journal. Thanks also for the helpful suggestions regarding our conference scheduled for 2008, especially the idea to have a session dealing with health care issues. We will surely want you to be a participant in that session. We hope that you will continue to help us coordinate with the Society of Actuaries.
-Zvi Bodie, Federal Reserve Board/Boston University
I have worked with Anna on a number of SOA annual meetings now and highly value her commitment as a speaker but also as a coordinator for mini seminars. Indeed, the past 2 SOA meetings contained mini seminars consisting of 3 to 6 sessions on a topic. Anna has enthusiastically taken the lead on a mini seminar at each meeting and helped recruit, moderate as well as coordinate with all speakers to ensure that all were on the same page and to prevent duplication of information. This necessiates a large time commitment, not to mention preparation time for her own presentation. And am glad to report that the mini seminars that Anna was involved in were very well received and attended. She is a jewel to work with and an important resource to the SOA’s continuing education.
– Chantal Bray, FSA, EA, MAAA
Society of Actuaries Pension Continuing Education Chair
Anna Rappaport’s contribution to our successful 2006 Association of Canadian Pension Management’s (ACPM) Annual Conference was significant. As a member of a three person, international panel, Ms. Rappaport provided attendees with insightful comments about the U.S. pension system. Her understanding of the social and economic impact of the challenges facing pension plans was of great interest to our attendees. She demonstrated a clear understanding of the issues facing pension plans today that was beneficial in terms of focusing on what is driving these issues and the potential for future challenges. Her forward-looking analysis of these issues and some of the possible repercussions to the retirement system provided our attendees with opportunity for discussion, both at the session and throughout the conference.
Feedback from attendees was very positive with consistent comments about the quality of Ms. Rappaport’s presentation.
– Becky J. West, Conference Chair, 2006 ACPM National Conference