10 Questions! with CBE Alum Adrian Weidmann

Welcome to another alumni episode of 10 Questions! for July 2026!

Adrian Weidmann is a property risk engineer and insurance executive whose career bridges high-hazard industry, catastrophe risk, and engineering education. Trained in chemical engineering at UConn ('02), she has spent more than two decades evaluating some of the most complex facilities in the country: from semiconductor fabs and steel foundries to pharmaceutical manufacturing, chemical plants, high-rise towers, and nearly every ski resort in the Northeast! She excels at translating engineering realities into the decisions that protect billions of dollars in property. Adrian's career includes more than a decade teaching first-year engineering courses at UConn Hartford and membership in UConn's Academy of Distinguished Engineers. She has developed and delivered nearly 30 technical training seminars to various national organizations, on everything from construction evaluation and natural catastrophe hazards to occupancy-specific risks and emerging technology like 3D printed construction. She maintains memberships in APIW - Association of Professional Insurance Women, NFPA, and AIChE (an AIChE member since 1998), while devoting her volunteer energy to mentoring the next generation of engineers. Today, as AVP of Property Risk Engineering at Crum & Forster, she is building a Property Risk Engineering function from the ground up with her colleague, Steve Fomchenko, driven by the belief that every engineering assessment is a prediction about a loss that hasn't happened yet, and that the best engineers make even heavily technical information digestible.

Thanks for joining us this past year as we've explored so many Husky stories, past and present - we're taking a brief break for August, but will be back in September with a new academic year and a whole new group of Huskies to welcome to the pack!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Hi everyone, and welcome to another special alumni edition of Ten Questions with Dean Berkey. Today's guest is proof that engineering doesn't always lead where you expect. Adrian Weedman graduated from UConn with a degree in chemical engineering, and over the last two decades, she's built a remarkable career helping companies understand and manage complex engineering risks. Today, she's the AVP of risk engineering at Crum and Forster, where she combines technical expertise, leadership, and communication to help organizations make smarter decisions and prevent losses before they happen. But Adrienne's impact doesn't stop an industry. For more than a decade, she's also been teaching first-year engineering students here at UConn, helping thousands of future engineers discover where their own paths might lead. She's a mentor, a STEM advocate, and someone who has spent her career connecting the classroom with the real world. Today we'll explore the surprising ways an engineering education can shape a career, why communication is one of an engineer's greatest tools, and how saying yes to unexpected opportunities can open doors you never knew existed. Alright, everyone, welcome to the July episode of 10 Questions with Dean Berkey. It's my great pleasure to welcome another alumni guest this month, Adrian Weedman, who is a 2002 alum from the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department. And so thank you so much for taking time out of your day and joining us here, Adrian.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Thank you so much, Dan. I'm so thrilled to be here. The university's been a huge part of my life since before 2002 and remains so. But I'm happy to spend some time and answer some questions with you.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Fantastic. Well, um for the summer, we've been doing these sort of alumni episodes, getting and going, uh, talking with some students that have graduated, you know, uh a little bit while ago and have had some time to build their careers and inviting them back to sort of then hopefully provide some perspective to our curtain students about what life and success looks like after the university. So let me start out with how do you think that UConn prepared you for your career? And what do you think, or what advice would you give to students to do now to set themselves up for that post-graduation success?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

No, I think that's a great question. Um, what I would say is that UConn and specifically this program prepared me in approaching problems and how to break things down because the job that I do, I have to walk in or used to have to walk into facilities where I didn't know anything about anything, I didn't know what was going on, and I had to look at a manufacturing process and break it down into what hazards were present. And that's a way of thinking. So there was a methodology that came out of it. Um, and interesting thing is that property risk engineering, you don't typically see a correlation to chemical engineering, but there is uh like sprinkler hydraulics, that's fluid dynamics, that's hydraulics, I've got that. Um, there's you know, reaction kinetics, also um special chemical within this field is like a specialty. So understanding reaction chemistry, figuring out this potential thermal runaway. Excuse me. That's stuff I do all the time. So it's really gave me a solid base on how to look at a problem and break it down.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

The critical thinking part.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Critical thinking, exactly. And then for students, I would say be open to non-traditional opportunities and make sure you work on your communication skills. Like those are humongous in any industry, manufacturing, consulting, any of them. And sometimes that kind of falls lower on their priority scale when they're a student.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Fantastic. So I like what you talked about there because you said you've sort of ended up in maybe a non-traditional field. So today you're the AVP for risk engineering at Crum and Forster. Yep. Get the name right? Fantastic. So many engineering students probably don't necessarily think of insurance as an engineering career. And so, what exactly does a risk engineer do, and why is engineering such an important part of your work?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Okay, so starting right out of graduation, I was what's called a field engineer. And what I would do is walk into, like I said, any of those facilities, and I had to break down what was going on in a property. So there's something called cope, which is construction, occupancy, protection, and exposures. All of those have an engineered approach to reducing risk. So we have to evaluate construction, strength of construction, how it performs in fires. We have to evaluate the occupancy. So if you think about, say, a shopping mall, there's different occupancy hazards with that than say a steel mill.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

So have to understand walking into each of those, what could go wrong, how can it go wrong, how will a fire develop, how does equipment break down, all that kind of stuff. Uh protection. So that is fire protection and fire detection. So understanding different technologies for sprinklers, for alarms, uh, for novel systems. There's things called oxygen-reducing systems used in warehouses, so they keep the oxygen level lower so combustion can't happen. Okay. Um and understanding that depending on where you're at, there's different requirements because, say, your styrofoam cup, that's going to burn differently than a piece of wood.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

So we have to understand fire dynamics and fire development and what it takes to put that kind of fire out. And then exposures, which is what's going on outside that could impact the business. So it could be NAT cat. Um, so I have to evaluate flood, flood hazards, so that's a lot of natural catastrophe.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Natural catastrophe. Okay, NAT Cat, got it.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

NATCAT, so flood, wildfire, snow collapse, wind, there is a ton of engineering in all of those.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

So not just chemical engineering, but some civil engineering, mechanical engineering, lots of different things.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Mechanical civil, you have to, you have to be able to be flexible and be willing to learn as you go.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

But you really need to think about a company's worst day.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yep, yep. Okay. Yep, yep. I my best case scenario is that what I've written out never happens. Okay. And a business operates seamlessly. But if they do have their worst day, how bad is it?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

How bad is it going to be? Yeah. Okay.

unknown 6:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

So before moving into a leadership role, you spent years, as you said, as a field engineer evaluating everything from manufacturing facilities to hospitals to construction projects. Is there a particular project or site visit that sort of really fundamentally changed for you how you think about engineering and risk?

SPEAKER_01 6:59

So I wouldn't say it's a site visit, but there were two projects I was involved in. So the first one is uh interesting, but this was more of a desktop exercise where you know you look at paperwork. I had a very large property insurance carrier come to me uh when I was in a consulting role and say, Adrian, we want to know what are our exposures in New York, New Jersey, God forbid a hurricane comes up the coast.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

And they said, Here's our book of business, help us figure out what could go wrong. What does a bad day look like? How is this going to be as the carrier with all their accounts? Yes. Because a field engineer looks at a location, an account engineer looks at the whole company, but the level I was doing at it was all the companies that insured New York, New Jersey. And I brought up some things that became very pertinent in a very special hurricane that hit that region.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Sandy. Sandy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yeah. Uh so I identified to the carrier, you have to be concerned about the density of your insureds. You have to be concerned about low-lying areas because if you check the FEMA maps, there's flood hazards everywhere, and the buildings are built above. But what about all the below grade spaces? Those are gonna flood. Right. It's tidal, that's not clean water. Right. That's salty water.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

You're gonna lose a lot of equipment.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

You're gonna lose equipment, utilities. A lot of these facilities in New York, New Jersey have tunnels in between them.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

You're gonna have water, water seeks its own level, as we know. It's gonna find its level and it's gonna be gross.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Um, so did a rough evaluation for them, and this was probably four or five years before Sandy happened. Okay. So they had an idea of what to expect, and when it happened, I wasn't too far off.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Um, and what validating, but also terrible, right? Terrible. Um, and then the other one, uh, I had been sent to Hawaii several times to do evaluations. Yeah, that was horrible. Horrible days of my day, times of my day. Um, no, I had to go to Hawaii multiple times to help another carrier understand their exposures to residential properties. So if you think condo complexes in Hawaii, they're very densely built. They're all wood frame, but there's only like six inches between structures. Okay. And they realized we're insuring hundreds of these condo complexes on all the islands, and we don't really know what the loss potential is.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

So And then we see the Hawaiian sort of super firestorm. Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

So I actually toured that neighborhood a couple years before that fire happened and was explaining, okay, here's this complex, there's this amount of space, the fire's gonna jump, right? This is what's gonna happen. And the morning the Maui fire happened, another one of my engineers was in Oahu waiting to fly over, and he called me and he said, Adrian, I can't get to Maui because it's on fire. And we just we watched in horror as a wildfire happened and wiped out Haina. Wow. Yeah. So those are those are two projects that kind of have stuck with me of, you know, I did the evaluation, but there is a real cost and a real um sense of loss with things like that. Right. Um, ideally, property insurance is about stuff in buildings, right? But there are real people with real jobs, and unfortunately, in the case of Lahaina, there are there are lives that sometimes are lost. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So, in addition to all of this work that you've done in risk engineering, um, you've also spent more than a decade teaching first-year engineering students at our UConn Hartford campus while also having this full-time job. So, how has teaching made you a better engineer, and how has industry made you a better better teacher?

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Well, so I actually love this arrangement.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Um, I feel like they are very intertwined. So, absolutely what you said, being an industry engineer makes me a better teacher, and being a teacher makes me a better industry and uh engineer. So I feel like teaching only first-year students, I bring them a real voice because I have contacts in many different companies, I have friends all over the country, and I can bring to them a realistic expectation of here's what your chance of employment is, here's the type of salary you can expect, here's internship opportunities, here's the changing marketplace. And if they have questions, it's not just theoretical, sure, it's all actual information. Um at the same time, having to break down complex um topics for first years is the same kind of methodology you'll use in a boardroom.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Sure. So to translate ideas to a non-expert or non-necessarily technical audience.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Exactly. A lot of the times uh when I was a field engineer, I was dealing with CFOs, so chief financial officers. These are actuarial background, business, accounting, these are not engineering people, but to get them to understand what's going on and and why it might be in their best interest to invest in improvements in their structure and their you know, their processes, um, that's really helpful. The other thing too is when I present problems to my students, I can almost always tie it back to something real. Yeah. Um in my my version of Engineering a thousand, we typically go over engineering disasters at least one week. Sure. And we tie it back to, okay, this is the degree program, this is something that went wrong, here's what we've learned, here's what we can do better for a future, so that these students have an idea of being good stewards moving forward. Because it's it's really important for us as an industry to act ethically and take responsibility for our choices.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

So you just mentioned this that that one thing that really stands out in your career is this passion or ability for translating technical concepts into language that everyone can understand, whether it's students, underwriters, CFOs, other executives. Why do you think that communication is such an underrated engineering skill?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Um, because a lot of students and a lot of engineers get hyper-focused on being technically correct.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

But you can be, you can be the most technically correct person ever. If you cannot effectively communicate your results and convince people that they have value, it's pointless. So I again I emphasize with my students that we should really work on our reading skills, our presentation skills, our communication skills, and you should communicate outside of your comfort zone because if everybody groups up in their little friend groups, they're not actually gonna learn anything. But if they realize that in a classroom of you know 30 to 40 students, there's 30 to 40 viewpoints, every one of those is valid, but they're different, and you need to overcome that difference to make sure you get to good results, that is extremely valuable. And that's valuable no matter what degree program you're in. Like it's not just an engineering thing, but engineers traditionally overlook it or place lower value, and I would argue it's right on par with, you know, Calc 2 and Chem and physics because you're gonna work in industry or research, you're going to work with other people, you have to deal with different personalities, and you have to deal with different communication styles. Um, you also have to understand that you know if you can't get people to buy into your solution, it's not gonna solve anything.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Right, because very rarely are you the one getting to make all the soul decisions. Right. Right. So you've got to convince other people that your your your viewpoints are are actionable. The interesting thing I see from a student perspective is that oftentimes um students are afraid of being wrong. Yes, right, and so and that can keep them from communicating. So what I try and do with students um is is convince them that now is the time to be wrong. Exactly. School is the place to do this, you know, these classrooms, classrooms are a place to have those conversations and articulate your ideas, and and we should make that a a welcoming environment in which to be wrong so you learn from those experiences. But it but that's a that's a tough that's a tough balance for some students.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

But I 100% agree with you. There's a lot of people who don't say anything because, like you said, they're afraid to be wrong, they don't want to stick their neck out.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

I guarantee you that if you're thinking it and it's wrong, a bunch of other students have the same misconception.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Right?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

And so getting it out there and talking about it is helpful, but that's sometimes that's hard for students to to do sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

I think though the project-based nature of both classes, I think it brings a lot of that to the surface. Yeah. Um, because they learn by trying. And I tell them you don't have to have a perfect project at the end of the day. There are there are certain metrics you should hit, but I'm more concerned about your process and your methodology, and that can you communicate to me what you tried, why it worked, why it didn't work, what you would do differently if the two ultimate constraints, time and money, sure, were of no object. I think they they take more out of that than you know most other things.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

So, in addition to all of the work that you've done for the regional campuses at you know, UConn Hartford, you've also volunteered with First Robotics. Yeah. You've mentored students, you've advised Phi Sigma Row, you've helped organize the Husky Robotics Invitational. What keeps bringing you back to mentoring the next generation of engineers?

SPEAKER_01 16:12

I believe very strongly, like I said earlier, that we are stewards of the future. There were people who supported me when I was a first-year student and I didn't know anything. Sure. But I was curious and I was excited. There were many different people who who helped me along that way. Um, there were three specific professors that were in the program in the late 90s, not to date myself. Um but just super supportive and open to questions and willing to teach me. You know, coming in as a young woman in engineering, it's a bit daunting. Um, you know, percentages in chemical engineering usually hover 20, 25 percent ladies compared to 70, 75 percent male.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

I think we're doing better now.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

I I would love to hear that. Um but at the time, uh, Dr. Weiss, who was one of my professors for several classes, he was a lovely man, and uh he gave me the opportunity to work in his lab over a summer. So I got an exposure to actual research projects, helped him with uh polymer research for golf balls. Um that was very, very fun. But also it was just learning how to function, living independently over the summer, managing my budget, helping with his lab tasks, keeping track of experiments that take multiple days. Like it was it was a really good experience. Uh and then Dr. Kan Erke, who is now in in Turkey or Turkey, I've been butchering the pronunciation, um, he was wonderful as well. I really enjoyed time with him in lecture classes and did two independent studies in his lab. Um, and that was with desulfonization of diesulfuel. Okay, using supercritical carbon dioxide. And again, really interesting equipment, learned a lot of testing methodologies, things that were really, really cool, um, but also just a wonderful human being who saw a young woman who was just trying to learn and and mentored me. Uh and then the third one was Dr. Susie Fenton. Um, she was another professor here at the time, and Susie always tried to keep an eye on the young ladies in the program and make sure we had a voice and that we were doing okay, and everyone really valued that. So those those three were fabulous resources, and I can't thank them enough for the base that they gave me to build from.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

So that's fantastic. So looking back at your own time as a chemical engineering student, you clearly identified some some professors that were you know really impactful to your time here. Was there a class, an internship, or an other experience as a student that really you think changed or impacted the trajectory of your career out outside of the mentoring and the and the faculty you interacted with?

SPEAKER_01 18:48

I would say 100%. So um, first off, get involved in student programs. So I was a student member of the chapter of AICHE.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

I'm still a member to this day. I would love to get a pin like you have, but I can't find one. Um but I we should nominate you for fellow.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

That's how you get one of those. Right. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

We'll get on that.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Um, but what actually changed my trajectory was a rejection. Okay. So I was an intern at Utilever um starting from junior summer after junior year, did tons of work, had a great experience, but when it looked like it was time to graduate, there wasn't a position there for me. So I had to reach out to career services here, be like, guys, we got a pivot. I I need I need options. And it was our career services department that said, hey, there's this company called FM Global. They're looking for engineers. What do you know? I'm like, I don't know anything about insurance, even though my dad was in claims my whole life. Okay. Um, and funnily enough, my mother was a teacher as well. She was an art teacher. So, you know, chemical engineer has a teacher in insurance for parents. Didn't think I'd ever end up in teaching or insurance.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

There you go. And now you're doing both.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

I'm doing both.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

It's funny. That's so funny how the way the world works sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah. So um it didn't work out at Unilever. I learned a ton. Great company, great people, but um joined FM. And what was very funny was my intern, my internship, my interview when I went in to interview of like, I'm dressed up and business professional, and I don't know what I'm doing. Um, and the gentleman who would be my boss is, you know, he comes into the interview space and he goes, Okay, here's a sprinkler head. Here's a sheet of paper. You got five minutes. Tell me how this works. And he walked out. And I've never seen a sprinkler head before in my left, like to touch it. Yeah, yeah. Like I didn't know. Um, so I'm just like, okay, there's this deflector thing, and there's a little bulb and it's full of a fluid, and I bet you that's gonna expand when it gets hot and it shatters, and this is a valve thingy that moves, and that's what lets the water out. Okay. And I'm writing furiously while I'm looking at this thing. And he comes in afterwards and he looks at it, and he goes, Yeah, this is good. Wanna go launch? Like, okay, I guess that's my interview. All right. And that's straight into the point. Straight to the point. Uh went out to lunch with him and and some other gentlemen, I think, that were his managers. And I think that was also a part of the soft interview. Well, though, was going to launch how I comported myself. Um, and the official offer came very shortly thereafter.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

And the rest, as they say, is history.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

The rest, as they say, is history.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

So engineering is taking you to consulting, education, leadership, strategic decision making. Yeah. Looking back over the last 20 plus years of a career, career, what has surprised you most about where an engineering degree can take you?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

That there are no limits. You know, when I went for my undergraduate program, everybody really had the goal of going into manufacturing. And very few went into research, which that's a valid path, but most of us were trying to be manufacturing professionals. As a property risk engineer, I don't make anything. I've never made anything. However, I have to know how everybody else makes things. Everything. Okay. Um so that that was really interesting, and trying to explain it to To other, you know, peers are like, you do what? And then we start talking, we're like, oh, wait a minute. So you've been to this plant and you've been to that plant. I mean, I've been to as part of FM Global, I had what was called a direct service provider role. So that meant I belonged to a company. So there were two very large pharmaceutical companies that were in state that are no longer here, but I had to take care of them. Yeah. Um for a very full circle moment. I was assigned Yukon Avery Point. Okay. And I was assigned Yukon Stanford.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Fun.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

So those were my locations I had to go take care of. Um worked out wonderfully. People there are nice. At the same time, you know, because of the chemical engineering background, I had to go to some other not so pretty and lovely places. I had to go to some lubricant manufacturers. I also had to do steel mills. I also had to do um more recently, I've done semiconductor manufacturing, I've done lithium-ion battery manufacturing. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

So a real whole gamut of uh industries.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

You name it, I've been there.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

And having to walk in day one as a trusted advisor. I have to walk in and earn people's trust of believe me when I tell you these are the bad things that can happen and why it's a good idea. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah, it's interesting because people often don't want to hear those things.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

No, they don't. They don't. But if I'm telling them that it'll save you money.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

And and I couldn't have done this without, again, that flexible foundation that this program gave me. Um you know, not every undergraduate program gives you that level of flexibility.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And I'm very grateful for it.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

So you've been obviously super successful leading uh after leaving here with your your degree, but you stepped away from full-time engineering to raise your family. Four kids? Four kids. Right. And then returned and rose to executive leadership. And so what would you tell students, especially maybe young women, who worry or might be thinking about a nonlinear path that might impact or derail their career? How do you talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 23:59

So, first thing I say is once you have a degree, nobody can take it from you. The hardest part is getting it, but once you've got it, you've got it. It's okay to prioritize yourself. It's okay to prioritize your family. You know, nobody this is this is something I say in a lot of the talks I give. Nobody lays on their deathbed saying I wish I worked more.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

For real. Yeah. For real.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

So, you know, it's okay to have those discussions with your partner and make those choices. Um, it was very, very important to me from a very young age to have children. And I actually had my first two kids at FM and you know, it worked out well, but then it got to be too much. I stepped away. I was a stay-at-home mom for two years. And it's very interesting when you come back to industry when you're coming at it from a position of not actually needing the salary.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

So I could be pickier in the choice I made, because when you're graduating, you need to be.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

You want a job.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

You want a job, paycheck. Um, and and I loved FM, they were fabulous. They gave me a retirement party at you know, 29.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

That's fun. That's awesome. It was great, it was great.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

I walked in and some of my clients came and they brought mugs. Nice. So I have mugs from different companies from my retirement party at 29. Um when I joined Lost Control Services, that's a vendor service company. So there's some insurance carriers out there that don't have engineers on staff, but they still really value engineering guidance and they'll pay for it on a project basis. So to have that project contractor kind of relationship instead of the typical, you know, W-2 40 hours a week, yeah. That flexibility was fabulous. And there are opportunities out there like that for lots of companies, for lots of positions. They're just not well publicized. Okay. So it's okay to take a step back. It's okay to not go full bore for 50 years. It's okay to focus on family.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Life happens.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah, life happens. It totally happens. And you know, I I like to tell people, you know, make sure that you enjoy what you're doing because a lot of times these careers are great because they'll support your hobbies. Um, I have friends that also graduated from this program and they do all kinds of amazing things. I have one girlfriend who was at Five Sigma Row with me. She is like the best world traveler ever, and she's been everywhere. I am very, you know, impressed with everything she's done. And then I have another friend who graduated from the mechanical engineering program, and he has a slew of race cars, and he races cars for fun. It's like you couldn't do that with another, you know, industry under your belt.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Work to live, not live to work, right? Okay. Exactly. Exactly. So you're relatively, relatively new at Crumb and Forster. Yes. Right? So that's a that's a recent move for you. Yes. Um, and you are kind of building their property risk engineering from the ground up. Yep. And so to wrap up here, tenth question, what is it like to be handed that blank page instead of sort of an established playbook? How is that different from your previous experience then?

SPEAKER_01 27:03

So I actually love it. Yeah. Because I'm taking what I know and I'm filtering it through what I've learned of 21 years of work. Excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Saying, look, this is what I've seen work well, this is what I've seen not work well, this is what, based on what I've seen in losses in industry, I think we should be worried about and stuff we should consider. So I'm I'm helping build this engineering practice with uh Steve Famchenko at Croman Forster and the property specialty division to help our underwriters, help guide them, help them make good decisions on what they're writing and help evaluate the risks. And I'm using what I've learned from all the carriers I've interacted with and said, look, you know, a warehouse with inadequate sprinklers, that's gonna burn down. It's gonna happen. We have losses that happened out in California just recently, um, where sprinklers are overwhelmed or weren't effective. Um you can write that into procedures, you can make tools around that, but the chemical engineering background, I'm not a programmer at all, and yet I've learned how to make tools. Right. You know, so it's it's really fun to build from scratch and to vet it through people that are gonna be using it. And so far, thankfully, all the feedback has been outstanding. That you know we're saving people time, they're they're getting support for their decisions, they can make better decisions moving forward, and we're really looking to grow, grow this going forward. And I I think this is one of those things that for students it's a good thing for them to see struggle and for them to see iteration because everything I'm doing, it's not one and done.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

I mean, before I came here this morning, I did a training presentation and I was briefly working on a tool I'm building on. I'm on version eight of that tool since January.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Nice. Iteration.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Iteration. It's huge. And and uh change is always coming, and you have to be aware of it, and you have to be nimble and you have to jump at it because our industry does not ever stop.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

No. So technology always moves forward.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Yeah, but but I'm open to change. I like it, and I kind of like chaos a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Says the lady working in risk management and insurance. I love it. Um, thank you so much for joining us here today, Adrian. For those of you that might be joining UConn this fall, uh, Adrian does teach uh Engineering 1000 and Engineering 1166 at our Hartford campus, so you can find her there. Uh, she's a fantastic mentor, so get to know her if you're one of the students there. And she's a regular presence here at stores as well. Uh, and we love having her affiliated with the College of Engineering. And uh, thank you so much for coming out and talking to us today.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Thank you so much for having me. This has been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Adrian's story is a wonderful reminder that an engineering degree really is a foundation for solving problems, wherever those problems may be. Whether she's helping companies better understand risk, teaching first-year engineering students, or mentoring the next generation of professionals, her career shows that technical knowledge, communication, and a willingness to keep learning can open doors in ways you might never expect. That's what Because of UConn is all about. By investing in our students, hands-on learning, faculty mentorship, and opportunities to explore new paths, UConn empowers graduates to build careers that continue to grow and evolve long after they leave campus. Because of UConn, alumni like Adrian are making an impact across industries while giving back to the engineering community that helped launch their journey. Visit because.edu for more. As we wrap up this summer special alumni series, we're going to take a short break during the month of August, but don't go too far. We'll be back in September with an all-new season of 10 questions featuring another incredible group of Husky students and the amazing research, projects, leadership, and experiences that make UConn Engineering such a special place. Thanks for listening, thanks for following along this year, and thanks for supporting the students, faculty, and alumni who continue to demonstrate what's possible because of UConn. And we'll see you in September.