Callum Higgins, St Hugh’s 2010

Career Choice: Graduate Analyst, Model Product Strategy, RMS, London
Salary Band: £25,000-£35,000K

What is your current role?
The company I work for (RMS) builds models and software to help (re)insurers and financial institutions evaluate and manage catastrophe risks like earthquakes, hurricanes and terrorism. I predominantly work in the Europe part of my team and help to create pre-release materials for products, support existing models by highlighting their business value, and examine different markets to see where there might be opportunities for future products.

What are you most proud of in your career so far?
I assisted in organising a series of presentations for our annual client conference in Miami. This involved helping with the creation of slide decks, organising dry-runs for all of the presentations and ensuring everything ran smoothly at the event.

What are the future opportunities for you in your career area?
I currently support a broad range of perils and countries wherever I am needed, but in the future I may get the opportunity to specialise and take on further responsibility for specific products. RMS also welcomes internal moves to different positions within the organisation and if I ever decided to leave there are also opportunities within (re)insurance companies or brokers.

What made you study Earth Sciences at Oxford?
I enjoyed studying a variety of science subjects during my A levels and wanted to continue developing my knowledge further in each of these while applying my skills to an area of study I was particularly interested in, the Earth.

What was your favourite aspect of the course?
My favourite aspect was the 4th year oceanography course because of its broad scope, ranging from climate change to marine biology, and the mix of lecturers.

What was your favourite field trip?
The Spain fieldtrip was my favourite because I was much more confident after completing my mapping project and felt that by the end of the week I had a good grasp on the geological history of area. Additionally it was the last fieldtrip with the whole of the year together.

What advice would you give to current students, either just starting out, or about to graduate?
Don’t worry if you would like to use your degree after you’ve graduated but don’t want to work in Oil and Gas / Mining or do a PhD. There are lots of Earth Science related jobs in areas you might not even have heard of.