About Us

Our Story

When I worked at what is now National General Insurance in North Carolina, I taught an internal class in SAS programming. But lectures can sometimes be dull so to make learning SAS more fun, I coded a simple game and uploaded it to the server for the class to use. The game contained a few hundred multiple choice questions along with a scoring system and a leaderboard so people could compete against each other. The name of that game was Battle-SAS!

Fast-forward to Toronto circa 2016: I was in semi-retirement back home in Canada and thought it might be fun to do something similar for the upper-level (CAS) actuarial exams. I like studying, I like teaching, I like coding, and I like games – it was the perfect storm – Battle-Acts was born! It took a few months of dedicated effort to learn Javascript and PHP so I could code a web version of what was originally an Excel file, but it turned out to be an engaging and enjoyable project.

Eva joins the team in 2017: My childhood friend Eva joined BattleActs in 2017 and since then, BattleActs has grown to help over 2000 exam-takers feel motivated, empowered, and confident on exam day. Both Eva and I are dedicated to BattleActs full-time with the aim of continuing to share our vision.

We have also welcomed several colleagues to the team as we are continuing to add more upper-level CAS exams to our offerings. While they may remain unnamed, they bring a wealth of experience and expertise to the table, forming the backbone of our Exam 8 study platform content, and providing crucial support for Exams 5, 6U, and 6C.

Graham Gersdorff

PhD (Mathematics), ACAS, President & Co-founder of BattleActs

Content writer for Exams 5, 6U and 6C

I did my undergrad in math at the University of Toronto and my PhD at Emory University in Atlanta. Subsequently, I spent a couple of years on the math faculty at Wake Forest University then 4 more years at Elon University before switching to an actuarial career. I worked for 16 years for what is now National General Insurance Company in North Carolina. My duties centered on reserving, and I coded a lot of the software used in the actuarial department. I also taught internal classes in Visual Basic and SAS to analysts, and basic actuarial techniques to analysts and product managers.

I moved back to Toronto in 2011 and spent two years working at Facility Association. In 2013 I took semi-retirement for personal reasons and started BattleActs in 2016. I developed the unique educational approach embodied in the BattleActs system, coded the website, and created the content for Exams 5, 6C and 6U. We launched the commercial version of Exam 6C in January 2018, with Exams 5, 6U, and 8 subsequently following.

Eva Taylor

B.Sc., M.S., R.R.P., C.C.R.C. Vice-President & Co-founder of BattleActs

Eva completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto and a Master's degree at the University of Nebraska. As the co-founder of BattleActs, Eva brings her previous work experience in teaching, Industrial Psychology, and Psychometrics to ensure BattleActs products incorporate sound strategies for synthesizing and mastery of information. Eva currently manages all aspects of customer service, operations, and business development at BattleActs.

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