The content of this article was originally published in The Actuary as Simplifying the Complex: How to speak to nontechnical audiences.
A natural part of anyone’s business career, the further you advance, the broader your audience becomes. And that applies to both formal and informal settings.
As an actuarial student, your primary audience is your boss (an actuary), his or her peers (other actuaries) and your peers (actuarial students). For the most part, this group is homogenous and very similar to you. Thus, it’s not too difficult to prepare to present information to them. You just need to focus on how you want to present the information since, generally speaking, the way you want to present it is the way they want to receive it. Said differently, early in your career you already know your audience well. This is not true, however, as your career advances and your audience gets more diverse.