Spencer Day 2026 | The Future of Strategic Risk Management

Feb 3, 2026

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Welcome to RIMScast. Your host is Justin Smulison, Business Content Manager at RIMS, the Risk and Insurance Management Society.

In this episode, Justin interviews Megan Miller, the CEO of the Spencer Educational Foundation, and John Button, ERM strategist and RIMS-CRMP Workshop instructor. The episode is divided into two interviews. Justin and Megan review the Spencer activities coming up around RISKWORLD 2026 and later, with a focus on driving students into insurance and risk careers and on providing risk scholarships to build the industry. Justin and John focus on John's ERM and risk philosophies and the key skills and knowledge the next wave of risk practitioners will need as risk management moves into strategic risk modes. They discuss the RIMS-CRMP virtual workshops that John teaches, and James Lam's RIMS-CRO Certificate Program in Advanced Enterprise Risk Management, which John endorses. They talk about RISKWORLD 2026, which is coming up.

Listen for tips on inviting the next wave of students into the risk profession and preparing for upcoming trends in risk.

Key Takeaways:

[:01] About RIMS and RIMScast.

[:17] About this episode of RIMScast. We will be joined by Spencer Educational Foundation CEO, Megan Miller, and ERM strategist and RIMS-CRMP Workshop instructor, John Button. But first…

[:47] RIMS Risk Foundations Certificate Program. This beginner program will guide you through the risk landscape and help evaluate the purpose, function, and process of risk management. On completion, you will receive a Digital Risk Foundation certificate and 24 RIMS CE credits.

[1:07] Cohort Number One starts on February 10th and 11th, with "Fundamentals of Risk Management," and then, on February 25th, "Risk Taxonomy," followed by two on-demand courses. Register now because the next cohort will be held in August. A link is in the notes.

[1:28] RIMS members always enjoy deep discounts on the virtual workshops.

[1:32] Webinars The next RIMS webinar will celebrate Women's History Month by exploring the success of women in construction risk on March 6th. We'll be joined by a Chief Risk Officer, an underwriter, and a broker.

[1:45] They will explore their career paths, risk and safety philosophies, and lend some insight as to why this is the time for the next generation of leaders to rise. Visit RIMS.org/webinars and check out the link in this episode's show notes.

[2:00] RISKWORLD General registration is open for RISKWORLD 2026, which will be held from May 3rd through the 6th in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Visit RIMS.org/RISKWORLD or RIMS.org. Register today to take advantage of those sweet advance rates through the end of this month!

[2:24] On with the Show! Returning to RIMScast is one of my favorite people, the CEO of the Spencer Educational Foundation, Megan Miller! Spencer Day is coming up on February 23rd. We want to hear all about what she has in store for us this month, and at RISKWORLD 2026.

[2:50] Megan Miller will also present a special introduction for the "Hard Hats and High Stakes" Webinar on March 6th. Let's get to it!

[3:08] Interview! Spencer Educational Foundation CEO Megan Miller, welcome back to RIMScast!

[3:30] Megan says the Spencer Educational Foundation had a great year in 2025. They surpassed their goals. They're riding into 2026 on top of the wave. They are also starting Year 1 of implementing their next Five-Year Strategic Plan through 2030.

[3:55] Megan says they have some big growth goals; they're hoping to raise $10 million a year by 2030. They ended last year at just over $4 million.

[5:13] Spencer Day on February 23rd is held in conjunction with Insurance Careers Month. The Insurance Careers movement is to get students thinking about careers in insurance.

[5:29] Holding Spencer Day during Insurance Careers Month raises awareness about what the Spencer Educational Foundation is doing to help drive more students into insurance careers.

[5:36] The Spencer Educational Foundation tries to raise at least $7,500 from individual contributors that day to fund an additional scholarship. If they can raise $7,500, they can give out one more scholarship in 2026 and set one more person on the path to a career in risk.

[6:18] At RISKWORLD, the Spencer Educational Foundation holds three events: Pickleball Social on Saturday, May 2nd, with sponsor Optum, the Gallagher Topgolf Golf Tournament on Sunday, May 3rd, and the 5K Fun Run on Tuesday, May 5th, with new sponsor Bold Penguin.

[7:59] The 5K Fun Run will take place at Boathouse Row at 6:30 a.m.

[8:57] The Spencer Soirée will be held on Monday, May 4th, at 5:30 p.m. It's Spencer's big donor appreciation event. At the Spencer Soirée, Spencer announces the winners of the International Student Risk Management Challenge that takes place all day on Sunday, behind closed doors.

[9:16] On Monday morning, you'll have the opportunity to see the top three student teams present. Over 50 teams are competing. They submit their papers online, and the judges select the top eight teams to be flown to RISKWORLD. In 2025, half of the teams were international.

[10:01] For some students, it was the first time they had ever been to the U.S. It's an incredible opportunity. In 2024, the team from Hyderabad, India, won. Justin had them as RIMScast guests.

[10:20] The 2025 winning team was from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

[10:32] At the RISKWORLD conference, the top eight teams present behind closed doors on Sunday, and the judges select the top three. On Monday, those presentations are open to the public. It's impressive to hear the students talking through their cases. Come and watch!

[10:53] On Monday, at the Spencer Soirée donor appreciation event, the first, second, and third place winners are announced, with cash prizes. It's a big audience, and the students answer the judges' questions. Megan says that the students are poised and super bright.

[12:08] The 2026 Spencer Funding Their Future Gala will be held on Thursday, September 17th, back at the Waldorf Astoria, which was recently reopened after extensive renovations. Megan says it's stunning.

[13:30] There are two honorees for the gala, Sierra Signorelli from Zurich, and Marya Propis from RT Specialty. Marya was one of the earliest RIMScast guests. She has been heavily involved in Spencer.

[13:51] Megan says Zurich has been a strong partner of the Spencer Educational Foundation for a very long time. Sierra has taken on an expanded role at Zurich.

[14:09] Marya is the former board chair who hired Megan within the Spencer organization.

[14:35] For more information about the Funding Their Future Gala, listeners can reach out to Megan Miller or Brianne Kelly-Prensa at the Spencer Educational Foundation.

[15:00] Megan mentions some of the new names at the Spencer Educational Foundation. Brianne Kelly-Prensa is the new Development Manager, helping Megan with fundraising and finding new partnerships. Amisha Kitani is the new Program Administrator.

[15:31] Amisha was an intern at LVMH through Spencer's internship grant program.

[16:10] Megan was a Spencer scholarship recipient. While she was at Swiss Re, she received a Spencer scholarship for the part-time Master's program. Spencer was very instrumental in helping Megan complete her MBA.

[16:37] Spencer also has two board members who are Spencer scholarshop recipients: Robin Roeder and Cristina Vigilante. As Spencer grows and impacts more students, he loves to see them come back into the fold.

[17:13] Justin shares details about the presenters of the RIMS webinar on March 6th, "Hard Hats and High Stakes: Women Leaders Shaping Construction Risk Management," including a special introduction by Megan Miller. Megan is excited about it.

[19:01] The webinar is not only in honor of Women's History Month but also in advance of Construction Safety Awareness Week in May. Justin says this important sector deserves the spotlight.

[19:39] If you have any questions for Megan, find her at SpencerEd.org. Justin tells Megan, it is such a pleasure to see you again.

[19:56] Our next interview features John Button, CRMP, an Enterprise Strategic and Technology Risk Strategist for American Systems and an Instructor for the UCLA Extension Business School, specifically for implementing their Enterprise Risk Management course.

[20:24] John Button is one of the instructors for the RIMS-CRMP Virtual Workshop Series. John will be leading the March 10th and 11th Workshop, and the June 9th and 10th Workshop.

[20:39] We are going to get a glimpse into his risk perspective and philosophy. We're going to talk about strategic risk management and where he believes ERM is headed in the short and long term. Let's get to it!

[20:52] Interview! RIMS-CRMP Commissioner John Button, welcome to RIMScast!

[21:10] John heard about the RIMS-CRMP from other practitioners who were getting certified. John worked with Joseph Mayo on a couple of his books, the latest being Cultural Calamity. Joseph suggested the RIMS-CRMP to John. John looked into it.

[21:41] John fell in love with the RIMS-CRMP, as it is a foundational risk management certification.

[21:52] Justin adds that John Mayo was the first RIMS-CRMP Story. John says the RIMS-CRMP has been a pretty exclusive club, but it's spreading quickly around the globe, and once you've gotten it, you start to see who else has it.

[23:16] Justin asks about strategic risk management. John says when he was studying for the RIMS-CRMP, he was well aware of strategic risk management, and he had been an enterprise risk management advisor at Gartner, but it wasn't practiced as much then as we see it today.

[23:45] While studying for the RIMS-CRMP, John learned of the RIMS Strategic Risk Management Framework. He thinks it is one of the clearest ways of thinking about strategic risk management. It started connecting the dots for him about the value chain and benchmarking.

[24:21] John says there's been an evolution in business from hazard risk to operational risk to strategic risk, and the real value is within strategic risk management. With strategic risk, what we focus on is largely the business model or foundational assumptions of the organization.

[25:22] It will involve your customers, your financial model, your capabilities, and your value proposition. Strategic management deals with deciding the direction of a company, where you are trying to go, and the business model for how you are going to achieve success.

[25:48] John says strategic is fundamentally different from operational, which may involve the execution of parts of the strategy, keeping the lights on, and running the business.

[26:21] John says the most important skills for future risk leaders are to understand the decision science and analysis component of measuring uncertainty. That involves a basic understanding of statistics, probability theory, and the psychology of biases. That's critical.

[27:23] John tells of helping develop risk quantification courses for RIMS for risk managers to learn how to measure and communicate risk in economic terms, for leaders in an organization. That skill set will differentiate risk practitioners in companies in achieving goals and objectives.

[28:18] The people in an organization doing the work of mitigating the risk are often labeled as owning the risk. John says a risk is an uncertainty that will negatively impact an objective. Whose objective is threatened by the risk? Knowing that, you can build the accountability bridge.

[29:58] John says when the ownership of risk is not known, most executive decision-makers use System One, instinctive thinking. System Two thinking requires deliberation and problem-solving. When a risk owner is identified, executives switch to System Two thinking.

[31:37] Accountability is a by-product of risk owner identification.

[32:09] Quantitative risk analysis allows you to accurately and mathematically measure risk. You can't count risk with ordinal scales that only tell you the order of things. When you measure risk quantitatively or statistically, you can accurately forecast the financial impact of an event.

[33:51] That forecast enables executives to make more informed decisions. You can add risks in a mathematically coherent way. You can see how risks hang together for the organization.

[35:12] John says a good risk culture is an organization that practices what it preaches. John would expect to see incentives built into measuring performance. It's not just whether you met your goals and objectives, but also whether you followed good risk management practices.

[36:38] John says a lot of organizations speak to it, but what they say and what they do are often two separate things.

[37:13] There's a big push right now for using more quantitative tools and skills for doing risk management. Risk management is more than quantitative measurement or decision analysis. John sees mistakes from companies looking only at the short term.

[37:57] If you do risk management well, with a solid risk culture, there is always the possibility or probability of failure. Any company, even with great risk management, can be susceptible to systemic risk and big surprises. Having a good risk culture lowers the probability of failure.

[38:47] John says they touch on risk culture during the RIMS-CRMP Workshops. It's about trying to develop a programmatic and systematic approach to risk that is consistent, coherent, and serves as the foundation for further growth. It's the beginning of the journey, not the end of it.

[39:30] John discusses flipping the script from uncertainty to opportunity. He notes that risk managers often focus on compliance, which was great in the past. The future, with its move toward strategic risk management, will need far more than risk event forecasts.

[41:03] John believes the next phase will come from using your imagination, in collaboration with AI, to see beyond the five-year strategy timeframe, to develop hypotheses and a different kind of forecast about where trends, drivers, and conditions will show up in the risk landscape.

[41:56] John thinks risk management will move outside of the organization. The next wave of practitioners will be equipped quantitatively, helped by AI, and will help to steer strategy and the strategic direction of business models to find the opportunities for innovation.

[42:27] Justin says this has been such an enlightening conversation and mentions that John will be leading the virtual workshops for RIMS-CRMP on March 10th and 11th and June 9th and 10th. What is John Button's instruction style?

[42:53] John enjoys teaching. He's currently teaching Implementing Enterprise Risk Management at UCLA. What's important to him is making sure people are crystal-clear, understand the foundation, and can analyze the concept.

[43:19] John reduces most challenges in risk management to communication. What one person means by cyberrisk may not be what somebody else means. He makes sure those he is teaching feel confident when they walk away, ready to go. His teaching style is thorough.

[43:59] John always stays back after the webinar to answer questions. Some people contact him later with questions, and he's more than happy to help them.

[44:18] Justin mentions the RIMS-CRO Certificate Program in Advanced Enterprise Risk Management, hosted by James Lam. John introduced himself to James Lam at the FAIR Conference 2022, after reading his book. John took the RIMS-CRO Certificate Program.

[45:07] John says they worked live for about four hours every other week for six sessions, with each module building on the previous one. The next cohort will begin in April. Registration closes on April 6th. That course will run biweekly from April 14th to June 23rd, 2026.

[45:55] Check out RIMS's social channels to see a testimonial from John talking about the course. It was extremely beneficial for him and for the others who shared their perspectives on it.

[46:40] John will be at RISKWORLD 2026. Last year was his first RISKWORLD, and having attended a lot of business conferences, he shares that he was blown away by how awesome RISKWORLD is. John invites you to reach out to him if you go, and he'll be happy to talk to you.

[47:15] Special thanks to both of our guests, Megan Miller, the CEO of the Spencer Educational Foundation, and John Button, one of our valued RIMS-CRMP Commissioners and virtual workshop instructors.

[47:29] Links to SpencerEd.org and to John's upcoming virtual workshops for the RIMS-CRMP Exam Prep are in this episode's show notes. Register now, and let them know how great they sounded on RIMScast in February 2026!

[47:46] Plug Time! You can sponsor a RIMScast episode for this, our weekly show, or a dedicated episode. Links to sponsored episodes are in the show notes.

[48:15] RIMScast has a global audience of risk and insurance professionals, legal professionals, students, business leaders, C-Suite executives, and more. Let's collaborate and help you reach them! Contact pd@rims.org for more information.

[48:33] Become a RIMS member and get access to the tools, thought leadership, and network you need to succeed. Visit RIMS.org/membership or email membershipdept@RIMS.org for more information.

[48:50] Risk Knowledge is the RIMS searchable content library that provides relevant information for today's risk professionals. Materials include RIMS executive reports, survey findings, contributed articles, industry research, benchmarking data, and more.

[49:07] For the best reporting on the profession of risk management, read Risk Management Magazine at RMMagazine.com. It is written and published by the best minds in risk management.

[49:21] Justin Smulison is the Business Content Manager at RIMS. Please remember to subscribe to RIMScast on your favorite podcasting app. You can email us at Content@RIMS.org.

[49:33] Practice good risk management, stay safe, and thank you again for your continuous support!

Links:

RISKWORLD 2026 Registration — Open for exhibitors, members, and non-members!

Reserve your booth at RISKWORLD 2026!

Spencer Educational Foundation | Spencer Day — Feb. 23, 2026

RIMS Legislative Summit — March 18‒19, 2026 on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. | Register now!

RIMS-CRO Certificate Program In Advanced Enterprise Risk Management | April‒June 2026 Cohort | Led by James Lam

RIMS Risk Management magazine | Contribute

RIMS Now

RISK PAC | RIMS Advocacy

RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) | Insights Video Series Featuring Joe Milan!

The Strategic and Enterprise Risk Center