USF expands risk management program as demand and impact grow, especially during hurricane season

By Paul Guzzo, University Communications and Marketing

A few years ago, Olivia Feldman's grandmother, who is deaf, was rushed to an Indiana hospital - and no sign language interpreter was available.

"They had to handwrite notes to communicate," Feldman said. "If something happened to my grandmother because of that, the hospital would have been liable."

That experience led Feldman to pursue a degree in risk management and insurance, which she earned in 2024 from the University of South Florida's The Baldwin Group School of Risk Management and Insurance.

To meet growing demand, The Baldwin School recently expanded beyond its original Sarasota-Manatee location, allowing USF students to major in risk management and insurance on all three campuses.

That decision has led to an increase in USF students deciding to "Put Risk in Their Futures," said Randy Dumm, director of The Baldwin School, which operates within USF's Muma College of Business.

In Florida, risk management is often associated with hurricane-related issues like building codes, but its scope extends far beyond major storms. From real estate to cybersecurity, its role is growing across industries.

"Risk management is a dynamic and expanding area," Dumm said. "It intersects across disciplines and isn't confined to just one."

Feldman is now a client service specialist for The Baldwin Group - the company that gave The Baldwin School its name - and she said that versatility is what drew her in.

"There are so many different people in this world with so many different needs," she said. "That's what appealed to me - the chance to protect not just major companies, but the average person, like my grandmother."

Think of a company's risk management team as in-house detectives: They search for hidden dangers and solve operational puzzles to head off trouble before it strikes.

Take accounting, for example.

"Accounting provides the framework that governs a business's financial activities - operations, credit, cash flow, all financial reporting," Dumm said. "Many transactions that pass through accounting carry some degree of risk."

Professionals in the field assess those systems to uncover weaknesses in internal controls, identify loopholes that could lead to fraud and create checks to catch calculation errors.

"Where do firms typically fail?" Dumm said. "It is often due to cash flow issues. That's why it is critical to identify problems early."

Cybersecurity is another key area. Nearly all companies are vulnerable to attacks, so risk managers evaluate digital defenses - from weak firewalls and guessable passwords to unreliable backup systems - and recommend improvements.

"Cyber risk isn't just a concern for large corporations," Dumm added. "Small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly targets of cyber attacks and given their resources, more vulnerable and at risk than large companies"

Physical safety is part of the picture, too, Feldman said.

"Resorts can have plenty of flaws," she said. "Without adequate protection - whether that means security guards, cameras or something else - guests are at risk of things like assault or worse. These are safeguards that can be put in place before anything bad happens."

Still, she and Dumm agree that protecting Floridians from hurricanes remains the backbone of risk management in this state.

In Florida, for instance, specialists assess the likelihood of hurricanes hitting specific communities and recommend building codes and mitigation strategies to limit damage.

"A stronger and more resilient housing stock means that the risk-bearers - insurers and reinsurers - are more willing to deploy their capital in the state of Florida," Dumm said. "Ultimately, competition and an increased availability of insurance is a positive for Florida homeowners in terms of better affordability."

Florida's population growth and building boom suggest that demand for risk professionals will only rise.

"The number of specialties within insurance is substantial - and within risk management even more so. As such, risk professionals tend to be passionate about what they do because they are problem solving in a setting that they are interested in and enjoy building expertise," Dumm said. "The opportunities for finding this path are only going to grow."

So, too, is The Baldwin School.

"We'll serve almost 1,300 students in our classes this semester," Dumm said. "A mix of those are majoring or minoring in risk management as well as those taking the classes as a required business course. We are seeing significant growth in enrollments and majors and minors in risk management and insurance, and we see these numbers continuing to grow for the foreseeable future."

The Baldwin School was founded in 2017 and renamed for The Baldwin Group after a $5.2 million donation in 2022 - a major milestone in its development.

Another milestone came when students formed a USF chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma, a professional organization that connects students with industry leaders, internships and service opportunities. It launched with eight members. Today, it has almost 130 members - making it one of USF's fastest-growing student groups - and its growth is expected to continue.

In addition to its active partnership with The Baldwin Group, The Baldwin School benefits from strong engagement and support from the risk management and insurance industry.

"You can't have success without an active, consistent and strong supporting industry around you," Dumm said. "There is a talent gap problem in the insurance industry that programs like ours are trying to address, so our industry partners are very much looking to our growth to help address this problem. And of course, you need to build to scale in terms of size in order to do so."

The next step was expanding access.

"The notion of being able to offer the major on all three campuses has eliminated a potential significant barrier to entry for interested students," Dumm said.

So, did The Baldwin School just manage its own risk?

"Well, risk management is all about reducing uncertainty," Dumm said with a laugh. "Imagine a student going home to tell their parents that they have indeed decided to put risk in their futures, and besides adding or changing majors, they also need to change campuses. While this campus assignment was a digital and not a physical requirement, this created unnecessary uncertainty, and a common outcome when making decisions under uncertainty is to do nothing. We have successfully reduced this uncertainty and the result is a significant increase in majors - the risk management process does work."

As for Feldman, her current job focuses on how clients' day-to-day decisions - such as adding or removing vehicles from an insurance policy - affect their coverage.

But like The Baldwin School, she hopes to expand her reach.

"I think about people like my grandmother," Feldman said. "Not just what went wrong in her case, but how we can build systems that work better for everyone - before something bad happens. That's what keeps me passionate about this work."