Lending a Hand to the Arc

A local non-profit was seeking ways to manage its health insurance costs. A team of Siena professors and students crunched months of data to help them find solutions.

The Arc Lexington is a local program that helps teens and young adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. Because their employees' health care insurance is self-funded, they were seeking ways to control costs in part by predicting the amounts of future claims. That's the perfect task for business analytics and actuarial science to handle together, especially if it's inspired by the Franciscan mission. CEO Shaloni Winston knew exactly whom to contact for assistance.

"Our insurance is self-funded, so any savings we achieve can be directly reinvested into our people and programs," explained Winston.

To help the Arc meet their organization's mission while covering their employee's health care, Ava Geer '26 and Alyssa Ramundo '26 conducted an analysis of how their insurance plan was used. Under the supervision of Professor John O'Neill, Ph.D. and Associate Professor Shahryar Gheibi, Ph.D. who began defining the project scope in the spring semester of 2025, the analysis began last May and wrapped up at the end of July.

"The analysis they conducted provided critical insights into our plan utilization and offered a clear framework for future data-driven decisions," said Winston. "Organizations like ours don't typically have access to this level of analytical expertise in-house, so this collaboration was incredibly helpful and impactful. We're grateful to Siena for empowering us to use our data in ways that truly strengthen our mission."

O'Neill and Gheibi explained that the Arc had a great deal of data to analyze, but not the time and staff power to do it. Once the data was anonymized (identifying names and services removed) the Siena team examined what types of health care claims were submitted and for what amounts, and how the trends fluctuated over time.

"This helped us develop a predictive model for them so they could identify cost drivers," O'Neill said, with Gheibi adding that it will allow them "to deliver insurance coverage to their employees more cost efficiently." In short: their projections will help the Arc save on insurance so they can spend more on their clients.

The team presented their findings and suggestions to Winston and her leadership team in July.

This is the second community-engaged project Siena's School of Business has conducted under its new Societal Impact Plan, supported by the University's Ted Winnowski '63 research fund. Last year, a Marketing for Managers class taught by Professor Adam Nguyen, Ph.D. explored ways for the Arc to increase awareness of its services and bring in new clients.

"I really enjoyed getting to know more about actuarial methods that I had never learned before, especially development triangles," said Ramundo. "It was really interesting to see how machine learning and team collaboration can really bring ideas together when working on a team. Overall, I learned a lot from this project and my team members and will carry this experience as I continue on my career and academic journeys!"

Geer noted the value of this opportunity for experiential learning.

"I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to work with Arc Lexington and Siena's outstanding professors, as well as my dedicated peer Alyssa," she said. "This project allowed me to gain hands on experience applying knowledge from Siena courses to real world situations. I found the impact from our project to be incredibly fulfilling."

Rashmi Assudani, Ph.D., dean of Siena's School of Business, has been coordinating the Societal Impact Plan on Behalf of Siena, and stressed the mutual benefits to partnering on an experiential project.

"When our students engage in projects that support non-profits, it creates a powerful exchange," said Assudani. "The students apply their classroom learning to solve real-world challenges, and the non-profit benefits from fresh insights and strategic thinking. It's a win-win that fosters both community impact and professional growth."