Stuart Robertson was born on February 28, 1918, in Montesano, Wash., in Gray's Harbor County about 95 miles southwest of Seattle.
But when he was told he must pay a higher out-of-state rate, he transferred to the University of Washington where he helped meet the costs of board and tuition by working part-time as a houseboy in a campus sorority and with a second job at the federally funded National Youth Administration.
[1] In his junior year at college, Robertson was reconsidering his future course when he saw a recruiting notice for actuaries on a bulletin board in the math department.
Milliman principal Stan Roberts once described actuaries as “doctors of probability,” in that their occupation involves calculating the likelihood of such things as how long an individual will live after retirement or how likely someone is to come down with a specific disease.
[2] From his research, Robertson learned that he could earn the status of Fellow in the Actuarial Institute by passing tests and decided this might better serve his goal than a bachelor's degree.
A day after his 19th birthday, he began a job as a clerk for the actuary at the Great Northwest Life Insurance Company in Spokane, Wash.
He dealt with multiple aspects of insurance, including actuarial work, accounting, underwriting, and stockholder and policyholder relations.
[3] At this point, anticipating his final actuarial exam, he began to consider a move to the East Coast to expand his prospects.
[4] Robertson joined Milliman in his two-room office at 914 Second Avenue in Seattle,[5] bringing Northwestern Life along as a client.
An entrepreneurial model gave principals the opportunity to invest in new expansion, either geographically or into new practice areas, and enabled them to benefit from successes while taking on some of the risks.