Life & Work with Ainsley Ramsey

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ainsley Ramsey.

Hi Ainsley, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, and have been passionate about the mathematics field for as long as I can remember. My academic history is heavily defined by my experience as a young woman in the STEM field, and I am proud to now be able to say that I have found, and I am continuing to find, ways to incorporate my love for math into my adult life.

I currently work as a Senior Consultant at a government healthcare consulting company providing actuarial and strategic support to my teams’ clients. Beyond my work life, I am also the founder of an annual Pi Day fundraiser called Piece of the Pi, which aims to benefit STEM education for local students while also cultivating awareness and support for the important role of women in the STEM field.

I had the pleasure of running the second annual Piece of the Pi fundraiser this year along with three other young women in the mathematics field: Lily Gabric, Tori Stratton, and Sofia Blavatsky. This year’s fundraiser benefitted the School Science Pass Initiative at the Arizona Science Center (ASC), whose goal is to provide School Science Passes offering free admission to the ASC for all 1,300 Title I elementary schools in the state of Arizona.

After three weeks of fundraising and with a goal of $5,000, this year’s fundraiser raised over $8,440, which will provide 42 Arizona Title I elementary schools with School Science Passes! I am so grateful for the hard work, commitment, and thoughtfulness of our team and our community, and I am so proud of the impact we have made this year. Our team looks forward to growing this initiative each year and continuing to make difference in our community.

The idea for what is now Piece of the Pi stemmed from what I can best call a “party trick” reciting hundreds of digits of the number pi (3.14…). After winning my first pi recitation contest at my middle school math club meeting and picking it back up years later for comparable high school contests, I made it a personal goal to memorize and recite 100 more digits of pi each year on Pi Day. In celebration of Pi Day 2022, I memorized and recited 900 digits of pi, one hundred more than I had recited the previous year.

I am so proud to have taken a long-term passion of mine, shared it with and connected with those with similar passions, and transformed it into a community initiative improving the educational experience for kids in our home state. More importantly, I am eager to expand upon this passion for the future and continue to give back in a meaningful way.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There were most certainly some struggles along the way.

My team and I have found that there are countless considerations, obstacles, errors, and challenges when you are building something “from the ground up.” None of us on our team had distinct, significant experience with creating and running a fundraiser, so we often had to learn as we went and support each other along the way.

We had to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, we acknowledged that we wouldn’t immediately have an answer to every question or obstacle, and we kept the importance of the cause at the forefront of our minds whenever we made decisions.

I certainly could not have managed this fundraiser alone, and being able to rely on my team of passionate women with differing ideas/ways of thinking was imperative to Piece of the Pi’s success this year. Each of us took what free time we had outside of our careers, college classes, and overall daily lives to contribute to this “passion project,” and I am so proud of what we have accomplished.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a Senior Consultant at a government healthcare consulting company in Scottsdale, Arizona called CBIZ Optumas.

I provide actuarial and strategic support to my teams’ clients in an effort to improve the healthcare experiences of some of our country’s most vulnerable members. As part of my work, I am also pursuing actuarial accreditation through the Society of Actuaries by studying for and taking a series of actuarial exams.

I love being able to use my skills to help others, and I am so grateful to do that within my company.

Contact Info:

• Email: info@pieceofthepi.org
• Website: pieceofthepi.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/piece.of.the.pi/