My non-linear career journey from actuarial student to tech investor

Solai Valliappan
10 min readApr 10, 2022

This is an adaption of a talk I gave to first year actuarial students at the University of New South Wales (my alma mater). In 2019 this talk was delivered in person and subsequently virtually in 2020 and 2021.

I’ve had quite a variety of roles so far in my career so my talk is going to focus on these roles and what I learned from each of them, the skills I’ve found most useful and also how the transitions have come about.

Slide 1: A little about me, Solai Valliappan

About me

When I studied at UNSW there wasn’t a specific degree for Actuarial studies — it was a Commerce degree and you could then choose your majors. So I picked Actuarial studies and Finance as my majors. I had a quick look at the course outlines in the degree you’re currently studying and there is a lot more coding and data analytics which I think are great fundamentals for the future.

What am I doing now? I’m investing in venture capital, I’m also advising some early stage companies one of which is a space tech company (High Earth Orbit Robotics). Where I am today is not at all where I envisaged to have ended up!

And a little about me as a person — I’m a Sydney sider, the daughter of Indian migrants, an amateur yogi and I love to try new restaurants, which is why I do so much yoga.

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Solai Valliappan
Solai Valliappan

Written by Solai Valliappan

Tech investor with an actuarial background interested in technology, startups, investing and data driven insights to influence system change.

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