Leilani Duong-Vázquez
Seeking Summer 2027 Actuarial InternshipActuarial Science @ UConn '29
Catastrophe Risk & Pricing Intern @ Yokahu (Lloyd's of London)
Bilingual English / Spanish • Founder, Lovely by Leilani
About Me
I spent the summer after my freshman year in London, pricing hurricane risk inside the Lloyd's market. Yokahu is a team of under ten building parametric weather insurance, and an approved Lloyd's Coverholder and Lloyd's Lab alumnus. My job was to find a way to price a margin that adjusts to each insured location, instead of charging the same flat number everywhere.
What surprised me most was how much of the work came down to judgment. Deciding which assumptions were worth defending, and how to explain a tail risk calculation to people who weren't going to open the spreadsheet.
Earlier in my freshman year I worked on a Goldenson Center case competition about how CVS Health and Aetna could address social determinants of health in underserved communities. Both projects came back to the same question: how do you get coverage to people the market usually skips? That's the work I want to keep doing.
I've also run Lovely by Leilani, a sea glass jewelry business, since middle school. Six years of setting prices and guessing how much inventory to bring to a craft fair turns out to be decent preparation for pricing work. I still make every piece by hand.
I'm looking for a Summer 2027 actuarial internship, open to any practice area.
Education
University of Connecticut, Storrs
Major: Actuarial Science
Expected Graduation: May 2029
Dean's List with a 4.0 in Fall 2025
Experience
Data Analysis Actuarial Intern
Yokahu
- Replaced a flat margin applied uniformly to every insured location with a dynamic one priced off each location's own contribution to portfolio catastrophe risk.
- Built the pricing model in Excel, using Python and generative AI, drawing on 41,000 simulated years of hurricane losses from the Reask DeepCyc event set to measure portfolio tail risk and how much individual locations compound or offset each other's exposure.
- Priced each location off its marginal contribution to the portfolio's worst 1% of years (Tail Value at Risk). Concentrated locations got loaded, geographically diversified ones got a credit.
- Documented the methodology and everything still unresolved in a technical handover, and a colleague carried the project forward after the internship ended.
- Worked on a team of under ten at an approved Lloyd's Coverholder and Lloyd's Lab alumnus, seeing directly how brokers, MGAs, carriers, and data providers transact in the Lloyd's market.
Founder and Owner
Lovely by Leilani
- Set retail pricing and margins across the product line, tracking per-piece material cost and sell-through to decide what to make more of.
- Forecast inventory and production against seasonal demand for craft fairs across Connecticut and Massachusetts, where committing to the wrong mix means carrying it home.
- Run lovelybyleilani.com end to end: listings, product photography, fulfillment, and customer service.
- Manage the business finances, including cost of goods, sales tax, and how much of each season's revenue goes back into materials.
- Design and make every piece by hand from locally sourced sea glass, six years and counting.
Cashier
Big Y World Class Market
- Ran a register through peak store hours and closed out a balanced drawer across cash and card.
- Worked the front end with a rotating team, handling price questions, returns, and the occasional unhappy customer.
Projects
Goldenson Center Case Competition
The prompt asked how CVS Health and Aetna could use their nationwide presence to address social determinants of health in underserved communities.
With three teammates, we proposed two programs, one a tiered produce prescription service for chronically ill, food-insecure Medicare Advantage members, then compared which one CVS could realistically sustain.
Skills
Leadership & Activities
UConn Actuarial Society
High School Outreach and Social committees
Junior Panhellenic Council
Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Organization of Latino Actuaries (OLA)
Sponsored to attend the Avanza conference twice: San Diego in 2025 and Chicago in 2026
Focus Areas
Catastrophe Risk
Tail risk, event sets, and how concentrated exposure compounds inside a portfolio.
Parametric Insurance
Coverage that pays on a measured trigger rather than an adjusted loss, and where that structure fits.
Access and Underserved Markets
Getting coverage to the people and places the market usually skips.
Get In Touch
Internships
Seeking a Summer 2027 actuarial internship, open to any practice area.