Baseball provides the spark for RIT alum’s finance career

David Foy ’89 (applied statistics) had long been fascinated by numbers, and America’s pastime provided the spark for the RIT alum’s long career in finance.

Growing up in New Hampshire, Foy, an avid Boston Red Sox fan, would calculate batting averages in his head for fun. His love for mathematics carried him into a 30-year career as an executive and consultant in financial and insurance services. Foy now embarks on his next chapter as the CFO of insurance giant GEICO.

Coming to RIT in the mid-1980s, Foy was drawn by the College of Science’s applied statistics program and the university’s co-op experience, which he felt gave him a chance to get practical work experience prior to graduation.

“As a baseball fan who had a talent for mathematics, the applied statistics degree felt like the perfect major for me,” Foy said.

The major turned out to be his launchpad. Foy discovered how advanced statistics could be applied to finance, particularly in developing stochastic models that analyze the probability and distribution of possible outcomes.

That foundation led him to begin his career as an actuary, leading him to executive roles at Hartford Life and White Mountains Insurance Group. At Hartford Life, he learned the ins and outs of corporate finance through one of his proudest moments—leading the company’s 1997 IPO—and he was named the CFO the following year. At White Mountains Insurance Group, he led the acquisition of Symetra and sat on its board through an eventual sale at roughly four times what the company had paid. He’s spent the last several years as an independent consultant in the insurance industry. A decade after graduating from RIT, his success brought him full circle as the College of Science named Foy a Distinguished Alumnus in 1999.

Foy has always been fond of GEICO. Throughout his executive journey, the late Jack Byrne, an insurance industry magnate who held CEO roles at both GEICO and White Mountains Insurance Group, became his mentor.

“I feel fortunate I was able to work with him,” Foy said. “I often heard him speak glowingly about his time at GEICO, so for me, I felt like it was the perfect company for me to return to a CFO role.”

When time allows, he still finds his favorite numbers at the ballpark, watching the Red Sox with his two grown sons.