WOMAN UNDERWRITER

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 93, 13 January 1939, Page 4

WOMAN UNDERWRITER

Canadian Visitor Discusses Pan-Pacific Conference

Most New Zealand women are already familiar with the name of Dean Mary Bollert, of the University of British Columbia, Canada. She is one of the most important and interesting visitors expected for the fifth PauPacific Women’s Conference, which is to be held in Wellington in 1940. At the last conference, held in Vancouver, she was elected president of the association.

First-hand news of Dean Bollert is brought to New Zealand by a Canadian visitor, Miss Eileen O'Brien, who arrived in this country on Boxing Day and is at present in Wellington on the course of a month’s tour. Miss O’Brien knows the dean well, and said she was eagerly anticipating her forthcoming New Zealand experience! She lectures in economics at the university, and is an exceedingly clever and charming personality. Miss- O’Brien follows an interesting career. She is the only woman in British Columbia with a chartered life assurance underwriter’s degree. She is employed by one of the largest international life assurance companies, and 95 tier cent, of her dealings are with, and for, women. There were four full-time women agents employed in Vancouver by her company, she said, and in that city were at least 17 other women in the same business. In common with the progressive methods of women in other professions, these life assurance women made a habit of regularly “getting together” to discuss their work with a

view to improvement and gaining additional knowledge to assist them in their work.

Miss O’Brien said there was much interest generally among the women of British Columbia in the Pan-Pacific conference in Wellington next year. It did not seem long since the last conference, which was held in Vancouver, and she had spoken to numbers of women who were hoping to come to New Zealand for the 19-10 conference. She has spent a month in Australia, and will return to Canada via the United States, where she will spend her third and last month before returning to Canada. After visiting Vancouver, she will leave for England, where she will gain further experience in the same class of work in the same company.